News

Bettina Brandt, Teaching Professor of German, has won the Outstanding German Educator Award from the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG). This is AATG’s highest honor and recognizes educators who demonstrate excellence in German education and creative leadership in German language education at the local, state, and national levels.

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Alumni, Felix Friedman ‘95, Will Baumgardner ‘22, and Chloe Parker ‘14 have received Liberal Arts Alumni Honoree Awards from the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, presented at the 2026 Alumni Awards Ceremony.

Felix Friedman, recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award, is president of Oxygen Partners Corporation, a Chicago-based firm he founded in 2002 that provides consulting services to RPM Access LLC and other energy companies. His work spans wind energy project development, grid interconnection, real estate, financing, construction, and operations. Earlier in his career, Friedman served as vice president of development at Midwest Renewable Energy Corp and as a project development manager at Iberdrola, where he focused on wind energy initiatives in Iowa. His experience reflects more than two decades of leadership in the renewable energy sector.

Will Baumgardner, recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Achievement Award, began his career at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank, where he assisted Dr. Chris Miller in writing the New York Times bestseller Chip War and Dr. Leon Aron in writing Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War. After a year at AEI, Baumgardner joined the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) at the US Department of Commerce, where he has spent the past three years shaping US export controls and processing export license applications to comprehensively sanctioned countries including Cuba and Iran.

Chloe Parker, recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Achievement Award, began her career in management at McMaster-Carr, a business-to-business e-commerce company in Atlanta. Her interest in the psychology of high-performing teams led her to pursue an MBA from Emory University. After graduating in 2019, she partnered with organizational psychology faculty to develop curricula including “Bias in the Workplace” and “The Science of Well-Being,” and co-authored a case study published through Northwestern University.

Please check out the recent article about our students exciting time in Bavaria and Salzburg this past Spring Break.

Students revel in German language and culture during Munich embedded program | Penn State University

Main article posted here: https://www.psu.edu/news/students/story/penn-state-undergraduate-earns-critical-language-scholarship-study-russian?utm_audience=Combined&utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=undergraduate%20education%20&utm_content=04-01-2026-10-45&utm_term=Stories%20-%204

This national award is presented annually by the major professional organization for Russian teaching in the United States. This award recognizes Dr. Mikaelian’s many years of service and dedication to our Russian program and all of our students learning and majoring in Russian here at Penn State. As the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Russian, Dr. Mikaelian is responsible not only for advising all students in our Russian program, but also planning countless extracurricular activities, including the weekly Russian Tea Hour, the annual poetry reading event, exciting speakers, excursions to New York and elsewhere to visit Russian-related arts and culture events, and embedded spring break trips to many different locations including Armenia and the Republic of Georgia. For more information, see the following website: https://www.actr.org/Teaching-Excellence-Award-PS

Please check out this recent Penn State News Q&A with Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures faculty members Bettina Brandt and Daniel L. Purdy on their co-edited book, Colonialism and Enlightenment: The Legacy of German Race Theories (Oxford University Press).

On January 1, 2026, Mike Putnam became the 11th (co-)editor in the 102-year history of the journal, Language: A Journal of the Linguistics Society of America. Language is the flagship journal of the Linguistics Society of America and is widely held as a premier venue for high-quality and groundbreaking research in linguistics and related fields and stands as one of the foundational and influential journals in linguistics. Putnam has served as an associate editor for Language from 2023-2025 and was nominated and elected to the position of editor by the members of the Society. He serves as co-editor with Prof. Shelome Gooden until 2028 and will transition to senior editor of Language from 2029-2031.

Featuring a story about our visiting Ukrainian Fulbright Scholars: https://www.psu.edu/news/liberal-arts/story/ukrainian-fulbright-scholars-spending-year-college-liberal-arts

Four senior Russian majors — Aidan Dlugacz, Gabe Daubert, Veronika Miskowiec, and Logan Romanowski — and three Penn State faculty members — Yuliya Ladygina, Irina Mikaelian, and Catherine Wanner — attended the international conference and school Crisis of Democracy: Mutual Symmetrical Recognition Between States and Equal Distribution of Power, held September 13–20 at Shota Meskhia Zugdidi State University in Georgia. The event was co-sponsored by Tbilisi State University and the University of Warsaw, Poland.

The four-day conference was followed by a two-day school for graduate and senior undergraduate students from the University of Warsaw and Penn State. The school was led by Professor Agnieszka Nogal (University of Warsaw) and the Penn State professors, resulting in two joint student presentations.

Our students and faculty were generously hosted by Zugdidi State University. Irina Mikaelian and Catherine Wanner received titles of Doctor Honoris Causa from this university in recognition of their contributions to collaboration between our universities.

Zugdidi is the capital of the Georgian province of Mingrelia, a strategic region located on the border with Abkhazia, a former autonomous republic of Georgia currently occupied by Russia. Our students had the opportunity to explore the city of Zugdidi, the Black Sea coast, and the adjacent mountainous region of Svaneti, as well as to engage extensively with local faculty and residents, many of whom still speak Russian.

We are grateful to Shota Meskhia Zugdidi State University and its Rector, Teona Khupenia for their hospitality, as well as to the Penn State Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Office, which sponsored our students’ airfare.