Austin Charron came to the University of Oregon to study history. It wasn’t long, however, before he found himself immersed in the cultures, languages, politics, and geography of present-day Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
In fact, Charron, a 2008 graduate of the UO and the
Robert Donald Clark Honors College, will spend next year on a Fulbright Scholarship in Simferopol—the capital of the Crimea—in Ukraine.
During his time at the UO, the geography and Russian major blended academic disciplines with real world experience. Through the university’s Study Abroad Programs, he studied for five months in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he polished his Russian-language skills.
“If you really want to get to know a people and a place, knowing the language is vital,” says Charron, from Corvallis. “I had the chance to get out of the city and see some places tourists don’t often go.”
But seeing the northwest corner of Russia wasn’t enough for Charron. Before graduating, he completed an IE3 Global Internship administered by the Oregon University System in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, where he taught English to grade schoolers before trekking around Central Asia.
“Getting to see a place like that was amazing,” Charron says. “Some people might have a hard time pointing out Kyrgyzstan on a map. But it’s really important for me to go to these places, get to know people, and see them first hand.”
Charron’s experiences on campus in Eugene and abroad played off each other, lending insights, understanding, and context to his travels and his academic work. For his honors thesis he analyzed how the world’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence might affect similar de facto independent regions in the former Soviet Union. His undergraduate research closely relates to what he wants to study in Ukraine as part of the Fulbright program.
In Ukraine, Charron plans to study the Crimean separatist movement. In 1954—just nine years after the Crimean peninsula hosted Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference—the Soviet Union shifted control of the Crimean territory from Russia to Ukraine. When Ukraine gained independence, it retained control of Crimea, much to the consternation of many in the heavily Russian region who would prefer to be aligned with Moscow.
“The university broadened my horizons and exposed me to things I never would have known about otherwise,” Charron says. “I’ll always be hungry for experience.”
