You learned Russian - in high school?

Armen Dedekian, the school's Russian teacher and head of foreign languages, believes four years of Russian stand out on a transcript. "I'm not going to make any claims that it helps them get into Harvard," he says. But he's sure it merits "some kind of check mark" in admissions office folders. Glastonbury teachers have heard the same from students after college interviews.

Not all parents, however, dream of seeing their child earn a degree in Russian.

LaPorte's parents encouraged her early interest, but they were a little disappointed when she switched from pre-med to Russian and East European studies at Yale.

Now, though, says LaPorte, who hopes to become a professor of post-Soviet politics, her mother calls regularly to alert her to news articles on the region. Her sister, who studied Spanish at Glastonbury, is a Spanish and Latin American Studies major at the University of Connecticut.

Their parents like to joke, says LaPorte, that "between the two of us they can travel most places with a translator."

Why study Russian today, so many years after the end of the cold war? Besides Russia's geographic mass, experts cite its oil and gas reserves, burgeoning businesses, and rich culture.

"Russia looms large in every way," says Benjamin Rifkin, chair of the Slavic Department at University of Wisconsin.

Glastonbury graduates' disparate pursuits seem to bear this out.

• After college, Richard Steffens, '78, went to work for the US Commerce Department. Learning over lunch one day that he spoke Russian, a higher-up waved over the woman in charge of assigning posts.

"She snapped out three sentences in Russian," writes Steffens in an e-mail from Prague, Czech Republic, where he is the US commercial counselor. He hadn't spoken Russian in a decade, but his Glastonbury training had stayed with him, so "I snapped back the right responses, with still a wonderful accent." The assignments director said, "Young man, your fate is sealed."

Two months later he was assigned to Moscow and, later, Vladivostok. He served in Russia for seven years. Next he will be in Kiev, Ukraine. Russian, he says, also offers the structure for Slavic languages like Czech and Ukrainian.

• As a graduate student in Moscow in 1987, Lisa Bailey, '83, worked as an interpreter for "Good Morning America." Later, she taught Russian at a private school in Honolulu.

• Sarah Cooper, '92, worked at the Defense Enterprise Fund in Richmond, Va., a government-sponsored venture capital fund that helped convert Soviet military facilities into businesses.

• After a stint at the US Embassy in Moscow, Allison Hawley, '94, worked as the Eurasia regional education advising coordinator for the State Department, helping Russians to study in the US.

• Anu Balakrishna, '94, has taught English to Russian immigrants in New York City's Chinatown.

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