Colleagues 'infused' by Russian trip
ENVISION Magazine, 2005
Five faculty members from the College of Letters and Sciences, Elizabeth Hachten, Anne Hamilton, Nancy Heingartner, Rebecca Hogan and Carol Rosen, are still talking about their summer trip to Russia. They are addressing their students, as they infuse their Russian experience into the classroom.
A total of 12 instructors, a mix from each of the four colleges within the university, traveled to Russia as part of an education grant coordinated by Anne Hamilton, assistant professor of political science.
Having been to Russia most recently in 1998, grant writer Hamilton was struck by the 'juxtaposition" of the old and new Russia during this trip. "Our brand new hotel in St. Petersburg demanded cash payment in euros," lamented Hamilton. While in Moscow at their renovated Soviet hotel, it took over an hour to register. "The clerk had to write down all sorts of information about each person before she would hand over the room keys," said Hamilton.
Hachten, a pre-trip organizer, has traveled to Russia numerous times with her husband who is from Russia and whose mother lives in Moscow. Even so, she found it exciting to bring people to Russia and see familiar places through their eyes.
Rosen, professor of geography and geology, also found the trip memorable because of the group she traveled with. "People from other colleges and from my own college got to know each other as we traveled so far from home," said Rosen. "I learned about banking, art, cross cultural communications, and all while in Russia!"
According to Hamilton, "In addition to funding a small faculty trip to Russia, the grant funded a two-year Russian language sequence and the development of several new courses."
Heingartner, languages and literatures, was hired in 2003 as the grant-funded Russian language instructor. The summer of 2004 trip helped her plan a student/instructor trip to Russia scheduled for spring semester 2005.
For Hachten, chair of the history department, the course that has changed the most since the trip is U.S. Experience in World Context. "A broader goal for the course is to help students 'decenter' their perspective on the world," said Hachten, "moving away from an exclusively American perspective."
Hachten is also very excited about the new course she is developing for fall 2005, which will trace the rise and fall of the Soviet Union through film. This grant-supported class will reach 80 to 90 students who will view Soviet films as well as western films, early films, silent and black and white classics of world cinema, according to Hachten.
Hogan applied to go on the Russia trip so she could teach a newly developed major-authors course on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. "I was able to go to the authors' homes, see their writing desks, their libraries, the paintings on their walls, the meadows, forests and city streets they used as setting for their fiction," said Hogan, professor of languages and literatures. "I have been able to share both the pictures I took and my accounts to help my students grasp the 'Russianness' of their novels." – Cynthia Vergenz