I am most proud to be a University of Arizona Russian alumnus, class of 1970. The professors there were all very good to me and recommended me to the doctoral program at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where I was given a full ride, earning the Ph.D. in Slavic and General Linguistics with minor in Russian Literature in June 1973. By that time, I had served as an instructor of Serbo-Croatian for a semester at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and I was then hired as Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Cornell. In August of 1973 I was moving with my wife and three small children back to Tempe, Arizona, with a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor of Russian at ASU. In May of 2011, I retired as the Senior Professor of Russian at ASU, having taught there for 38 years. I was the Coordinator of Russian and Slavic Languages there for 35 years and am the co-founding Director of the ASU Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies' CRITICAL LANGUAGES INSTITUTE. I am the author of "Russian in Arizona" which profiles the University of Arizona program and faculty as well as all others in the State. I definitely see the University of Arizona's superb Russian MA program as a major potentiator in my life. The faculty there, with whom I have maintained close relations for years, is a truly wonderful group of people, diverse in personality and outlook, but unified in their daily advancement of the students.
