Dr. Irina Ivliyeva, professor of Russian at Missouri S&T, recently received the Dean’s Medal for Outstanding Commitment to Undergraduate Student Success in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education at S&T.

Members of the Dean’s Leadership Council Faculty Excellence Committee surprised Ivliyeva with the award while she was teaching class Thursday, April 13.

“In the eyes of many on the S&T campus, Irina is the embodiment of an engaged and gregarious professional willing to go the extra mile to help others,” says Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE). “As the sole Russian instructor at S&T, she has built up the Russian language, literature, and linguistic program with sweat equity. Developing curricular content, teaching new courses, and creating databases for students wishing to learn a new language single-handedly is no small task.”

“Dr. Ivliyeva was our committee’s unanimous choice to receive this award,” says Ted Kelly, chair of the CASE Dean’s Leadership Council and a 1977 economics alumnus. “Each year we have a difficult choice to make, because CASE has so many outstanding faculty members, but that should speak volumes about Irina’s abilities – she is held in high regard at this university.”

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, Ivliyeva has received multiple awards for outstanding teaching. She was named Missouri S&T’s Woman of the Year in 2012.

Ivliyeva has served on S&T’s 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.

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 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.

About Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System and located in Rolla, Missouri, Missouri S&T offers 101 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top 10 universities for return on investment, according to Business Insider. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.