Academic Accelerator - Bachelor of Arts - Russian

Program Description

As a student in the Academic Accelerator, you’ll receive:

• The right amount of support for your academic and English-speaking needs
• A full year’s worth of college credits
• Access to courses exclusively for international students
• English-language help with words you need to know for your classes
• A mix of classes with international and U.S. students

Despite the end of the Cold War, the demand for Russian speakers is great. Russian is the native language of approximately 150 million citizens of the Russian Federal Republic. It is one of the five official languages of the UN, and ranks with English, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, and Spanish as a strategic language. Additionally, Russian remains the unofficial lingua franca of the former Soviet republics, making it indispensable for communication across the oil-rich and politically strategic regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia is designated by economists as one of the nations with the greatest potential for economic growth.  Within the next two decades the Russian economy is expected to surpass that of Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. Not to mention that Russia has one of the world's richest traditions of fine literature, film, music, as well as visual and performance arts!

A Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Russian provides an opportunity to develop vital language skills and cultural competence. Russian is a language of national strategic importance, and Russia's rich cultural heritage includes such world-renowned figures as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes.

Many Russian majors go on to pursue careers in the following fields:

• Federal, state, and city agencies
• The armed forces
• National security establishments
• Banks and businesses dealing with Eastern Europe
• Publishing and data-gathering companies
• Transportation and tourist industries
• Ethnic cultural services and organizations, such as cultural centers, libraries and museums, ethnically oriented public media, etc.