Outbound Photo Contest Winner Selected

The results of the Outbound Department's Fall 2009 Photo Contest are in! Join us in congratulating Joely Hildebrand for her wonderful picture of a street artist in Suzdal. Joely, a junior at American University, is currently studying Russian in Vladimir, Russia as part of the Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP).

Each semester, Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP) students are invited to participate in the Annual Outbound Photo Contest. This semester, the Outbound department received a record number of submissions ranging in subject from Russian architecture to local rock concerts to every day student life in Russia. It was a very difficult decision, but our panel of judges would like to extend its congratulations to the overall winner - Joely Hildebrand for her exceptional photo. Joely described the photo, "Taken in late September on the streets of Suzdal, a man plays the accordion with a stray dog at his feet and passers-by enjoy the quaint little town to the sound of his music." Joely is an International Studies major at American University in Washington, D.C.

Katherine Sandstrom, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, won second place. Katherine is a Russian major, currently studying in St. Petersburg. Sadie Freeman, a graduate of Grinnell College, won third place. Sadie completed her B.A. in History and is currently spending the academic year studying Russian in Vladimir. To view the second and third place winning photographs, as well as the honorable mentions, please go to the 

Photo Gallery section.

This fall semester, American Councils has over 60 students studying Russian in three cities - Vladimir, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. The Russian Language and Area Studies program serves both graduate and undergraduate students, who attend approximately twenty hours per week of class in Russian grammar, phonetics, conversation, history, and cultural studies; all courses are taught by native Russian-speaking faculty. One day per week of the academic program is set aside for local cultural excursions. Local excursions usually include a trip to the Bolshoi Theater and Sergeyev Posad for Moscow students, trips to the Hermitage, Pavlovsk, and Yusupovsky Palace for St. Petersburg students; and trips to the Golden Gate Museum of History; Uspensky Cathedral, and Suzdal for students living in Vladimir. During the semester, resident directors arrange a seven-to-ten-day trip outside the host city. RLASP groups have recently traveled to Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod, Rostov-na-Donu, Sochi, Suzdal, and Yaroslavl.

Alumni of this program have gone on to graduate school and academia (some of them going on to become teachers of Russian themselves!) as well as illustrious careers in academia, business, government and nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Russia.

For more information about the Russian Language and Area Studies program, please go to our website.