ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sharon Hudgins is an award-winning author who has also worked as a book and magazine editor; freelance journalist; magazine, newspaper, and Web site columnist; filmmaker, and photographer. She lived abroad for 20 years—in Germany, Spain, Greece, France, England, Scotland, Japan, Korea, and Russia—and has traveled in more than 45 countries around the world. Together with her husband, Tom Hudgins, she taught for almost 18 years with UMUC’s programs overseas— in the European Division and the Asian Division, at the Munich and Augsburg campuses, and with the Russia Program in Siberia and the Russian Far East. She now works as a lecturer on National Geographic educational tours in Europe and Asia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in government (Soviet and East European studies) and a master’s degree in communications (radio, television, and film), both from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a master’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is the author of the first commemorative history of UMUC, Never an Ivory Tower: University of Maryland University College—The First 50 Years, 1947–1997, published by UMUC in 2000. Her most recent book is The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East (Texas A&M University Press, 2003), a memoir about her experiences while teaching for UMUC’s program in Russia in the 1990s.