UCLA Russian Flagship students spend one summer (8 weeks) in a Russian-speaking country, typically the summer after they have completed third year Russian.
Our students have participated in summer programs through American Councils for Teachers of Russian (ACTR) and spent summers in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Additionally, students can apply to the Critical Language Scholarship program (CLS) to spend a summer in Nizhni Novgorod or Vladimir, Russia. While abroad, students participate in intensive education programs, taking courses instructed entirely in Russian and attending excursions to national landmarks. The program includes cultural activities programs such as cooking, singing and dancing, with the exact curriculum determined by the hosting institution. Students live with host families to experience complete cultural immersion.
The summer program is optional for Flagship students, but mandatory if they wish to attend the year-long capstone program in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Its primary purpose is to enhance students’ Russian language proficiency and introduce them to life in a Russian speaking country, to ensure that they can commit to a year-long program. It is also a fun and rewarding experience.
There is some financial aid available for the summer program abroad, but available funds vary every year.
Check out the architectural research that Flagship student Alexa Black conducted during her summer 2019 study abroad in Almaty:
From Alexa: "I set out to learn about the city, both through Soviet archival documents, all in Russian, and exploration of the physical urban space, and began my research interested in Stalinist architecture of power in Almaty. My thesis topic developed with my research, as I uncovered documents about the planning of Almaty from Moscow, underscoring the connections between the Sovietization of Kazakhstan and architecture of the capital." Link to video here.
Flagship alum Sophia Badalian offers a personal account of her experience during the summer 2019 program:
I still get frazzled when I’m asked about my time abroad. How do I go about relaying my experience and interpretation of an entire country in a thoughtful manner? For many of the people that I speak to, I may be their only point reference to the country besides the infamous film Borat. In fact, many of the people I encounter still elicit the dreaded pronunciation, “Kazakhastan.” When I finished the summer, I wanted to get my elevator pitch right. How could I convey/preserve the integrity of the beauty and culture in passing? The pressure was real. I tried to prepare a bullet-pointed pitch in my head; I would talk about the breathtaking mountainous hills that cradled the city’s borders. Discussing the cuisine is always a welcomed addition in regard to travel, right? “I ate horse,” always evoked a soft, but maybe nervous laughter. Although I had prepared a dialogue, I kept myself busy when I got back from the summer. I never allotted any time to spark true emotions and dialogue within myself. I tried to reflect on my time there in a thoughtful way, but my mind wandered in a direction I saw to be unfit to preserve the honor of Almaty. I didn’t want to give just an elevator pitch; Kazakhstan is far more worthy of a mere pitch. I wanted to speak honestly.
That being the case, I put a lot of pressure on myself to “reflect” on my time in Kazakhstan. I feared that I would be quick to assign inauthentic value to my experiences. My time abroad was rewarding and beautiful, but I often faced moments of discomfort that I couldn’t have prepared for. From simply being a woman, to my insecurities in my language abilities at home with my host family, it was a challenge. The gender disparity came as a huge shock to me and was a large contributor to my discomfort. Walking alone during broad daylight, dressed in jeans, and still receiving stares, honks, and the rare occurrence of a yell, «возьмите мне собой, » made me shutter. I didn’t know how to handle myself. In the classroom, I pushed myself harder than I have in any academic setting to keep up with the Soviet mentality of teaching. I was thrust into the language, whether I was prepared or not. My nerves got the best of me on my off days. At home, my host-grandmother would berate my Russian. She desperately wanted me to be as confident and expressive in my Russian as Nathan was, a former host student of hers from summers’ past. These are the experiences that would send me into an insecure spiral.
My host grandmother, Clara, and I were often left in just each other’s company. Meals were long and I usually couldn’t think of a single word to say to this woman. I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t speak or understand Russian; I did, I do! I knew what she was saying. I wanted a little sympathy or patience maybe, but this just wasn’t in her style. When I finally just allowed myself, though, a moment of release from my shell, just to hear to what this woman had to say, I truly interacted with her stories. She often pointed to the to the massive laminated map that had probably hung above the kitchen table for years before Nathan. She told me of all of the exotic places she plans to see before she dies–one being the most blatantly exotic place America has to offer: Colorado. This eighty-something year old woman plans to visit Colorado to see Nathan and his budding family. Clara was like a switch though. One moment she was yelling about the MMA fight during breakfast, while the next she fell into a manic spiral of dread. She dreaded her age; she dreaded the aches in her arms from surgeries long ago; she dreaded her swollen ankles. “You’re so young,” she would tell me, longingly, apathetically, maybe enviously. She told me of my stature in life – how advantageous I am to have the world wrapped around my finger. Clara looked at me with her budding yet exhausted eyes and didn’t comprehend what a major sense of accomplishment I felt stemming from her bitter attitude. She was vulnerable; she let me in to her thoughts, and somehow two aggressively different people sat under that laminated map and coexisted. I think Clara and I both had an existential summer.
She was right, though. I am privileged to have traveled across the world and live in Kazakhstan. Regardless I still felt a sense of falsehood during my time there and for a while after my return. I lived the so-called “flyer” experiences; I had pictures to prove it: riding horseback down mountains to the esteemed Lake Kaindy, watching the sunrise at the Charyn Canyon basin, the pungent yurt cheese atop the snowy peaks above Almaty. My relationship with the nature of Kazakhstan was never an issue though. Somehow, however, I confused the wild sense of discomfort evolving from my human interactions with inauthenticity. I felt like an imposter. But as I sit here and produce these thoughts, I realize that I looked past these insecurities during my time abroad. I realized then that I had to sacrifice some of my habitual values and expectations that I have cultivated in the US for my entire life. In order to genuinely immerse myself, I had to sacrifice a sliver of my own culture; but I was then free to honestly live amongst another.
I think the problem with my generation is that we feel entitled to our stubbornness; we can’t go into another country with those same expectations that we have of our own. I saw this naïve behavior from a few of my peers from different universities. If this reflection were longer, I would delve into the stories of the dreaded «ночь женщин, » when one of our peers thought in order to do away with unsolicited male attention in a bar, she felt the responsibility to tell him in Russian that we were having a «ночь женщин. » Erica, we know you meant girls’ night out, but you’re delusional. We acted in a rash manor that night with the expectation that our English colloquy would have any sort of helpful relevance in Russian. I don’t blame Erica; there were so many times when I didn’t know how to face my own discomfort. It happened to the best of us.
So, here’s my elevator pitch: we often reject discomfort; we shelter ourselves from it when we should seek it. My natural instinct was to do so, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t fully reject the shocking foreign culture throughout the early weeks of my time in Kazakhstan. But it was only after this initial rush of emotion that I allowed myself to exist presently and holistically and to truly live through the “flyer” experiences and picturesque moments. I lived authentically and vulnerably; and without hesitation, I can assure you all that I no longer feel a sense of falsehood. I am grateful and feel accomplished to have studied among such an underrated and unrepresented culture of people, place, and history.
Oh, and some advice I would give to my pre-travelled self – don’t be ashamed to eat Kazakh McDonald’s and/or KFC! Sometimes we need a taste of home.