Externally Funded Programs

 

REEES has administered or collaborated on the following externally funded programs.

Funded by: US Department of Defense, Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO)
Funded under: Project Global Officers (Project GO)
Program dates: 2022-2024

REEES’s Project GO program offers full scholarships for ROTC students from any US college or university to enroll in an eight-week intensive course in beginning Russian at Pitt’s domestic Slavic, East European and Near Eastern Summer Language Institute, or in intermediate through fourth-year Russian at Pitt’s overseas program, hosted by Narva College of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Students enrolling in REEES’s Project GO fourth-year program in Narva also participate in a Russian-language job shadowing experience. More information is available here.

 

Funded by: Longview Foundation for Education in World Affairs and International Understanding
Institutional partners: Pitt’s University Center for International Studies (grantee organization), College in High School Program, and Institute for International Studies in Education
Funded under: Innovations in International Education Program
Program dates: 2021-2022

With support from the Longview Foundation and additional funding from the National Resource Center Program of the US Department of Education, partnering organizations at Pitt will host two virtual summer institutes in 2021-2022. Offered at no cost, each summer institute will allow in-service and pre-service secondary educators in all subject areas to develop courses and lesson plans with enhanced global and regional studies content. Educators from Title I schools are especially encouraged to apply. Online synchronous and asynchronous sessions will include the use of film and media, simulations, games, and technology to enhance global learning and teaching. Pitt College in High School (CHS) teachers will have the opportunity to meet with CHS staff on foregrounding global issues while meeting University and district requirements. Participating Pennsylvania teachers will be eligible to apply for Act 48 credits.

 

Funded by: Carnegie Corporation of New York
Program dates: 2020-2021
With Carnegie Corporation support, the Sean's Russia Blog (SRB) will intensify efforts to close the gap between academic expertise and the broader public. In addition to its weekly interviews and the REEES Speaker Series, the SRB Podcast will expand its programming through the creation of two audio documentaries on the experiences of two very different Americans in the Soviet Union. The overarching theme that unites these projects is Russia’s historical engagement and influence with the United States and the wider world. Given the current public discourse concerning Russia, these projects focus on offering a critical balance to the often hyperbolic, narrow, and sometimes misinformed rhetoric concerning Eurasia’s past and present.

 

Funded by: US Department of Education, International and Foreign Language Education
Funded under: Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) & Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Programs
Program dates: 2018-2022
REEES’s Title VI National Resource Center grant supports language and area instruction in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies at Pitt; faculty and staff resources; educational outreach programs; REEES library acquisitions; and other programming to enhance the University’s teaching, research and public service capacities in relation to the Center’s world area. Title VI funds also enable REEES to award Academic Year and Summer FLAS Fellowships to graduate and undergraduate students who are studying REEES-area languages and focusing their academic programs on the Center’s world region.

 

Funded by: US Department of Defense, Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO)
Funded under: Project Global Officers (Project GO)
Program dates: 2018-2021
REEES’s Project GO program offers full scholarships for ROTC students from any US college or university to enroll in an eight-week intensive course in beginning Russian at Pitt’s domestic Slavic, East European and Near Eastern Summer Language Institute, or in intermediate through fourth-year Russian at Pitt’s overseas program, hosted by Narva College of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Students enrolling in REEES’s Project GO fourth-year program in Narva also participate in a Russian-language job shadowing experience. More information is available here.

 

Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities, Education Programs
Institutional partners: Asian Studies Center
Funded under: Humanities Connections
Program dates: 2018-2021
"Water in Central Asia: Tributaries of Change" is a joint initiative with Pitt's Asian Studies Center to strengthen interdisciplinary engagement among Pitt faculty and students across the humanities, social sciences, and pre-professional programs in business and engineering. Led by Professor Nancy Condee (REEES Director/Slavic Languages and Literatures) and Associate Professor Ruth Mostern (Director, World History Center/History), this grant will support the development of a cluster of three new undergraduate courses incorporating high-impact experiential learning activities. The planned cluster consists of three classes—Central Asian Water Past: Climate Change in the Preindustrial Era, Central Asian Water Present: Engineering in the Industrial Post-Empire, and Central Asian Water Future: Encounters in the Anthropocene. These courses will be integrated into the Sustainable Development Certificate for students in the College of Business Administration; the Engineering for Humanity Certificate for students of Engineering; and REEES’s emerging Central Asian Studies Initiative, aimed primarily at Arts & Sciences students. This project is constructed along mutually supporting trajectories: encouraging students to consider water issues on unfamiliar terrain and to explore a largely unstudied area of the world, while addressing an issue they know to be of global urgency—the need for clean, sustainable water sources.

 

Funded by: US Department of Education, International and Foreign Language Education
Institutional partners: Pitt’s University Center for International Studies (grantee organization), Institute for International Studies in Education, and School of Education
Funded under: International Research and Studies Program
Program dates: 2018-2021
This grant supports a collaborative research study investigating the impact of UCIS's new comprehensive evaluation model, which was developed to enhance and continually assess the global competence of undergraduate students in international education programs at Pitt. This comprehensive model combines a gamified digital platform (Suitable)—tracking and incentivizing student engagement in an integrated set of curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular global learning experiences—with an electronic portfolio system to curate students’ self-reflection on their learning. The project will contribute to identifying needs for specific improvements to the design of post-secondary international education programs and will inform the efforts of a diverse range of US universities and colleges seeking to bolster their students’ global learning outcomes.

 

Funded by: National Security Agency
Institutional partners: Pittsburgh Brashear High School, Pritzker and Noble Street College Prep (Chicago)
Funded under: STARTALK Program
Program dates: 2019-2020
Through this grant, REEES organizes an annual four-week, summer intensive residential Russian language program at Pitt for high school students. REEES partners with Russian language teachers at Pittsburgh Brashear High School, as well as Pritzker and Noble Street College Prep in Chicago, to recruit student participants for its STARTALK summer program. Students from other US high schools are also eligible to apply, and the program is cost-free for accepted participants. More information is available here.  

 

Funded by: Longview Foundation for Education in World Affairs and International Understanding
Institutional partners: Pitt’s University Center for International Studies (grantee organization) and College in High School Program
Funded under: Innovations in International Education Program
Program dates: 2018-2019
Awarded in support of the inaugural 2018 Summer Institute for Pennsylvania Teachers, this grant will advance the training and College in High School program certification of secondary social studies and world language educators to teach globally focused courses for transferable college credit at their high schools. Courses for which teachers may obtain certification include: Intermediate French, German, Spanish, Latin Intermediate Prose and Verse, Western Civilization II, World Politics, and Imperial Russia.

 

Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities
Institutional partner: Community College of Beaver County
Funded under: Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges Program
Program dates: 2014-2017
REEES was awarded this grant to partner with the Community College of Beaver County in order to internationalize CCBC's curriculum by introducing humanities content on Eastern Europe into existing courses and by developing courses on the literature and cultures of the region. CCBC faculty from various departments worked with REEES faculty coordinators at a series of bi-monthly workshops on Eastern European history, cultures, and literature to develop learning modules for courses spanning English, History, Political Science, Communications, Business, Information Technology, Nursing, and Microbiology. The grant also supported a monthly speaker series and a new Eastern Europe-focused section of CCBC’s existing World Literature course, introduced in fall 2015 and initially team-taught by Pitt and CCBC instructors. Course modules and video recordings of program events are available on the UCIS Outreach website.