The Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies congratulates its four undergraduate Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship recipients for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Sophie Boelk, an undergraduate Russian and French major, will study 5th-year Russian. Sophie's long-term career goal is to use her language skills to become an interpreter working for the UN or a government organization.

Kale Fuller is an undergraduate Russian major with minors in History and Turkish and Central Asian Studies. He will study 2nd-year Uzbek. He ultimately hopes to earn a PhD related to Central Asian Studies to educate Americans and guide US policy towards this region that is often misunderstood or ignored.

William Slabodkin, an undergraduate Chemistry and Russian major, has received FLAS to study 4th-year Russian. He plans to pursue a career in chemical research, using his language skills to consult studies published in Russian and cooperate with researchers in Russian-speaking countries.

Denis Yasyrev (not pictured) is an undergraduate majoring in Accounting, Finance and Russian. He will study 4th-year Russian. He aspires to combine his language skills and financial expertise to help people such as immigrants and refugees navigate complex financial situations.

Academic year FLAS Fellowships are awarded to undergraduate, graduate, or professional students who are enrolled in a course of study at Ohio State that requires both language and area studies expertise. Students are required to take one language and one area studies course in both autumn and spring semesters, completing one academic year language sequence. For undergraduate students, it provides a stipend of $5,000 and tuition and fees up to $10,000. The application for summer 2025 and academic year 2025-26 fellowships will open in fall 2024.  

Visit our other article to learn about this year's graduate FLAS Fellows!