Despite the threats of sanctions, reprisals, counter-reprisals and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, there is good news on the Russian front for Memorial University.

Three undergraduate students − two from the Faculty of Arts and one from the Faculty of Business Administration − have been granted Russian State scholarships and will spend up to 10 months studying in the country during the 2014-15 academic year.

Conception Bay South-native Meghan McDonald is in the fourth year of her degree program in the Faculty of Arts. She has been accepted to study Russian language at Kazan Federal University in the Volga Region, which was founded in 1804 and is one of the oldest universities in Russia. Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Lenin, who studied law there but was expelled for organizing student disturbances, are two of Kazan’s most noteworthy alumni.

Ms. McDonald acknowledges that studying Russian at university isn’t the type of discipline “you think of when you’re a kid.” Growing up in a family of cinephiles, she gained an appreciation for Soviet Russian movies of the 1950s and 1960s, an era known as “the thaw” after decades of Stalinism. Arriving at Memorial, she enrolled as an English student but then took a Russian film course with Dr. Alec Brookes.

“It clicked – this is what I want to study,” she said.

Ms. McDonald assesses her ability in the Russian language as intermediate – “I can order food and function in everyday life,” she said – but at Kazan she will be immersed in the language, living among and learning from Russian students and locals. She is looking forward both to experiencing the country’s cultural richness and to being on her own.

“The longest I’ve been away from home before is a month in St. Petersburg with the Memorial summer program.”

Ms. McDonald plans to pursue graduate studies in Russian after graduating from Memorial.

“For some reason, this niche discipline – which might seem confining − actually opens up so many possibilities for me,” she said. “Once you become well acquainted with faculty members in a department, you can see where they’ve gone and what they’ve done with their careers. Well, I’m very confident about the future.”

The Russian State awards are administered by the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada and cover all tuition costs and living expenses.

“Three years ago I made a formal request in Moscow to establish more awards for Canadian students to study in Russia, and since then I have promoted the idea so now I am gratified that students here at Memorial have this opportunity,” said Dr. Stuart Durrant, Department of German and Russian.

Ms. McDonald’s fellow students Josh Bonnell, Faculty of Arts, and Jon Mankow, Faculty of Business Administration, will attend the Southern Federal University in Rostov, Russia.