One of the most exciting aspects of Russian Studies at Stetson is the Russian Studies Artists and Lecturers series. Under the sponsorship of the Russian Studies program, several times each semester leading scholars and cultural and political dignitaries from around the world visit the campus to give lectures and meet informally with students. Because of the Residential Fellowship program sponsored by the Russian Studies Program, some scholars reside on campus for several weeks. Whether it is a political scientist from Oxford, a leader of the Russian women's movement, a poet from Moscow, or an ambassador from Kyrgyzstan, students are exposed to leading thinkers and policymakers in their field.

In the 2004-2005 academic year, Stetson observed the twentieth anniversary of the election of Mikhail Gorbachev commmunist party general secretary and the beginning of the Gorbachev reforms.

Lecturers in 2005-2006 included Kyrgyz environmental scientist and Fulbright scholar Gulnara Musuralieva , "Environmental Issues in Central Asia;"

In previous years the lecturers and artists sponsored by Stetson included Vladimir Gel'man, Sergei Tcherkasski, Nikita Koshkin
Nikolai Butkevich, Dr. Stephen Shenfield, Dr. Joel Moses Alexander Obolonsky, Martina Vandenberg, Alan Cooperman, Kyrgyzstani journalist Zamira Sydykova, Chechen foreign minister Ilias Akhmadov, Turkmen historian Shokrat Kadyrov, Dr. William Fierman, Dr. Brian G. Williams

In the past fifteen years Stetson's Russian Studies program has hosted the following:

Writers and poets Tatiana Tolstaia, Andrei Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akmadulina, and Anatoly Rybakov
Composer Alexander Raskatov
Artist Aleksandr Kalugin
The Honorable Roza Otunbayeva (Kyrgyzstan), The Honorable Dr. Yuri Scherbak (Ukraine)
Russian social scientists Alexander Fetisov, Alexander Yakovlev, Mikhail Guboglo, Alexander Gasparishvili, Gulnara Iskakova, Boris Topornin, Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, Pavel Romanov, and Alexander Obolonsky
Russian space scientist Roald Sagdeev
Russian journalists Egor Kuznetsov and Tamara Kalugina
Russian eye-surgeon and 1996 presidential candidate Sviataslav Fedorov
Western Russian Studies specialists Archie Brown, Thomas Remington, John Armstrong, Caryl Emerson, Boris Gasparov, Michael Mandelbaum, William Fuller, Janine Wedel, and Jerry Hough
American astronaut who flew on the Russian space station MIR Jerry Linenger
Director of the Center for Political and Strategic Studies Susan Eisenhower