Sarah Bogdanovitch '11 Receives Fulbright in Russia

Sarah Bogdanovitch, a 2011 graduate, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Russia, where she will teach at the Eurasian Linguistics Institute in Irkutsk.

Bogdanovitch says her love of Russian language and culture stems from her family’s heritage. At Oberlin, she double majored in Russian and comparative literature. She also speaks French and Spanish.

After she graduated from Oberlin, Bogdanovitch started a small bakery, Community Loaves, in Jacksonville, Florida. She left in June 2015 to pursue opportunities in education and graduate studies, but the business is still thriving since her partner took over. She is currently living in Panajachel, Guatemala, where she teaches prekindergarten at an international school, and studies in the graduate program at Middlebury’s Kathryn Wasserman Davis Russian school in the summers.

She will begin her Fulbright year in September, and she looks forward to gaining teaching experience at a university, improving her Russian skills, and “spending nine months in winter.”

She spent the summer before her senior year in Yaroslavl, a few hours north of Moscow. She also had the opportunity to travel to St. Petersburg and further north to Karelia, “a beautiful region that is culturally mixed with Scandinavia.” “I have always wanted to spend more significant time in Russia outside of the capital region,” she says.

After her Fulbright year, she plans to pursue additional graduate studies in language acquisition and communication science.