Teaching business students about leadership and risk-taking has its challenges at a state university in Belarus, a former Soviet republic.

"They still have a managed economy, though they're attempting to open it up," said Keith Kirkpatrick, who will depart next week for his sixth teaching stint at Belarus State University in Minsk.

"They are trying to grow their economy without embracing Western free-market traditions," said Kirkpatrick, a former Indiana University Northwest faculty member and president of KPM Group Inc., his own firm.

"It's a cautious entrepreneurship," Kirkpatrick said.

For his outreach work in the now independent Belarus, and in China over the summer, Kirkpatrick on Tuesday was named winner of the Northwest Indiana World Trade Council Tai-Pan award.

Named for the Chinese translation of a business big shot, the award recognizes a local individual engaged in international business.

The award was one of a handful given out Tuesday by the World Trade Council, founded in 1988 to raise regional awareness of the international marketplace.

Kirkpatrick, the group's president, was invited to teach in Belarus about three years ago and formed a relationship with the university that kept him coming back, he said.

His seminars on leadership and entrepreneurship are attended mostly by MBA candidates in Belarus, a country of about 10 million people, Kirkpatrick said.

"What makes it challenging is you're trying to teach people about entrepreneurship, and the opportunities are kind of guarded," he said.

"What's nice about teaching there is that the students are hungry to learn," he said. "They're eager to find opportunities."

The others honored on Tuesday were Thomas Peters, a Portage dentist who travels to South America to provide humanitarian dentistry; Russ Snyder, a retired steelworker and longtime Realtor who helped found the World Trade Council and continues to contribute to it; and Sandy Baker, a retired Munster teacher who assists emerging democratic nations worldwide in the teaching of democracy.