As Assistant Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Farah Sultana Akbar serves as a member of the CELOP leadership team, supporting the Managing Director in identifying and achieving strategic goals and collaborating with CELOP faculty to ensure a high-quality academic experience for students. Among other responsibilities, Farah also teaches 5-10 hours per week and helps foster an innovative and dynamic teaching environment at CELOP.

Prior to joining CELOP, Farah held various roles at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she taught graduate-level courses in TESOL and Applied Linguistics program and the TESOL Certificate Program.

Farah also taught graduate-level TESOL and ESL courses at Hunter College, City University of New York, and served as a faculty member at Aga Khan University in Pakistan and Traduc Global in Chile. Her international experience includes conducting professional development workshops for Chinese teachers of English in Beijing and designing workshops on EFL pedagogy for the Korean EFL Teachers Immersion Program. She also contributed to the Tibet Scholarship Program through The Tibet Fund and the U.S. Department of State.

Farah’s research and teaching have resulted in several publications in esteemed journals, including TESOL Quarterly and CALICO Journal. She holds an Ed.D. in Applied Linguistics (specializing in Second Language Acquisition) and an M.A. in TESOL from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also earned two master’s degrees from the University of Karachi, Pakistan, one in Linguistics and another in English Literature.

Farah is a member of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL); Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO); International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT); and New York State (NYS) TESOL. She loves traveling and meeting people from diverse cultures, enjoying the opportunity to try new foods along the way.