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International Student and Scholar Services

International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) supports Penn’s community of more than 9,000 international students, scholars, and employees from over 137 countries. The Office is dedicated to celebrating and supporting Penn’s diverse international student and scholar communities by offering inclusive, innovative, and impactful immigration services and integration programs.  

ISSS is committed to ensuring that students experience the smoothest transition possible, from preparing for their journey to settling into life in Philadelphia. The Office provides guidance, information, and referrals on immigration, employment authorization, overseas travel, and integration into the Penn community. In addition to these services, ISSS collaborates with initiatives such as the International Student Advisory Board ( ISAB ), International Student Table for Advocacy & Relations ( ISTAR ), International Partners Outreach Group ( IPOG ), and Building International Student Integration Group (BISIG) to actively advocate for the needs of the international community at Penn. Once students arrive on campus, ISSS continues to offer relevant, well-informed programming and intercultural initiatives to foster an inclusive global community at Penn. 

Penn World Scholars' group picture.

ISSS offers:  

• Immigration advising for international students, scholars, and staff members currently located both in Philadelphia and overseas.
• The Penn Global Mosaic program—a pre orientation program—where first-year students interested in broadening their worldview and becoming informed global citizens build friendships with peers from all over the world, explore Penn’s global opportunities, and learn more about how students can leverage their Penn experience to shape their future as global leaders.
• The Culture Crossings series where Penn’s global community participates in opportunities to explore local cultures, gain valuable knowledge, acquire new skills, and build meaningful relationships. Participants can share diverse perspectives, celebrate their myriad identities, and gain insights into the perspectives of others.  

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The infographics provided below outline the depth and breadth of services offered by UPenn's International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) office to the diverse international students and scholars whose non-immigrant status is under Penn immigration sponsorship.

Please click on each infographic to see them enlarged.

International Student and Scholar Population* Snapshot

Source: upenn isss open doors student reports from fall 2011-2021; upenn isss open doors scholar reports from ay ’11-’12 to ’21-’22 *isss classifies international students and scholars as foreign nationals in non-immigrant status under penn immigration sponsorship., international scholar population* snapshot, source: upenn isss open doors scholar reports from ay ’11-’12 to ’21-’22 *isss classifies international scholars as foreign national visitors and employees in non‐immigrant status under penn immigration sponsorship., international student population* snapshot​, source: upenn isss open doors student reports from fall 2012-2022 *isss classifies international students as foreign national students in non-immigrant status under penn immigration sponsorship., eforms processed by isss staff, from november 1st, 2021 to october 31st, 2022, isss office metrics, isss programs, isss advising appointments, isss staff to clientele ratios, source: upenn isss open doors scholar reports from ’21-’22; upenn isss open doors student reports from fall 2022; isss staff as of november 2022.

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The Airport Authority

Tula Airport — Tula, Russia

Other nearby airports.

Domodedovo Airport , Moscow ( DME ), 136km (85mi) Ryazan Airport , Ryazan ( RZN ), 136km (85mi) Vnukovo Airport , Moscow ( VKO ), 157km (98mi) Orel Airport , Orel ( OEL ), 168km (105mi) Sheremetyevo Airport , Moscow ( SVO ), 198km (124mi)

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Russia travel facts

Tula, Russia: Land of Gingerbread, Samovars and Tolstoy

Slavic Travels Uncategorized

Fall was always my favorite season growing up.

Something about the air turning crisper, the weather getting colder. The leaves turning yellow and brown and orange. And of course Halloween.

It’s that back-to-school weather that any person growing up in the United States loves.

So it was a special treat to be able to experience what fall was like in a different country on a different continent, in a country so unknown in the west. To experience fall in Russia.

Maybe it’s because the season is so short here, but autumn in Russia is truly special.

For starters, it only lasts one month. Fall rolls in during the second half of September and ends in the first half of October. After that winter is already in the air.

But during that brief four-week period, when the country transitions from summer to winter, the Russian countryside explodes into the most beautiful mosaic of red and orange and brown and yellow.

They call it ‘zolotaja osenj’ here, or ‘golden fall.’

It was during this time of year I decided to head outside of Moscow and visit Tula, a city located three hours south of Moscow.

The year was 2017. I was living in Moscow working for a Russian newspaper. October had just arrived.

I was living with another American at the time working in Moscow. We both didn’t want to waste a beautiful crisp sunny autumn day cooped up in Moscow in the apartment.

So we took out a map and looked at what cities nearby we could visit.

We looked North, East, West and finally South. And there she was. Tula.

We’d read a lot of good things about Tula before. How Tula was the birthplace of Leo Tolstoy. That it was where a traditional Russian desert called pryaniki, or ‘gingerbread’ originated.

How for centuries Tula supplied the Russian empire with weapons and arms. And that samovars, what Russians used to make tea and keep water hot, originated from there.

Throw in a Kremlin too, which the city had, and the choice was obvious. We should visit Tula.

And off we went. To enjoy the Russian autumn in the Russian provinces.

How to get to Tula

There are two ways to get to Tula from Moscow. You can take a suburban train, known as elektrichkas, or you can take a regular train. The regular train costs more, and will take you there directly. In this case, Tula is usually the first stop of a longer train ride headed south toward Voronezh and Ukraine.

The other option, which we opted for, was the elektrichka. Elektrichkas are suburban trains that connect surrounding cities to Moscow. The elektrichka takes longer, three hours as opposed to an hour and a half. But the benefit is it is cheap. And you get to see all the smaller cities the train stops in.

When we went, the train was packed full of Russians heading to their dachas for the weekend.

Churches all across the Soviet Union were declared to have ‘no historic value’ and torn down. Churches that were several centuries old. Comunist style administration buildings were put in their place. Monuments to Russian czars were also destroyed and replaced by statues of Lenin.

In the 1980s under Gorbachev an effort was made to restore churches that had been neglected for decades under communism. The domes were put back in place and religious services began once more.

In 2006 the building was finally returned back to the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow, Tula’s Uspensky Sobor managed to survive 80 years of neglect under Soviet rule. Let’s hope the 21st century treats it better.

It too faced threats of disappearing forever under the communists. In the 1920s the dome was torn down but the remainder of the building was left untouched. For a while it functioned as a school, and then in 1960 the building was deemed to be part of the city’s architectural heritage and received protected status.

It’s interesting to compare Kremlins in Russia and when they were built. As far as Tula is concerned, it’s Kremlin isn’t the oldest, but neither is it the youngest.

• Veliky Novgorod – 1490
• Moscow – 1495
• Nizhny Novgorod – 1515
• Tula – 1520
• Zaraisk – 1531
• Kolomna – 1531
• Astrakhan – 1581
• Smolensk – 1602
• Rostov – 1680

There’s actually a lot more kremlins in Russia, depending on how you define a Kremlin. Technically many monetarists could be considered Kremlins, but are classified as religious objects, such as Sergiev Posad or Zvenigorod . Some have only been partly preserved, such as Kolomna . In any case, Tula gets the honor of being one of a handful of Russian cities with a Kremlin that’s been fully preserved.

In Moscow, the Kremlin is closed to the public. In order to visit, you have to pay. And as a result, nobody gets to enjoy the Kremlin. Tourists will pay and go inside when they visit the city. But the actual residents of Moscow, the people that live in the city, never get to enjoy it. It feels separated from the city, not like an integral part of it.

It wasn’t always like this. Up until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Moscow’s Kremlin was open to the public and anybody could walk in and out of it. It functioned just like the Kremlins in Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Veliky Novgorod and so forth.

Moscow should learn from these cities and open their own Kremlin up to the public. The city would become much more attractive.

One problem in Tula were the wide streets that favored cars. Tula’s main street in the city that went through the center of the city had three lanes for cars going in each direction.

It was no wonder, therefore that cars drove very fast. In fact, I was quite surprised at just how loud Tula was for a city of only half a million people. It felt like on every street there was the constant noise of cars rushing by.

What should Tula do instead? Streets like these should be reduced in size and preference given to pedestrians and cyclists. Two lanes in the middle should go toward a tram line, the other two narrowed in size to make way for a bike lane going in both directions.

Tula in fact, had tram lines operating on its main streets up until WWII, before the government decided to get rid of them.

Giving the streets back to the people would make the city a more comfortable place to live.

What I love most about these buildings is how colorful they are. They are all painted in different colors.

Unfortunately many of them were in bad shape. Traditional wooden buildings in Russia are in danger of disappearing forever. All across the country these buildings are being torn down as people move to cities and forget about the buildings where their grandparents grew up and came from. I wrote an entire separate post about the topic here about a street in Tula that was filled with these wooden buildings.

This is one of the oldest cemeteries in the city. Built in 1772, it contained some of the oldest graveyards and tombs in the city from over 100 years ago.

Tula was the city where the majority of Russian samovars were produced in the 19th century. You could find them all over Europe and chance are if you live in an old house and look in the attic, you will find a samovar that was made in the city of Tula.

Tula was an amazing city to visit in the fall. Russia can have extreme weather. Most of the year is covered in snow, but you have brief glimpses of fall, spring and summer that can be enjoyed.

These photos capture what fall in Russia is like. We happened to spend them in Tula, but really, any Russian city will look this beautiful in the fall.

When it comes t othe city of Tula itself, it is a great day trip outside of Moscow. The city is beaming with history. The armaments factory, the Kremlin, the wooden buildings in the center of the city, the beautiful cemetery atop the hill and the delicious Russian pryaniki all combine to make this worth the trek outside of Moscow.

Be sure to add it to your itinerary when you visit Russia and Moscow.

The Destruction of Moscow: Rusakovskaya Street

Ellicott City: Exploring Small Town Maryland

Down in the heart of Sumadija: Cacak, Serbia

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