Faculty Spotlights for Spring 2019
What have our faculty been up to?
This year, we had five faculty members earn notable promotions. Please join us in congratulating Professor Wiebke Denecke for her promotion to Professor of East Asian Literatures & Comparative Literature, Professor Roberta Micallef for her promotion to Professor of the Practice in Middle Eastern Literatures, Professor Yuri Corrigan on his tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Dr. Sassan Tabatabai for his promotion to Master Lecturer of Persian and Core, and to Dr. Jungsoo Kim for her promotion to Senior Lecturer in Korean!
Mark Lewis, Director of the Geddes Language Center at BU and Part-time German Lecturer, was awarded this year’s Outstanding Service Award for Excellence in Partnership at the End-of-Year Luncheon for CAS/GRS Academic Administrators on April 24th. Mark plays a huge role in World Languages & Literatures and Romance Studies and is a key member of our community. Congratulations, Mark!
Professor Abigail Gillman has a new publication, The History of the German Jewish Bible Translation (published April 2018).
Jungsoo Kim, lecturer and head of the Korean language program, received a STARTALK grant third year in a row to host STARTALK Online Korean Teacher Training program during the summer, 2019. The 4-week summer program focuses on educational technology training for Korean language teachers with Amber Navarre as the Instructional Lead.
Three Korean language faculty (Heeju Lee, Junga Yoo, and Jungsoo Kim) received a Geddes Mini-Grant to develop an Online Korean Placement Test. They presented their work in progress at the Spring Geddes Faculty Showcase in April.
Amber Navarre was featured in the Language Educator (ACTFL magazine, April/May, 2019) for her tech tips for language teachers: https://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/tle/TLE_AprMay19_TechWatch.pdf. Amber Navarre also gave an invited workshop on effective use of instructional technology at the annual conference of Chinese Language Teachers Association.
Luluah Mustafa had a busy, and productive semester. In addition to presenting in the Open House, she participated in the Adobe Catalyst Program (ACP) that was offered by the Boston University Center for Teaching & Learning. By completing the program requirements that lasted from January till April, she received unique invitations to serve in two significant and prestigious events:
- Adobe Creative Jam Planning Committee member: Lulu was among other BU faculty members who planned for the Adobe Creative Jam event that took place on Thursday, April 18th, is aimed towards BU undergrad and grad students, this hack-a-thon type competition taught participants how to use Adobe XD. Then, worked in teams, they faced-off to create a winning design product.
- Presented at the Ninth Annual Educational Innovation conference on May 3rd: Presented her innovative project “Turning Students’ Work into Teaching Materials” as one of the speakers during the “faculty spotlight” session and received outstanding comments from CTL staff based on the participants’ feedback.
- She also presented at Massachusetts Arabic Teachers’ Council Conference at Babson College, on Saturday, May 4th. and her presentation was the only one to be selected by the editor of the Arabic K-12 Bulletin to be published.
Shutan Dong, Lecturer in Chinese received Geddes Mini-Grant for her project Supporting Student Engagement through Open Educational Resources. She presented her work at the Geddes Faculty Showcase in April.
Sassan Tabatabai, Master Lecturer in Persian, has published a translation of Rumi poetry. Click here to view the Harvard Review Online.