Dr. Olga Klimova
Dr. Olga Klimova
Born in Uzbekistan and raised in Belarus, Dr. Olga Klimova is a Visiting Associate Teaching Professor of Russian Studies at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining CMU, she served as an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of the Russian Program at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). She also directed the STARTALK Russian Program for high school students at Pitt from 2017 to 2026. Since 2021, Dr. Klimova has served on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR), including as Vice President (2023-2024). She currently serves as President of ACTR and as National Co-Chair of the ACTR Olympiada of Spoken Russian, providing leadership for Russian language education initiatives at the national level.
Dr. Klimova earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Russian Literature, Language, and Culture from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A. in Popular Culture from Brock University (Canada), and an M.S.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Duquesne University. During her graduate studies, she studied German, French, and Polish, receiving a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for her study of Polish. She has been teaching Russian language, literature, and culture at the university level since 2005, beginning as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Pittsburgh and later serving as a full-time faculty member. She has also taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Brock University, Mercyhurst University, Chatham University, Washington & Jefferson College, and Middlebury College. In addition to her extensive experience in higher education, she worked as an instructional technology integrator at the Hampton Township School District in the Pittsburgh area. From 2008 to 2013, as Assistant Resident Director for the Pitt Summer Language Institute, Dr. Klimova accompanied students during their study-abroad program at Moscow State University.
During her tenure at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Klimova founded the Western Pennsylvania regional chapter of the ACTR Olympiada of Spoken Russian. She also established the Dobro Slovo Slavic Honor Society chapter within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and served as its faculty advisor.
Dr. Klimova has received extensive professional training in second language pedagogy, educational technology, and online teaching through the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, the University of Hawaiʻi, the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa, the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute in Moscow, and the National Institute for Higher Education in Minsk. She is a certified ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tester and has also completed training as an ACTFL Writing Proficiency Test (WPT) tester. Her contributions to teaching, curriculum development, and educational innovation have been recognized through numerous grants and awards, including Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, the Tina and David Bellet Teaching Excellence Award, the AATSEEL Excellence in Teaching (Post-Secondary) Award, a University Provost's Award for curricular innovation, the Provost's Open Educational Resources Fund, the Course Incubator Grant, and the Dietrich School Curricular Innovation Fund.
Dr. Klimova's professional interests include second language curriculum development, proficiency-oriented instruction, task- and project-based learning, instructional technology and artificial intelligence in language education, online and hybrid teaching, gamification, community-engaged language learning, and assessment. Her research focuses on the visual and popular cultures of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, cultural representations of Chornobyl, post-Soviet protest culture and art, and the cinemas of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.