Research Opportunities Students are encouraged to talk with the Director about their research interests. Each year one or two students are offered a position asa research assistant to the Director. Students may set up an independent study project if their research interests are not covered in depth by the program. 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 RES Program has well-established relationships with Washington’s many think tanks and educational institutions. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, The George Washington and Georgetown universities and other organizations invite RES students to their events. Representatives from various embassies are frequent guests at SAIS seminars. The biweekly non-credit newspaper and pizza 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. RES alumni are invited to meet with seminar participants and describe their professional experiences after SAIS. Students proficient in the Russian language often bring movies that have not been released in the United States to watch together with their classmates at SAIS. Other Opportunities Whenever possible, the RES Program helps students gain experience that supplements their formal course of study. RES concentrators were selected to serve as election observers during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,” and the RES Program helped them finance the trip. Other students served as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers during the parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan and the presidential election in Belarus.
| 
