Endowed through a generous gift from Priscilla Heim in honor of her late husband, the eminent literary scholar and translator Michael Henry Heim (1943-2012), the Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Letters provides a three-year, renewable appointment for a faculty member working in the broad range of Heim’s interests. Professor Heim’s work spanned an impressive array of languages and cultures, from Croatian and Serbian to Dutch, Czech, German, Romanian, and Russian. A beloved teacher of literature and language, Heim also authored works on language pedagogy and spearheaded the translation and dissemination of often unknown literary gems by artists hitherto unknown in the English-reading world. The Heim bequest also makes possible a one-semester visiting professor each year and two graduate recruitment fellowships, each of which bears the Heim name and highlights our continued commitment to Michael Heim’s lifelong work. We are honored to carry on his legacy through this award.

This award is given to one graduate student associate instructor every year. Established in 2013, it is named in honor of Dr. Jerzy Kolodziej, B.A. 1962, Ph.D. 1984, Slavic professor emeritus, who retired in 2009. Kolodziej spent over thirty years working with Russian and Polish languages at Indiana University, including over twenty years as director of the Summer Workshop in Slavic and Eastern European Languages. He played a pivotal role in the success of the Summer Language Workshop and gave years of dedicated insight to the department. Donations to this fund help ensure that exceptional teaching among our graduate student instructors is recognized in his honor.

Charles Neatrour, widower of department alumna Elizabeth (Betty Jo) Baylor Neatrour (1935-2002, Ph.D. 1973), endowed the Neatrour-Edgerton Fellowship for graduate study. This award honors the memory of both Elizabeth Neatrour and (at her request) the late William B. Edgerton (1915-2004), her IU mentor.

William Hopkins (Ph.D. 1977) led an effort to acknowledge the exceptional training offered by émigré Russian language teachers affiliated with the department and the Summer Language Workshop in the 1950s and 1960s. He and other alumni have made gifts toward the installation of a memorial plaque on campus to recognize their former teachers.