Teaching Experience

In Winter 2025 I am teaching a personally-developed course titled "Environment, Politics, and Society in Russia" at the University of Michigan.




In Winter 2021 term I had an exceptional chance to build from scratch and teach my own 400-level course "Sociology of Corruption" (SOC  410) which has never been taught at the department before.

In this course, specific attention was paid to studying the connection between macro and micro processes; corruption and culture; corruption and society; corruption and inequality. The course started with teaching the basics: the role of social capital and social networks. Further in the course students learned a variety of definitions, opinions, and theories applicable to corruption studies. Together we learned how political, economic, and sociological processes affect the formation and development of corruption in education, healthcare, police, as well as the government. These topics were examined through the prism of social institutions, cultural contexts, and informal exchange. With the help of comparative analysis, students gained insights into the corruption practices that characterize different countries, such as the USA, China, Russia and other Post-Soviet States, Western European and South American countries.

Snippets from student evaluations are shared below:

During the Summer 2021 I developed and taught my own 300-level online asynchronous course "Research Methods" (SOC 311)

For this four-week online course, I built my own syllabus, researched the teaching materials to find the best-fitting textbook and supplemental materials, and built a Canvas page. During the four weeks, students developed knowledge of the main research methods, such as: surveys, interviews, observations, experiments, and historical-comparative methods. In this course, students learned about research methods’ strengths, as well as their limitations. To illustrate the importance of a correct methodological approach, students were invited to learn about projects that breached the various protocols and standards of research methods. The assignments used in this course provided students with hands-on experiences and helped them prepare and conduct their own original research. 


During the Summer 2019, I developed and taught my own 400-level asynchronous online course "Introduction to Sociology of Corruption"

According to the student reviews, the mean for the course was 4.4, which compares to the school's mean of 4.3.

Besides developing and teaching my own courses, I have also served as a Discussion Section Assistant numerous times for introductory-level courses, such as:

I have also served as a Teaching Assistant (Grader) for the following courses: