The Europe: East and West Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or other countries of the former Soviet Union.

CCBC faculty participating in the NEH-sponsored project "Bridging Cultures: Eastern Europe in the Curriculum" will attend a monthly speaker series to learn about various aspects of contemporary life in Eastern Europe.

Kindergarten students from Kentucky Avenue School will tour the Nationality Rooms and attend a presentation on Polish holiday traditions.

Conflict Kitchen will present an informal discussion about current events in Russia with speakers Marsha Shisman, a native of Ukraine with a degree from the Institute of Municipal Engineering in Kharkov, and Olga Mukhortova, a native of Russia who is a PhD student in Pitt's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Russian food will be available for purchase.

Natallia Svistunova, a master's student in Pitt's School of Education, gave a presentation to students in Devin Browne's Russian I class at Brashear High School about the importance of studying the Russian language.

Professional development workshop for faculty of the Nine College and University International Studies Consortium of Georgia, addressing political and economic aspects of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict and how this material could be introduced into undergraduate classrooms.

Russia Today is a one-credit (Pitt)/ three-unit (CMU) mini course, consisting of 14 hours of classes over a weekend, with a major paper assignment to be completed for credit. This course is created for undergraduate and graduate students. However, K-12 educators, business and community members are welcome to attend all or sections of the course for free. The course will open with two keynote lectures on Friday evening on an overview of the issues. This will be followed by instructional lectures on Saturday on the various themes by experts in the fields.

Dr. Panayotis Tsakonas, an Onassis Foundation Fellow and Professor Ozgehan Senyuva, visiting from Middle Eastern Technical University as part of Pitt's EU-GLOBAL partnership, will present a roundtable discussion of the current state of Turkish-Greek-EU relations. Given recent elections in Turkey, recent economic turmoil in Greece, and on-going negotiations between both parties over Cyprus, there will be no shortage of interesting topics to discuss.

The presenters spoke to three 7th grade social studies classes about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis.