Walter Denz founded Liden & Denz in St. Petersburg in 1992. He then expanded his language schools to Moscow, Irkutsk, and, most recently, Riga, Latvia. SRAS has, as of summer 2023, partnered with Liden & Denz in Riga to offer our students a unique new location for studying Russian. In the half-hour conversation below, Walter… Read More
SRAS Blog
SRAS Publishes Updated Materials for 2024
SRAS is pleased to announce the publication of our new materials, showing our lineup of 2024 programs abroad. You may download these below. If you would like to request copies of these for your university/college department or study abroad office, you may use this form. SRAS Study Abroad Poster – A beautiful 8.5 x 11″… Read More
SRAS in Conversation with Student Nathan Renard: For the Love of Languages
Nathan Renard is a recent high school graduate of Friends School of Baltimore. As part of his senior year there, he participated in a faculty led study abroad experience to Kyrgyzstan organized by his Russian Instructor, Lee Roby, and SRAS. Nathan plans on intensively studying Korean for a year abroad before moving on to linguistics… Read More
Faculty Led Programs to the Caucasus
This spring I joined the SRAS team and in my new position, I will be developing faculty-led programming throughout our region (Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Baltics, the Balkans, and the Caucasus). The Caucasus – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – have become increasingly popular destinations for faculty-led programming in the absence of Russia… Read More
SRAS 2023 Photo Contest
The SRAS calendar has been a long-standing SRAS tradition. Each year, we have asked our students to send in the pictures that they believe best tell the story of their time abroad. We then assembled these pictures into an annual calendar with brief narratives from the student describing what they saw, what they learned, and… Read More
SRAS Debrief with Student Kat Lytkowski: Security and Society in the Information Age
Kat Lytkowski is currently majoring in STIA at Georgetown University in the US. STIA stands for “Science, Technology and International Affairs” and is a new major that “applies cutting-edge science to the world’s most pressing political, social and ethical issues.” It takes into account the multiple forces affecting international affairs today – from social media… Read More
SRAS Debrief with Friends School of Baltimore: Spring Break in Kyrgyzstan
Lee Roby of the Friends School of Baltimore led a group of her high school students to St. Petersburg, Russia every other year for 18 years. This faculty-led travel was, as she says, “a well-oiled machine” in introducing her students to Russian culture and immersing them into the Russian language. For the past three years,… Read More
SRAS Debrief with Connecticut College: Spring Break in Georgia
The Slavic Department at Connecticut College has run course-based faculty-led travel abroad with SRAS six times since 2008. This has proved essential to their department-building efforts. These short, impactful experiences abroad can educate and excite students in ways that make them want to dig deeper and know more. Students who go abroad are more likely… Read More
In Memoriam: Elena Varshavskaya May 23, 1952 ~ March 2, 2023
Elena Varshavskaya graduated from university as a teacher of the English and German languages. She worked at the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum Department of Education for 20 years. She arrived to the US in 1996 and, after receiving her PhD degree in Art History, taught a wide variety of courses at the Rhode Island School… Read More
SRAS Expands Russian-Language Study Opportunities For 2022 And Beyond
Students seeking immersive Russian language study opportunities abroad saw the landscape shift abruptly in 2022. Both Russia and Ukraine, the most obvious and familiar locations, are no longer viable study abroad destinations and not likely to be in the near future. There are still many excellent study opportunities to choose from, however. SRAS has been… Read More