Dear Colleagues and Friends of Slavic,
I wholeheartedly hope that these notes find you healthy and in good spirits! What a year 2020 has been! It has brought us new unimaginable challenges, from COVID-19 to the political and cultural climate in our country. I am proud to state that our department has met these challenges and other difficulties triggered by the precarious budgetary situation of Ohio State with resilience and dignity. We have continued to offer high quality instruction, advance our scholarly activities, and engage with the community despite the new circumstances. Astoundingly, this fall marked our highest course enrollments for the last 10 years! I am deeply grateful to my colleagues, faculty, associate faculty, students, and staff for their unfailing commitment to our mission!
The 2020-2021 academic year marks my eighth and last year as chair. Please allow me to reflect briefly on my tenure of leading and serving the department. Our most valuable force is our faculty and two brilliant colleagues, Drs. Alisa Lin and Philip Gleissner, joined us as assistant professors during the last few years. We have revised our curriculum creating new courses and programs, changes which have contributed to our continuous growth in enrollments (from 1571 in 2013-14 to projected 2050 in 2020-2021). We have created a new online undergraduate certificate, “Essential Skills for Travel and Business in Russia” and a new MA specialization “Russian Language and Culture for the Professions.” Concerned with matters of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we have taken important steps in creating an equitable curriculum and education for our students.
Our research impact continues to advance our profession in a variety of fields. A quick look at our faculty profiles on the SEELC website can testify to these accomplishments. My colleagues and I have received over $500,000 in grants from Ohio State and prestigious outside research entities such as the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, ACLS/Mellon, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since 2017, our department has housed and edited one of the premier journals in our field, the Slavic and East European Journal. Our staff members, Dr. Larysa Stepanova and Derek Peterson, have received college awards for excellence. In an effort to further engage with the community, we have seeded the instruction of Russian in the Metro Early College Middle and High Schools, starting this winter term. Last but not least, our endowments have grown, as we added two new ones to benefit our undergraduate and graduate students!
All this is not to say that our job is done. We are facing more and more challenges with a new General Education reform at Ohio State and limited academic market, challenges which demand our creative solutions and more hard work. But I have no doubt that we are up for these tasks!
As always, I appeal to all of you, our friends and supporters, to give and invest in our students and programs, for investing in the education of our young citizens is the best investment!
Appreciatively and with warmest wishes for a healthy and joyous holiday season,
Yana Hashamova, Chair
