Outreach

We intend to continue our already significant outreach efforts.

Our Community Outreach including K-12 has greatly contributed to our overall visibility. The Slavic communities in the Pacific Northwest are among the most populous in the country. Russian is now officially the second most-often spoken non-English language in the state of Washington. Since April 1996 the University of Washington Slavic Department has hosted the Washington State Olympiada of Spoken Russian, an annual competition for high school Russian language students. In it, beginning to advanced level students are judged on their performance in three areas: conversational Russian; Russian culture and civilization; and reading/discussion and poetry recitation. Judging panels have consisted of faculty, staff, current students and alumni as well as native speakers from the local community. The top students at the advanced levels have a chance to compete for a place in a 15-member ACTR Olympiada group which participates in an academic and home-stay program in Russia. As additional incentive, the department also established the Nora Holdsworth Scholarship, providing an outstanding student with tuition for the department’s summer quarter intensive Russian language program.

We have also participated in “World Languages Day” as well as in “Teachers as Scholars” seminars in humanities and arts for K-12 teachers offered by the UW Humanities Center in conjunction with Seattle Arts and Lectures, and taught by UW faculty. In winter 2003 Professor Diment led a seminar on “Shostakovich and his Contemporaries: Early Soviet Art, Music and Literature.”

In spring 1997 the Slavic Department and the Association of Alumni and Friends of the Slavic Department revived a 30-year-old tradition by hosting Saints Cyril and Methodius Day at the Russian Community Center. This event, held annually until 1992, was started by graduate students and the faculty of the department in 1967 as a way to bring together members of the various Seattle-area Slavic communities. In spring 2004, the celebration transformed itself into a two-day event, named The Slavic Fest. Saturday featured workshops ranging from cooking classes, dancing instruction and Polish paper cutting, followed by the Cyril and Methodius Day party. Sunday brought together eight national groups with kids in costume and folk musicians marching around Red Square, followed by musical and dance performances by groups (mostly children) in Kane Hall. The festival was also held in 2005 and 2006, with groups competing for an opportunity to perform in front of the standing-room-only and enthusiastic audiences. In 2006 we had an exhibit of the Baine/Cincebeaux Slovak & Czech Folk Dress Collection in Suzzallo Library as a part of the event.

Thanks to the joint efforts of Wayne Jehlik, our former student in Czech (and REECAS graduate), and our Czech lecturer, Jaroslava Soldanova, the Czech Center for Education and Culture (CCEC) was founded in 2005. In November 2006, the inauguration ceremony at the Center was attended by over 200 members of the Czech and Slovak communities, together with the Czech Ambassador to the U.S. (the first visit of a Czech Ambassador in the last 50 years). CCEC has close ties to the Slavic Department (J. Soldanova is on the board of CCEC directors), to Czech Centers around the U.S., and to the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C.