My career in Russian instruction began at the age of 22, when I first taught Russian at Lesnoe Ozero, Concordia Language Villages’ summer immersion program for youth ages 7-18. I worked in that program for several summers, and then became the Dean, or program director, a position I have held now for 20 years. However, because it was only a summer position, and my work during the academic year was in English language teaching, I was not able to consistently engage with the Russian language teaching community. It was not until fall 2021, when I transferred from the University of Oregon’s Intensive English Program to the program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, that I was able to devote time to engaging in the professional community of Russian language teachers.

ACTR was instrumental in helping me make the mid-career jump from teaching primarily advanced academic reading and writing in my native language to teaching primarily first- and second-year four-skills classes in a foreign language. I attended ACTR teachers’ lounges and webinars, accessed resources on the Padlets, and reached out to contacts I made through ACTR events. As the new coordinator of the Russian language program at UO, I also used ACTR resources for my students – nominating our first ACTR post-secondary scholar laureate, re-starting a long dormant chapter of Dobro Slovo, and nominating our exceptional graduate students for teaching awards. I am interested in running for the ACTR board now because, three years into my current teaching position, I have some time and focus to spend on giving back to the professional community that was so helpful to me in my transition.

Leadership Experience. How have you been a leader in your community, profession, and/or institution? How have your unique strengths, professional, and volunteer experiences prepared you to serve on the ACTR Board?

My career has provided me ample opportunities for leadership experiences. For the last 20 years, I have served as Dean of Lesnoe Ozero, Concordia Language Villages’ summer Russian language immersion program for children ages 7-18. In this seasonal role, I oversee curriculum design, teacher training and supervision, student support, community building and parent communication.

Concurrently with my role at Concordia, I pursued a career in teaching English to speakers of other languages, earning tenure and serving as an assistant department chair and in many committee leadership positions at City Colleges of Chicago, and then moving to the University of Oregon, where I coordinated the Intensive English Program for several years. During this time, I was very active in the largest professional organization in that field, International TESOL, serving on the board committee for sociopolitical concerns, chairing the LGBTQ caucus, and co-founding an Interest Section focused on supporting English Language Learners with disabilities.

All of these roles require strong communication skills, as well as organization, collaboration, and willingness and ability to learn a variety of technological platforms. I also have academic leadership credentials, including an MA concentration in Language Program Administration and the TESOL certificate in Leadership Development.

My leadership approach is collaborative and transparent, prioritizing the voices of stakeholders, and providing frequent opportunities for feedback. At the same time, I strive to be efficient, moving quickly to action, and assigning clear roles and responsibilities. I appreciate what I know of ACTR in this regard – the clear rubric for this application, for example, and the division of labor and shared responsibilities of board members.

Diversity, Equity, Access & Inclusion. How have you worked to create an inclusive environment in your classroom, workplace and/or community? What is something you have done in professional or volunteer service that demonstrates your commitment to be more inclusive of diverse populations and/or to provide greater access to the study of Russian by diverse populations?

While diverse and inclusive programming has always been important to me, my understanding of how to implement it has grown over the course of my career. At Lesnoe Ozero, we have always hired staff from a wide range of backgrounds – every year, we hire staff from multiple countries where Russian is spoken, as well as staff from diverse backgrounds within the Russian Federation. I have worked with professional networks to increase diversity, for example, I started an exchange program with the Tuvan State University, which brought Tuvan university students and professors to Lesnoe Ozero for cultural exchange. I also directed our first unrestricted capital gift to the purchase of a yurt to supplement the “culturally inspired” architecture on our site, which previously represented only northern Russia. We have always offered diverse cultural programming – our Kyrgyz staff taught komuz, our Ukrainian staff taught hopak, our language curriculum included mention of non-Russian holidays and cities, and we dedicated entire days to exploring the language and culture of staff who are interested in organizing day-long programming. However, in the last few years, we have asked ourselves how we can go further toward decolonizing our instruction, and we have done this in several ways. First, we have re-examined all of our language curricula, ensuring that all of our students have the opportunity to engage in greater depth with a wider range of cultures. For example, one of our non-credit curricula was initially based on the Trans-Siberian Railway, but did not contain meaningful engagement with the various cultures one might encounter along the way. We re-adjusted the curriculum to include these elements and also created an additional version (our non-credit students typically return to the same differentiated novice-high-to-intermediate-low group for several years, sometimes multiple times within one summer, so we have a long list of simulation-based curricula that rotate each session) with a similar structure that involved “Magic Schoolbus”-style travel to cities in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Secondly, we changed the expectations for our cultural choice activities so that cultural representation is explicitly included in the criteria for programming, alongside attention to balancing sports, art, music, etc. We also critically reviewed our large-group singing curriculum, and while we continue to use songs like Katyusha and Kon’, we discuss their use in military propaganda. We have also added non-Russian songs, so that each session, all of the participants learn a song in, e.g., Georgian, Belarusian, or Ukrainian, and non-Russian electives on Sundays, so that participants who are interested can familiarize themselves with greetings or the alphabet in a new language. We feel strongly that, since the Language Villages do not include non-Russian languages from our region, that we need to provide opportunities for participants to develop interest and begin study of these languages. We have similarly re-envisioned the camp menu, so that at least once every three days, we have a day-long menu from a specific ethnic background (e.g. Armenian, Tatar, Moldovan, Uzbek, etc.) with cultural information shared through table tents and presentations. Finally, we have ensured that we provide all-camp and elective activities that engage with questions of social justice. Each session, we offer an elective such as “Analyzing Sources on the War in Ukraine” or “USSR, Russia & the Global South” that provide a week-long deep dive into a specific area of concern, and an all-camp evening activity to learn more generally about topics such as protest music in Belarus, gender roles in Uzbekistan, or LGBTQ rights in Russia.

In addition to adjusting programming to incorporate better representation of and engagement with cultures where Russian is commonly spoken, we have also worked to make Lesnoe Ozero more accessible for more diverse learners. I have hired consultants and staff to work specifically on dismantling racism, and we now have visuals for learning that incorporate racially diverse families and students; cultural activities that address connections between Russia and the USSR and Latin America, Africa, and African-Americans; and training for staff to address issues of race in Russian learning, such as the use of the video for the song “Chunga Changa;” as well as awareness-raising activities for participants about experiencing racism in study abroad. We also have added expectations and training around use of pronouns and names for trans villagers and staff. We have made a particular effort to recruit a diverse hiring pool, and in the last few years have seen a substantial increase in ethnic and gender/sexuality diversity among our US-origin staff. This year, I was able to reach out directly to faculty at Howard University, and I hope to see staff applications from this HBCU’s Russian program. I also created a volunteer internship program that allows US-based college students who do not meet the language proficiency requirements to be on staff to come to the village, experience the immersion environment, and learn the language and pedagogical skills to co-lead one activity. The aim of this program is to provide access to language and cultural immersion for post-secondary students for whom study abroad may not be an option. Finally, we have worked for many, many years to try to bring a Startalk program to Lesnoe Ozero to provide access for students with financial need, and we are happy to say that we were finally successful this year. Financial need was our top criterion for acceptance, and we were able to admit all applicants with demonstrated need.

Another area of diversity that has been a particular focus for me is inclusion and support for students with disabilities. For many years, the population at Lesnoe Ozero was, in any given week, 50%-90% post-institutional Russian adoptees. Many of these children were affected by trauma, pre-natal substance exposure, and other challenges. Frequently, children who were thriving in the home were triggered by the institutional environment at camp or the smells and tastes of Russian foods and were unable to remain at camp. I advocated for training on these issues for myself and my leadership staff, and then we delivered annual training to our staff to enable us to support this population. While we remained an academic rather than a therapeutic camp, by improving our communication with parents and mental health professionals pre-camp, in order to support building compensatory strategies and identifying protective factors, and by giving our staff a range of tools to support children with these challenges, we were able to provide hundreds of post-institutional adoptees with successful camp experiences for over a decade, until the passage of the Dima Yakovlev act effectively eliminated Russian adoption.

Since receiving my MA in Special Education in 2021, I have had a particular interest in supporting students with disabilities. In particular, in my post-secondary context, I have used Universal Design strategies like contract grading to increase flexibility in assessment, as well as targeted literacy supports in office hours for students with difficulty reading. While the numbers are too small for statistical analysis, the implementation of these strategies coincided with a dramatic increase in retention across first-year Russian.

My dedication to personal growth in the area of Diversity, Equity, Access & Inclusion can be seen in my consistent attendance at the ACTR series on Diversity and Inclusion at the Lower Levels of Proficiency and my completion of the AATSEEL Certificate Program in Diverse and Inclusive Pedagogies.

Contributions to the ACTR Board. How would you like to contribute to the ACTR Board? What strengths, skills, and experience would you bring as an ACTR Board member?

As the director of a program for pre-college learners, I would bring experience developing curriculum and supporting programming for this age group. I am particularly interested in supporting incentive programs, like the National Russian Essay Contest.

After implementing the Post-Secondary Scholar Laureate program and a Dobro Slovo chapter at my university, I am acutely aware of the benefit that these kinds of incentives bring to Russian programming. However, I have struggled to find ways to connect the pre-college opportunities to my summer program. I understand that there is a need for support for the National Russian Essay Contest, and I would be happy to do that work, both to connect more with k12 teachers and programs nationally, and to figure out whether it is possible or desirable for summer enrichment programs to be more involved in this opportunity.

Supporting Documentation for Candidacy