Dr. Sharon L. Wolchik is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She has served as Director of the Russian and East European Studies Program and the Masters in International Policy Program and as Associate Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs. She has been a Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, and a Visiting Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Dr. Wolchik’s teaching and research have focused on Central and East European, and Caucasian politics. Dr. Walchik has held fellowships or been awarded grants from numerous organizations, including the International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Council for Russian and East European Research, the Macarthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She has also served as Adjunct Chair or Course Coordinator for courses on East Central Europe, Central Europe, the Caucasus, Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, and breakout sessions on various combinations of Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republics, the Baltic States and Romania at the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute since 1980. Additionally, she has served as a consultant to the Civic Education Project of the ACLS, the International Affairs Network of the American Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center, the Advisory Committee of Nations in Transit, and as a member of the board of the Penn Kemble Fellows Program at the National Endowment for Democracy. She is the author of Czechoslovakia in Transition (1991) and has published over 100 articles and book chapters. Dr. Wolchik holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, an MA in Political Science from Indiana University, and a BA from Syracuse University.