Dear Friends of Slovene Studies at UW,
As we approach a new year, I’d like to share some highlights of the amazing educational and research opportunities that your generous support for the Roma Boniecka Slovene Studies Endowment made possible over the past year:
-
UW offered its first ever Early Fall Start intensive study abroad program in Kamnik, Slovenia September 1-21, providing fourteen UW students in majors ranging from chemistry, civil engineering and environmental studies to history, psychology and linguistics with rich interdisciplinary learning experiences that will endure for a lifetime. You can read about the 2024 program in the UW Libraries’ December blog post. The Boniecka Slovene Endowment partly underwrote the cost of the program and provided three UW students with merit- and need-based scholarships, enabling them to participate.
-
Soon we will be taking student applications for UW’s 2025 Early Fall Start study abroad program in Slovenia. Because EFS Slovenia is so unique, this year up to five slots will be made available to students applying from universities throughout the U.S. alongside a main UW cohort of some fifteen students.
-
Based on the manifest strength of UW’s commitment to Slovene studies and research collaboration with Slovenia, the University of Ljubljana applied for and received coveted Erasmus+ funding from the European Union this year, which it has dedicated to covering all costs and increasing the number of its participants in the UW-U of Ljubljana Scholars Exchange from 2025 through 2029.
-
In 2024, UW Professor Naja Ferjan Ramirez (Linguistics) and PhD candidate Christina Bjarvin (Forest Sciences) visited and worked with colleagues and students at the U of Ljubljana under auspices of the UW-U of Ljubljana Scholars Exchange.
-
Our strong applicant pool for the UW-Ljubljana Scholars Exchange in 2025 promises to establish a number of dynamic new relationships between our two universities with long-lasting benefits for UW students, faculty and the wider community. I hope to report on specifics soon.
-
The Boniecka Slovene Studies Endowment paid for a large shipment of new books from Ljubljana, bringing Suzzallo Library’s collections for Slovene studies across the arts, humanities and social sciences to over 8,000 volumes.
The Boniecka Slovene Endowment, which you helped us augment in 2022, has been indispensable in creating these learning and research opportunities at UW. But this is just a start. As you think about opportunities for year-end giving, please consider supporting UW Slovene Studies with a gift to the Endowment. You can make a gift online here: https://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift/?source_typ=3&source=END-132381.