• Townshend Cooper, a junior, is currently studying in St. Petersburg. He will return to OSU in the autumn and use the award to support further academic year studies in Russian and for study abroad in St. Petersburg.
• Jon Harris will use the award to help pay for materials related to his translation project and graduate school work. He graduates with the B.A. in Spring 2015 and will enroll in the Slavic Center MA program in AU 2015.
• Caleb Hermann is a Russian and Music Theory major who strives for an interdisciplinary academic approach. He has taken Russian 1101, 1102, 3460 and 2250 and will study second year Russian at the Russian School at Middlebury College this summer.
• Megan Kupka is a junior Russian major who has completed all Russian language courses through 5201, as well as a variety of literature and culture courses. She is the president of the Russian Club and will study abroad this summer; she will use her award toward OSU tuition next year.
• Robin Smith will use the Schwartz award to support her studies in Russia during 2015-16. She has completed her Russian major and is working on her Political Science major -- but will continue to take courses in the department and is planning a thesis on cultural diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Melanie and Philippe Radley Awards were given to two undergraduate majors. The Radley Award provides merit-based scholarship support to outstanding undergraduate students who are majoring in Russian:

• Noah Nguyen will use the award to supplement summer study in Nizhny Novgorod with the CLS program.
• DeAnna Miller, a double Russian and Security and Intel major, has been working at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies this year. Her award is to support her thesis research on relations between Russia and Georgia.

​The Francis M. Buzek Award was given to Christian Brymer, a Midshipman in the Naval ROTC program who is planning a trip to Kyrgystan in summer 2016. The Buzek fund goes to an undergraduate majoring in Russian or Slavic Studies, with preference going to ROTC members. The award was initiated by Associate Professor Emeritus George Kalbouss in memory of one of his favorite students during his tenure in the Slavic Department at Ohio State. The student who receives this award is the one who energizes her/his instructors' teaching and helps coalesce the class in such a way that the students teach each other. At the tea, Dr. Brintlinger read a poem that Christian composed in Onegin stanzas about reading various translations of Eugene Onegin.

Three (non-monetary) Pushkin Awards were also announced, in recognitiion of students' contributions to the Russian Club and other Slavic-related extracurricular activities at Ohio State. The recipients were Megan Kupka, Jon Harris, and Jared Palazza.

The Kenneth E. Naylor Prize is a new annual prize that recognizes a student who demonstrates a deep and abiding interest in South Slavic and/or Balkan studies and excellence in his/her academic pursuits, thus honoring the memory of Kenneth Naylor, Professor of South Slavic languages and linguistics in the Department from 1966 until his untimely death in 1992. This year's recipient of the Naylor Prize was Daniel Petrick, a Political Science major and Slavic Studies minor. Among other coursework, Danny has completed three years of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language and two years of Turkish. As part of his coursework he has studied the relationship between nationalism, politics, language, and education in the Balkans and Turkey, and in summer 2014 he conducted in-country research on the implementation of post-conflict educational policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Finally, the following students were inducted as new members of the Dobro Slovo honor society: Lindsey Korte, DeAnna Miller, Jared Palazza, Todd Testerman, and Tyler Tomaszewski.

Congratulations to all awardees and inductees!

These awards were made possible by university endowment funds. Click here to learn more about the funds and giving to the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures.