Each year the department sponsors a different language assistant from Russian. The assistant is usually a post-BA student who serves as an additional resource for students of Russian and depending on student interest, organizes extracurricular activities. The language assistant conducts Russian 200 (conversational practice) and runs the weekly Russian Language Lab, where students are able to come to do homework, consult with the native speaker, or just chat. Our language assistant also lives in Russian House.

2005-2006 Maria Elova is originally from Kazan.

2004-2005 Abdurakhman "Rak" Zulumkhanov. Rak (or Rakh) (or Rock) is originally from Daghestan. He moved to Moscow to pursue his education. Rak is a graduate of Moscow Statue Linguistics University with a degree in Linguistics, Translation, Interpreting and International Communications. Most recently he worked as a journalist for Lifestyle magazine, an English-language entertainment magazine in Moscow.

2003-2004 Dinara Moukhametjanova. Dina is from Moscow. She has returned there.

2002-2003: Tatiana Yakovenko. Tatiana-or Tanya-is originally from Rostov-on-Don, a city in Southern Russia, and completed the Master’s degree in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Moscow State University in 2001. She taught Russian as a foreign language to students in Moscow, and enjoyed working with faculty and students at Grinnell. Tanya has invited any Grinnellians studying in Moscow to contact her.

2001-2002: Elena Melnikova. Elena received her undergraduate degree at Penza State Pedagogical University, and is currently working on an advanced degree at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.

1999-2001: Anna Samoilova. Anna worked with the Russian Department at Grinnell College for two years. She received her B.A. from Moscow State University, and after Grinnell entered the graduate program in Communications at Fordham University in New York.

A weekly lunch meeting in Cowles Dining Hall at the "Russkii stol" gives students and faculty members an opportunity to speak Russian in an informal setting. Speakers at every level are encouraged to participate. Individuals not on board are the guests of the Russian Department. Russian table is held every Friday, at 12pm, at the Cowles PDR.

In addition to Russian Table, students can practice their Russian at the weekly Russian Language Lab, traditionally held every Wednesday from 7:00-8:30 in ARH 227. Students who need help doing their homework, studying for exams, or who just want to chat are welcome to stop by on a walk-in basis.

Students are encouraged to make the most of the department's extensive collection of Russian film, one of the largest collections in the country. Expanded most recently by our Visiting Heath Professor Galina Aksenova, who taught a well-attended course on the history of Russian film in 1998, our collection covers the spectrum of Russian cinematography, from its beginnings in the silent film, to contemporary masterpieces, such as Bodrov's Academy Award-winning Burnt by the Sun. The Russian Department frequently organizes campus screenings of subtitled films, and Russian students often organize film evenings at Russian House. In addition, our faculty extensively use the film collection of our language and literature offerings.

Multimedia Support Instruction at Grinnell is supported by the first Sony language lab in the nation. The department houses an extensive and growing film and laser disk collection of titles ranging from early cinema classics to contmporary documentaries. Classrooms are each equipped with a laser-disc/VCR/CD station. The College receives daily satellite broadcasts from Russia, which are adapted for classroom use in some courses. Films, videos and music complement various courses in the language and literature sequence. Munindra Khaund of Grinnell's Instructional Multimedia Technical Support team assists humanities faculty in integrating the latest technologies into their teaching.

The Russian Department, in its continuing efforts to provide students with a fuller understanding of Russian cultural traditions, in a cross-disciplinary fashion, frequenlty collaborates with other departments and artistic and literary programs in bringing to campus prominent Russian scholars and artists.

Each department at Grinnell has a Student Educational Policy Committee (SEPC), a group usually made up of departmental majors, that assists and participates in a number of departmental activities, including faculty reviews; faculty hiring; extracurricular events; and faculty-student communication.

An annual Spring event in the Russian Department is the Slavic Coffeehouse, which is co-sponsored by Russian and Central and Eastern European Studies (RCEES). Students meet at kitchens on campus and in professors' homes, and prepare a variety of exotic treats from the Slavic kitchen, to be sold with coffee and tea that evening in the Forum Coffeehouse. Musical entertainment is a frequent tradition of the Slavic Coffeehouse, and performers have ranged from Russian bards to classical musicians. Proceeds from the evening are used to fund an event for Russian House.

The purpose of the Mohan Russian Study Award is to permit students to study or do internships in Russophone countries after graduation, when financial-aid from the college is no longer available. Please visit our Award Website to learn more.

The Russian Department, often in conjunction with RCEES (Russian and Central and Eastern European Studies), organizes one or two day-long excursions per year to numerous area sites of interest, or to events in nearby metropolitan areas that are connected in some way to our academic program. Often these excursions are arranged in connection with first-year tutorials taught in the department, but are usually designed to include our majors and friends of the department as well. We have traveled to Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cedar Rapids, St. Louis, and other cities on numerous occasions to visit art exhibits, attend important plays, visit local ethic communities, or participate in scholarly conferences.