In most of Central Asia, teachers and professors are highly esteemed.  When visiting educators are expected, often students of a school assemble outside to greet their arrival.  Dr. Alan DeYoung was part of a UNICEF project evaluation team in 2006, where secondary school students in a small city Uzbek school waited to greet the team and present them carnations. 

Dr. DeYoung is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. His formal training is in the Sociology and Anthropology of Education, where his particular interest is in rural education and education and social change. Dr. DeYoung’s Central Asian research has spanned 14 years, during which time he was a Fulbright Scholar to the Abai Pedagogical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan (1995-96); and to the Arabaev Pedagogical University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (2000 – 2001). He was also an advisor to the Kyrgyz education ministry in 2001 – 2002, and administered a US Freedom Support Act university partnership between the University of Kentucky and three Kyrgyz universities from 2003 – 2006. Dr. DeYoung has published over twenty articles and book chapters on education reform in Central Asia during this time. He has also co-edited a book with Dr. Steve Heyneman ("Challenges to Education in Central Asia", 2004); and most recently co-authored a book on rural Kyrgyz secondary schools ("Surviving the Transition?: Schools and Schooling in the Kyrgyz Republic since Independence", 2006). Dr. DeYoung is now engaged in a study of student lives and subcultures in several Bishkek universities, funded by a US Title VIII grant. Dr. DeYoung also has a substantial domestic publication record in Appalachian Studies in the US, with particular focus on rural schools and communities in Appalachian West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.