Heather R Rice
Lecturer — Ph.D., Indiana University
Assistant Professor of Instruction

Contact
- E-mail: hrrice@utexas.edu
- Phone: 512-471-3607
- Office: BUR 386
- Office Hours: FALL 2021: contact for appointment in Zoom
Interests
Community Building and Student to Student Interactivity in Online Learning; Experiential Learning Online; Distance Learning; Russian Language Pedagogy; Second-Language Acquisition, Phonetics and Phonology, Russian and Soviet cinema
Biography
Heather Rice is the Russian language coordinator and an assistant professor of instruction of Russian for the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies. She teaches lower-level, introductory Russian language courses.
In coordination with the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) at UT, Dr. Rice created the content for the three-semester online Russian language sequence and textbook Будем на связи (We'll be in Touch / Online)*, which is exclusively used at the University of Texas for all lower-level, introductory Russian language courses, including the intensive and online sequences.
Dr. Rice completed her PhD in Linguistics and Slavic languages at Indiana University Bloomington in 2016. Her dissertation examined the second language phonological acquisition of the palatalization contrast in Russian.
Dr. Rice is the Southwest Regional Chair for the Olympiada of Spoken Russian, and through LAITS has served as a faculty consultant for the transition to online instruction.
Most recently, Dr. Rice has been focused on developing strategies for community-building in the online language classroom - namely, ways to create opportunities for shared experiences that lead to greater student engagement, success, and retention.
With the support of a Global Virtual Exchange development grant through Texas Global, Dr. Rice is working with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow on a exchange program, aimed at providing the online students with live, real-time virtual language and cultural experiences on the ground in Moscow.
Links to articles and interviews:
- "Still Teaching Online? Unleash Creativity to Heighten Student Engagement and Build Community in the Asynchronous Language Classroom", FLTMAG
- Будем на связи - Information about the online Russian courses
- “Teaching Russian Online from Texas? Da!” by Michelle Daniels, Russia Beyond the Headlines
- "Exploring the World Through Language" by Alexandra Reshanov, Life and Letters, COLA Magazine
- "Russian Language Online!" by Thomas Rehnquist, The Slavic Connexion
*The title of the online textbook and course Будем на связи (We'll be in Touch / Online) is the brilliant contribution of Dr. Thomas J. Garza.