In Memoriam: Leon I. Twarog

[John Schillinger]

Daniel-
	The profession has lost a good friend, innovator, and devoted 
teacher/administrator.  Here are a few words about one aspect of his 
contributions to the profession--his work to promote language learning 
and teaching.
	Leon was remarkable for his energy and dedication to Slavic studies, 
which continued long after
his retirement.  Both jovial and at times hard-nosed, Leon was a 
pleasure to work with, a kind of "velikij
kombinator" who accomplished much through his personal determination 
and persuasiveness.
	Through the years I worked with him first at in the 70's at Purdue 
when the Ohio State program he was instrumental in initiating
became the jointly sponsored Ohio State/Purdue program at the Pushkin 
Institute,  which provided an unusual opportunity at the
time,  responsible for recruiting many students into the profession.   
In the 80's, when I was at Oklahoma State, I continued to send students 
to the Ohio State/Purdue program, and a number of them went on to 
careers in Slavic studies and related fields.  I  worked with Leon then 
as he sought and secured NEH funding for a series of highly successful 
summer teacher institutes, to which the evaluation team I chaired 
repeatedly awarded the highest marks for their impact on pre-college 
Russian teachers.
	I never ceased to admire his indefatigable and perspektivnie efforts 
to develop, fund, and promote the  teaching and learning of languages.  
His work to develop individualized mastery-based language learning with 
telephone language-assisted instruction beginning in the 70s stretches 
across three decades.  Familiar to most of us were his many 
presentations at AATSEEL and AAASS conferences, and his mailings and 
phone calls to department chairs and university administrators to 
consider including TAMBSPI in their programs.  Pre-college Russian 
teachers used the approach in Ohio State's NEH summer institutes to 
upgrade their language skills.  Students (and lifelong language 
learners) around the country who could not otherwise get instruction in 
a given language were constantly referred to Leon Twarog at Ohio State 
for the TAMBSPI solution.
	Using computers and the internet, our colleagues now continue to 
develop and expand the possibilities for self-instructed language 
learning that were originally envisioned and championed, in particular, 
by Leon Twarog.
	Thanks, Leon, and vechnaja pamjat'.	
>
John Schillinger
Emeritus Prof. of Russian
American University

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