Dr. Irina Ivliyeva, assistant professor of Russian in the arts, languages and philosophy department at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has been named 2012 Woman of the Year by Missouri S&T. She was honored during a campus ceremony on Wednesday, April 18.

The Woman of the Year award is given annually in recognition of efforts to improve the campus environment for women and minorities. As part of the award, Ivliyeva received a $2,000 stipend funded by Missouri S&T graduate Cynthia Tang, founder and former chair of Insight Industries Inc.

“Irina is one of those rare individuals we call a natural intercultural communicator,” wrote one of Ivliyeva’s nominators. “She consistently displays sensitivity to the myriad possibilities for misunderstanding that take place because of cultural differences, and shows a rare talent for remaining tentative in her own judgments while she draws other people out.”

Ivliyeva “holds her students accountable for their studies,” wrote another nominator, “and I secretly believe that some students take her class less for the subject matter and more for her informal mentoring of them.”

“Irina is one of those people who leads by setting an incredible example,” another nominator wrote. “She serves as an amazing role model for other women as we learn to balance work and life, and be good at both. Her realistic but positive outlook, as well as her example, shows others how to forge a successful career at S&T.”

Ivliyeva joined the Missouri S&T faculty in 1997 as a lecturer of Russian. Since 2000, she has served as an instructor in the American pronunciation program in S&T’s Speech Communication Center. She was named instructor of Russian in 2000 and assistant professor of Russian in 2006. During her tenure, she has received awards for outstanding teaching for 14 consecutive years.

Ivliyeva serves on the Campus Curriculum Committee and the Female and Underrepresented Minority Faculty Recruiting and Retention Task Force, is a faculty evaluator for the annual Undergraduate Research Conference, is a faculty advisor to the Russian Club, and a faculty mentor to Women in Business, a new organization dedicated to connecting female students with women business leaders and career development opportunities.

Ivliyeva is the author of two Russian language books, “Russian Verbal Modifications: an Experience of a Dictionary Creating” and “Problems in Synthesis of Russian Verbs.” She is currently working on a third book, “Russian Verbal Modification Dictionary,” which will be published within the year.

Prior to joining S&T, Ivliyeva served as an assistant professor of Russian at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in Russia, a visiting instructor of Russian at the University of Maryland at College Park, and an instructor of Russian and Russian House advisor for the Summer Russian Language Institute in Budapest, Hungary.

Ivliyeva earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1997. Her specialty is the Russian language and literature, general and Russian semantics and word formation. She earned a master of arts degree in Russian language and literature and the teaching thereof from the Lomonosov Moscow State University School of Philology in Moscow in 1989.