Russian Enrollments

[Tatiana Osipovich]

Thanks, Julie, for raising good questions. They are very relevant to the 
issue of Russian enrollments:

Here is my brief reply to your questions:

1. Very few heritage speakers -- try to convince your administration to apply for IREX undergraduate students from Russia&  the former Soviet republics or for a Fulbright language assistant
2. Pre-arrival registration means Œadvertising¹ doesn¹t work. - active participation in the New Students Orientation (Academic Fairs, etc.) -- of course, our students preregister on line only for two courses
3. A campus culture of conformity -- this is very hard to change! Visibility. Publicity of your students' successes... Basically, I discovered that my current and past students are much more helpful in this regard than my administration.
4. Student worries that Russian will penalize their GPA - I try to convince students that Russian is not more difficult than other languages. It is different and takes a little longer to achieve the same level of proficiency than, let's say, Spanish.

Like you, I am very interested in learning more about new ways to improve our enrollments, especially at small colleges, like Colby or Lewis&  Clark.

Sincerely,

Tatiana Osipovich

The Russian Program at Lewis&  Clark:
http://college.lclark.edu/departments/foreign_languages/russian/

   

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