It is the time of the year to nominate a stellar student in your program for the annual ACTR Post-Secondary Russian Scholar Laureate Award - PSRSLA-2026. Organized under the auspices of the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR), this award seeks to provide national recognition for one student per program who is either a junior or a senior in college. Each program chooses its laureate, and ACTR provides a certificate and congratulatory letter. Community colleges can nominate one second-year student. 

The nomination process is very easy, and the award is offered free of charge by ACTR as a service to the profession. The nomination deadline date is March 1, 2026.

For guidelines on submission criteria, please visit https://www.actr.org/PSRSLA_Guidelines. Please note that nominations must be submitted electronically at https://forms.gle/vphtz6bnbfsoLhgd9. Only one nomination will be accepted per Russian language program. Award certificates will be mailed to nominators by April.  

Questions? Suggestions? Please contact us at iza.savenkova@gmail.com

We look forward to receiving your nominations for PSRSLA-2026.

Izolda (Iza) Savenkova 
PSRSLA Co-chair

We are happy to inform you that the 2026 NEWL exam dates are now available on this website.

Additionally, the NEWL Practice Exam is now offered year-round in both short and full-length formats (depending on the language).

Access the practice exam here.

If your school plans to participate in the 2026 NEWL exam cycle, please join us for an upcoming informational webinar. If your school no longer teaches Arabic, Korean, Portuguese, or Russian, or if you would prefer not to receive future communications, please let me know by replying to this email, and I will update our contact list accordingly.

The 2026 registration and webinar links will be made available early next year. Please check the NEWL website periodically for updates.