Montana State University Announces:

Mongolia, a visually stunning country that shares much with Montana but also contrasts with it in important ways, will be the focus of Montana State University's International Education Week 2008, set Nov. 17-21.

This is the sixth year that MSU's Office of International Programs has sponsored an international education week. The event emphasizes the culture and traditions of a country while offering to the community free admission to lectures, film, stories and demonstrations. Mongolia is a natural topic for international education week because it is linked to Montana in several ways, according to Norman Peterson, MSU's Vice Provost for International Education. 

"Mongolia shares similar landscapes and environmental challenges with Montana," Peterson said. "It is also a land of haunting beauty and singular customs that will be the topic of a great line-up of interesting, free events throughout the week. I hope everyone on campus and in the Bozeman community is able to attend."

Bolortsetseg Minjin, a paleontologist from Mongolia who is currently a visiting scholar at the Museum of the Rockies, will kick off the Discover Mongolia week with a presentation about dinosaurs in Mongolia. Her talk is set for noon, Monday, Nov. 17, in SUB room 275.

In 2007 Bolortsetseg founded the non-profit "Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs" (ISMD) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The goal of the organization is to build a museum in Mongolia to preserve dinosaurs and other national treasures, and to further science education in the country. Since 2005 she has worked with MSU's Jack Horner, who has supported her efforts to improve Mongolian paleontology. She is working on the paleobiology of the Cretaceous dinosaur Psittacosaurus while at the Museum of the Rockies on a post-doctoral research position.

Bozeman freelance photographer Gordon Wiltsie, whose work is frequently published in National Geographic and other national magazines, will narrate a slideshow, "Images of Mongolia" at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17, in SUB Ballroom A. 

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