With funding from the International Research Opportunities Program (IROP) at the University of New Hampshire, Andrew Langsner traveled to Russia in summer 2008 to explore the state of Russian–American relations in the railroad industry. Born in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, Andrew will graduate from the University of New Hampshire in May 2009 with a bachelor’s of science in civil engineering. He plans to attend graduate school for engineering and hopes to someday reconnect with the Russian professors he met who were interested in working with American engineers on the development of the Siberian Railway, including a rail line connecting Russia to Alaska under the Bering Strait. Andrew chose to publish an article in Inquiry to support his larger goal to “contribute to the process of changing the way we think about Russia now that the Cold War is over.”
Dr. Cathy A. Frierson is a professor in the Department of History at the University of New Hampshire, where she has been teaching for seventeen years. Her research and teaching interest focuses on Russian history. Although she co–founded the International Research Opportunities Program (IROP) in 1997 with Dr. Donna Brown, Dr. Frierson’s first experience as an IROP mentor came in 2008 when she mentored three students, Andrew Langsner being one of them. Andrew’s project is just what Dr. Frierson hoped IROP would make possible when she first envisioned the program: an opportunity for students in the sciences to learn about the international aspects of a scientific career by exploring their field in another culture.
Read Andrew Langsner’s research article Toward a New Era of Russian–American Collaboration on Railroads >>
