Featured Madisonian

Lawrence Scott Sheets, Alumnus

Lawrence Scott Sheets (IR/Russian '90) is a visiting faculty member at James Madison College. He is also a contributor for National Public Radio (NPR), as he concentrates on covering the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union from his base in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. From 2001 to 2005, Sheets was NPR's Moscow Bureau Chief, and covered the countries of former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia.

Among major stories Sheets has covered for NPR have been the tragic siege of a school by a pro-Chechen separatist terror group in 2004 in which 330 mostly children were killed, the 6-week long "Orange Revolution" that brought down Ukraine's old government in 2004, and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. Sheets has also reported for NPR from Iran and Afghanistan. He covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, including the bloody Taliban uprising at a fortress in Mazar e Sharif in which hundreds of people died. Sheets' reports can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Day to Day, and Weekend Edition.

Before working for NPR, Sheets worked for Reuters News Agency as the bureau chief for the Caucasus region, and was based in Tbilisi, Georgia (1992-2000). He covered several wars and conflicts in the region over those years, including Chechnya. Sheets previously worked for both NBC News and for Reuters Television as a producer/assignment editor in Moscow (1991-92).

Sheets graduated with honors from James Madison College in 1990 with degrees in both International Relations and Russian Language and Literature. He then went on to be a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University (2000-01).