Russian and East European Institute

Indiana University (IU) has been a leader in research, training, and service on Eastern Europe and the former republics of the USSR for 60 years. IU employs 85 academic year and 24 summer faculty specialists on the region in 16 academic departments and six professional schools. Our mission is to train future generations of scholars and professionals in advanced, interdisciplinary language, and area studies; support the activities of IU faculty and students who study the languages and peoples of our region; and furnish accurate and timely information to K-12 teachers, postsecondary faculty, government, media, business, and the general public.

During the academic year, IU offers language instruction in Russian, Czech, Polish, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Estonian, Yiddish, Old Church Slavonic, Modern Greek, and Finnish. Our 60-year-old Summer Workshop for Slavic, East European, and Central Asian Languages provides intensive instruction in the above languages, plus Georgian and Tatar. The Russian and East European Institute (REEI) administers Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for all of the Slavic languages, plus Hungarian, Yiddish, Estonian, Romanian, Georgian, and Tatar. Graduates of these language programs include many of today's leading area specialists in government, business, and academics.

A library collection of over 620,000 volumes and 1,450 serials, supplemented by a full range of the latest online systems to access materials related to our area of interest, serves scholars, students, and the general public.

REEI awards undergraduate and graduate minors and certificates. We offer a master's degree in area studies, and dual master's degrees with the IU Schools of Business, Library and Information Science, Public Administration, Public Health, and Law.

At the end of the FY 2010-2013 grant cycle, REEI will have expanded foreign language and interdisciplinary area instruction at all levels. We will permanently add a tenure-track positions in Religious Studies and focus on maintaining the strength in our language offerings by working with the new Russian Language Coordinator and other Slavics faculty, as well as the Director of the Summer Language Workshop (SWSEEL) to ensure that the same number of levels of Russian and EE languages is offered in the academic year and the summer. We will also double the number of language-across-the-curriculum offerings with a focus on professional students. We will enhance REE training in professional programs by developing new dual degrees (Law, Education, Journalism) and offering course development grants to augment existing dual MA degrees (Business, Public Health, Library Science, Information Science, Public and Environmental Affairs). We will build academic exchanges (some new, others existing) with institutions of higher education in the Western Balkans (Macedonia and Kosovo) and Central Asia (Kazan, the Russian Federation, and Kyrgyzstan) to improve coverage of areas with a significant Muslim population. We will reach out to K–12 schools by working with teachers offering pre-college Russian through teacher training opportunities, site visits, and the Russian Olympiada. We will also internationalize the curriculum at 2-4 year colleges (especially community colleges) through a collaborative “Internationalizing Laboratory” and an annual workshop for instructors at such colleges. Most of our outreach activities will be undertaken in collaboration with other Title VI centers on campus and across the country. Our activities will be carefully evaluated periodically with the assistance of an independent evaluation institute and revisions to our programs considered accordingly.