Center for Russian and East European Studies

The Center for Russian and East European Studies (REES), located within the University of Pittsburgh's Center for International Studies, is a prominent component of the increasing international emphasis in Pitt's undergraduate and graduate curricula. The Center's mission is to coordinate University efforts in teaching, research and public service related to Central and Eastern Europe and all countries of the former Soviet Union. At a time when the field of Russian and East European studies has seen a decline in student enrollments nationally, REES has brought its most recent undergraduate student enrollments above the previous peak levels of the early 1990s. REES also has maintained strong graduate enrollments, with rapid growth in the professional schools.

The REES program is based on the premise that a student should obtain training in an academic discipline and add value to that training with demonstrated competence in the region and one of its languages. Thus, REES offers interdisciplinary Undergraduate and Graduate Certificates, which students earn in conjunction with their regular degrees. A combined master's program with the University's Katz Graduate School of Business and an International Law Certificate also are available through REES.

REES courses are offered in 15 departments of Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences and in five professional schools. Languages taught at multiple levels each year are Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian (through the annual Summer Language Institute), Hungarian, Modern Greek, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Turkish and Ukrainian. Additional languages are available upon student demand through the Less Commonly Taught Languages Center. REES library holdings total approximately 400,000 volumes, 260,000 of which are in languages of the region, as well as a collection of over 6,000 films from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.