Every February, Dickinson Russian students compete in the National Post-Secondary Russian Essay Contest. They are given one-hour to write an essay in Russian, with no outside help and no previous knowledge of the essay prompt. Their essays are then sent to Russia, where judges rank them together with essays from all other college students studying Russian in the United States, in groups based on their prior Russian experience and the number of college-level instruction hours they have had. This year, in the 2018 cycle, Dickinson student Nga Thu Duong ’20 took home the gold medal in her category. Nga worked as a Russian writing tutor in the Multilingual Writing Center from August 2017 through April 2018, and she has worked as the Russian Department’s Teaching Assistant for the 2017-2018 academic year.
