I began studying Russian during my sophomore year at nearby Bryn Mawr College Russian department. My professor believed in as full immersion as possible from the start – something I would recommend to my students, too. It probably helped that my classes were early in the morning and that I bicycled to campus from my dorm in Ardmore, arriving fresh for classes every weekday. Most summers in college I attended Russian language school: sophomore year – at Bryn Mawr; junior year – the Pushkin...
I began studying Russian during my sophomore year at nearby Bryn Mawr College Russian department. My professor believed in as full immersion as possible from the start – something I would recommend to my students, too. It probably helped that my classes were early in the morning and that I bicycled to campus from my dorm in Ardmore, arriving fresh for classes every weekday. Most summers in college I attended Russian language school: sophomore year – at Bryn Mawr; junior year – the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. The chairman of the department at Bryn Mawr also employed me to write a computer program to train first- and second-year students in Russian grammar. After graduation, under Gorbachev, I led a students' cycling exchange between the US and the USSR, seeing Moscow, Leningrad, the Crimea, Georgia, and places in between up close. I also met my first wife in Moscow during this time, before entering Columbia University to study for a Ph.D. in political science and Russian studies.
My current topic of research is "Alternative Medicine in Russia".
Like my professor at Bryn Mawr, I believe that Russian can and should be approach as a language that can be learned systematically, not through rote memorization. Also, I think as much culture should be presented in teaching as possible, making the subject come alive for the student. Given my background, I can provide this.
