Research Opportunities Students are encouraged to talk with the Director about their research interests. Each year one or two are offered a position as a research assistant to the Director. Students may set up an independent study project if their research interests are not covered adequately by the course offerings. Co-curricular Activities The RES Program invites all interested SAIS students to biweekly meetings of the Russia-Eurasia Forum. The meetings are organized as brown-bag lunches with scholars and professors from other institutions. The biweekly non-credit Russia-Eurasia Current Affairs Seminar is open to all students who want to discuss current developments in the post-Soviet states, read the Russian-language press, listen to overviews presented by their classmates or pose any question that interests them, and enjoy pizza. Several times a year RES alumni are invited to meet with current students and describe their professional experiences after SAIS in a series of "Life after SAIS" talks. Other Opportunities Whenever possible, the RES Program assists students in gaining experience that supplements their formal course of study. RES concentrators were selected to serve as election observers during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,” and the program helped them finance the trip. Other students were Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers during the parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan and the presidential election in Belarus. In Washington, D.C., the program has established relationships with the city’s many think tanks and educational institutions; they invite RES students to their events, and the RES Program reciprocates. Embassy representatives are frequent guests at SAIS seminars, and Voice of America and C-SPAN often cover lectures at the school. The Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies organizes regular presentations and colloquia by scholars from around the world and, as noted above, offers graduate students the opportunity to work as interns alongside the researchers in residence. The Russian and Eurasian program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a major center of research on the former Soviet Union, and its senior fellows often speak at SAIS. | 
