SRAS

In the summer of 2020, I faced two challenges as I prepared to teach my course on Russian history to Peter the Great in the fall semester: first, the need to transform a course normally taught in a classroom into a virtual format during Covid-19, and second, the need to respond to growing protests about racial injustice during summer 2020. Now, my memory of teaching pre-Petrine Russia in fall 2020 will always be associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the storming of the US Capitol.

The impact of COVID on study abroad and on SRAS is far-reaching. There was the rush to bring students home and the need to transition quickly to online studies so that they could complete their semesters while attending classes across multiple time zones. Then we found ourselves unable to send students abroad for more than a year. However, I think we were not alone in deciding to use this “down time” to organize systems and plan for the next term and what seemed like perhaps a new era in study abroad.