A graduate student from the Kyrgyz Republic is leaving Kansas University today in hopes of starting an anthropology curriculum at home for Manas University in Bishkek, the republic’s capital.

Aigerim Diykhanbaeva was sent to Kansas University for a month by the Open Society Institute through its mentoring program, Central Asian Research Initiative.

Arienne Dwyer, mentor for Diykhanbaeva at Kansas University, said the program paired talented students with mentors in the United States.

Diykhanbaeva is a doctoral candidate in Kyrgyz folklore, specifically shamanism in epics and legends, at Aegean University in Izmir, Turkey. Diykhanbaeva also is a lecturer on Kyrgyz folklore at Manas. Anthropology is new to the Kyrgyz Republic, and Diykhanbaeva was interested in bringing a field methodology course to Manas. She hopes to expand the curriculum in the future, she said.

During her stay in Lawrence, Diykhanbaeva attended anthropology classes, faculty meetings and worked with Dwyer on field methodology. Dwyer also assisted Diykhanbaeva with fieldwork skills, using technology on campus, and acted as a go-between for introductions to staff and people in Diykhanbaeva’s field of study.

Diykhanbaeva said her experience at Kansas University was fruitful.

“I learned the culture of American people — students’ life on campus, for example. I gained lots of materials, lots of books and monographs,” Diykhanbaeva said.

Paul D’Anieri, director of Russian and East European studies, said Kansas University was looking into starting an exchange program with Manas.

D’Anieri said KU had a faculty exchange program with the Kyrgyz Republic in the mid-1990s, then known as Kyrgyzstan, but it was a three-year funded program and didn’t receive a renewal, so the program was dropped.

Aigerim Diykhanbaeva will return to her country, the Kyrgyz Republic after a monthlong visit to Kansas University to study anthropology and to return with curriculum to the university where she teaches.

If the new program comes through, D’Anieri said he hoped the results would be better this time around.