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The Department of Russian & Eurasian Studies

The Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies was established in 1970 and authorized to grant MA degrees in 1986. It runs a joint PhD program with People’s Liberation Army University of Foreign Languages to grant doctoral degrees in Russian Language and Literature. The Russian course holds the separate official designations of both ‘key’ and ‘model’ disciplinary major in Liaoning Province, as well as those of ‘first-rate’ and ‘distinguished’ disciplinary major from the Ministry of Education. The Department has a faculty of twenty-four full-time members and five native Russian experts, of whom six are professors and ten are associate professors, with nine holding PhDs and fourteen MAs. Faculty members serve as PhD and MA advisors, have been selected as part of a provincial project that seeks to identify talented personnel, and have been honored for outstanding teaching at the national level and the provincial level.

The education principles advocated by the department have always been a laying solid foundation, achieving competence through practice, and allowing individual talent to shine through. The goal is cultivating high-quality, innovative and knowledgeable professionals, capable of excelling in the fields of foreign affairs and trade, and skilled in translation. A solid foundation in the Russian language and culture as well as the fundamentals of economics, trade, science and technology and a broad general knowledge are essential for this. In 2009, the Advanced Comprehensive Russian course and its team of instructors received official designations for being of superior quality at national level, while both Advanced as well as Basic Comprehensive Russian received corresponding provincial designations. Advanced Comprehensive Russian was also appraised as a Provincial and a ‘Resource Sharing Course’ in 2013 and 2014 respectively. In 2013, the Russian Language and Literature program ranked first in the overall assessment of all foreign-language programs in tertiary institutions of Liaoning Province.

The Department emphasizes internationalization in education and is uniquely placed to benefit in this respect from its links with the Russian Center (sponsored by the Russian World Foundation), the Ukrainian Studies Research Center, and the Sino-Russian Student Exchange Center (accredited by the Ministry of Education), all of which are hosted by the university. Through the Office of the Chairperson of University League of SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) which is also on campus, the Department has cooperated with Russian universities such as Moscow State Linguistic University to take the lead in recruiting undergraduate students for the Regional Studies program in China. This is a joint program that allows for students to complete a year or more of their studies in Russia. The students are sponsored by the Chinese Scholarship Council and receive diplomas from both the participating Chinese and Russian universities as well as a certificate from the SCO after finishing the program. Up to now, the department has worked with over thirty universities in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other countries in the region and provided various options for students in terms of the number of years that can be spent abroad. Over seventy percent of the students are dispatched to study in these countries. This has led to a new initiative that integrates the joint training of undergraduates, postgraduates and doctoral candidates between Russia and China, aiming at a truly internationalized learning experience for Russian-language talents.

Website for the Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies:http://ru.dlufl.edu.cn/