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Participating Faculty, Staff and Speakers

Administration

Photo of Elizabeth Bernhardt Elizabeth B. Bernhardt (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is the John Roberts Hale Director of the Language Center and Professor of German Studies at Stanford University. She has spoken and written on second-language reading, teacher education, and policy and planning for foreign- and second-language programs. Her book, Reading Development in a Second Language (1991), earned her the Modern Language Association’s Mildenburger prize as well as the Edward Fry Award from the National Reading Conference as an outstanding contribution to literacy research. Professor Bernhardt’s latest book, Understanding Advanced Second Language Reading, (2011) has appeared with Routledge.  UNESCO has recently published her pamphlet on teaching second-languages and her work is appearing in the Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education;  Debating Issues in American Education; and in the International Encyclopedia of Education.  She has published in the Modern Language Journal, Applied Linguistics, the ADFL Bulletin, Foreign Language Annals, and Reading Research Quarterly.
Monica Brillantes Monica Brillantes serves as Program Manager for the Stanford Language Center. Her primary responsibility revolves around budget management, human resources and payroll issues for the Language Center's full-time and part-time staff. She processes all academic appointments for the Language Center. She serves as the primary liaison with the Humanities and Sciences Dean's Office, Accounts Payable, University Procurement and other university offices. Additionally, Monica oversees building management for the Stanford Language Center.
Amy Keohane Amy Keohane is the Language Center Scheduling Assistant. She is in charge of scheduling the more than 900 courses offered by the Language Center each year, ordering books, and organizing Language Center events and special meetings. She is also the coordinator for the Chinese Summer Language Program and building manager for Building 30.
Photo of Allison Kopp Allison Kopp is the Student Services Officer for the Stanford Language Center. She majored in Psychology and minored in German at Stanford, and returned to campus after several years of teaching preschool through Teach For America. Allison is responsible for all undergraduate and graduate student-related activities in the Language Center; this includes language advising, certification of the Language Requirement, academic records for the 6000 students who take foreign language courses each year, language credit transfers, and administration of the Advanced Proficiency Notation. She is the primary contact person for students, as well as for language program coordinators within the Language Center.
Tracey Riesen is a Language Center administrative staff member and is the central point of contact for the English for Foreign Students (EFS) program. In addition to managing the EFS summer intensive English program for incoming international graduate students and visiting scholars, she maintains the Language Center and FLTA websites, creates a quarterly department newsletter, processes reimbursements for Language Center staff, handles telecommunications for the Center, and is the Department Property Administrator.


Student Staff

Rachel Crovello is a 2015 graduate of Stanford University, earning her B.A. in Linguistics. While at Stanford she completed the Arabic minor and pioneered the minor in Translation Studies. She has recently completed the translation of a French Algerian text, due to be published by Dalkey Archive Press in mid-2017. This summer she worked in the Language Center as English for Foreign Students program assistant and teacher's aide.
Elena Dancu has been at Stanford since 2012. She completed her undergraduate degree in English and German at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and then went on to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she finished her master's in Comparative Literature with distinction. Her dissertation, "Kafka by Borges", traced the reception of Franz Kafka's oeuvre in Argentina, primarily through the short stories and essays of Jorge Luis Borges. Currently, she is working on 20th century and contemporary narrative in the lusophone world and Spanish America, while maintaining a keen interest in Kafka and Paul Celan. She has four years of experience teaching foreign languages (English, German, Portuguese and Spanish) in Romania, Scotland, China and at Stanford. She is a dedicated educator who also volunteers as a teaching consultant for the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. She has worked as coordinator at the Center for the Study of the Novel at Stanford for two years. Currently, she is the new Graduate Director of Project Write at the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking, and the coordinator of the "Sense and Sound" Digital Humanities Research Group.
D. Brian Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. His research primarily examines experiences of translation, travel, and language learning in pre-revolutionary Russian contexts. Brian holds a B.A. in linguistics from Williams College and an M.A. in Japanese literature from Stanford. He is a certified OPI tester in Russian and has taught several Stanford courses in language, literature, and culture.

 

Presenters

Nanette Andrews Nanette Andrews is the Associate Director of the Stanford's Sexual Harassment Policy Office. The mission of the SHPO is to provide preventative education and effective resolutions to sexual harassment concerns in the Stanford community. Stanford's Sexual Harassment Policy applies to faculty, students and staff, making up a diverse population of  approximately 30,000 people, The SHPO provides state mandated training for over 6,000 Stanford  faculty and supervisory staff every two years as well as numerous other training programs for different segments of the university population. Nan has been at Stanford since 2001 and before that, was responsible for market research for three daily newspapers in California. Nan lived in Nagoya, Japan from 1996-1999 but makes no claims as to her Japanese language proficiency!
Photo of Annie Atura Annie Atura is a third-year doctoral student in English at Stanford; she is also minoring in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is cross-listed under Jewish Studies. Annie got her BA in English and Art from Yale in 2011. In addition to her studies, Annie works as a Graduate Coordinator at the Stanford Women's Center, as a Writing Tutor at the Hume Writing Center, and as a Pilates instructor with Stanford Aerobics and Yoga. Last year, she was a GPS fellow with the Haas Center, where she worked on a service-learning course concerning narrative and dance in juvenile halls. In her free time, she sings in a rock band called The Great American Novel.
Derek Cook is a Program Officer II for the Fulbright FLTA Program at IIE. He manages communication with Fulbright Commissions and U.S. Embassies abroad on programmatic matters, oversees day-to-day fiscal management and the maintenance of grantee records, leads projects related to student services, and provides support in all other aspects of the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program. Prior to working on the FLTA program, Derek worked for nearly two years as an English teacher in South Korea. Derek graduated from Winthrop University in May of 2009, where he received a B.A in English Literature.
Armen Davoudian is a doctoral student in English Literature at Stanford University. His interests span the history of English poetry and poetics, with particular attention, so far, to the twentieth century. Having grown up in an Armenian community in Esfahan, Iran, and studied various foreign languages (particularly Latin, French, and German) throughout his life, he’s also interested in translation.
Natalie Sherwood Deam is a graduate student in the French and Italian department at Stanford, where she studies nineteenth-century literature and its relationship to science. Natalie is originally from the midwest, and received her bachelors degrees at the University of Iowa, where she studied English, French, and Comparative Literature. As a third year PhD student Natalie currently teaches undergraduate French language classes. She is also co-director of the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages’ weekly film series and graduate student coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consciousness workshops.
Saadet Ebru Ergul has been teaching Turkish Language and Culture in the Stanford Language Center since 2010. She received her Bachelor’s degree and MBA from Bilkent University, and holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Romance Languages from Texas Tech University. She also holds Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Tester Certification by the American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Her teaching and research interests include curriculum design, oral proficiency assessment and instructional technology. She is the recipient of multiple program enhancement grants from Stanford’s Academic Computing Services and the Center for Teaching & Learning; as part of the iPads for Learning initiative, she has investigated how iPad use can support Turkish language learning and teaching.
Photo of Nicole Gounalis Nicole Gounalis is a Ph.D. Candidate in Italian, with a Ph.D. minor in Slavic Studies at Stanford. She is currently working on a dissertation that presents an alternative reading of the Italian Futurist movement by placing it in the context of homegrown left-wing critiques and, with the theorization of neorealism, the emergence of Italian national cinema.
Heather Howard Heather Howard is Coordinator of and Lecturer for the French Program at the Stanford Language Center.  She also teaches French to adult students through Stanford's Continuing Studies Program. Heather is a certified OPI and WPA rater through ACTFL.  She received a Ph.D. in Eighteenth-Century French Literature from UCLA in 2003.    Her current research focuses on the development of presentational language in the second-year language classroom.
Photo of Biliana Kassabova Biliana Kassabova grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria. She came to the US to do her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago in 2003, where she double majored in French literature and Economics. Since 2008, Biliana has been a PhD student in French literature at Stanford and has taught many classes in language, literature, history, and philosophy.
Andrea Kevech Andrea Kevech teaches courses in listening and communication and academic writing and has taught various other courses in the EFS summer program over the past 20 years. Her main areas of interest are writing and grammar.  Andrea earned a BS in Education and French from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and received a Masters degree in English and TOSEL from San Francisco State University. During the academic year, Andrea also teaches at San Francisco State. She is proficient in French and Spanish and has studied Japanese.
Zhenya Khassina Eugenia Khassina is a Lecturer in Russian and the Coordinator of the Russian Language Program at Stanford. She received her Master's degree in linguistics from Moscow University of Foreign Languages.  She has had extensive experience in teaching ESL and RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language). Her area of special interest is language acquisition through role play and modern literature. She created several course readers for SRJC – community college in California and is currently working on the second year Russian text.  She has taught at Stanford since 2004.
Hee-Sun Kim is Coordinator and Lecturer for the Korean Language Program. She holds her PhD in Linguistics from Stanford and has taught Korean language courses at Stanford Language Center since 2003. Her principal research areas include psycholinguistics, experimental phonetics, and second language acquisition. She conducted research on the integration of multiple sources of information in Korean sentence processing and the relationship between sentence comprehension and production focusing on prosodic disambiguation. She is a certified ILR/ACTFL tester, OPIc rater, WPA rater, and ACTFL OPI trainer. She is currently working on curricular development for heritage language education.
Photo of Amanda Licato Amanda Licato is a third year English PhD candidate. She studies nineteenth-and-early-twentieth century American literature, with a focus on African-American poetry and performance. Amanda is interested in African-American influences on mainstream American literature, and of the narrative and performative strategies black artists deployed in dealing with multiple identities, genres, and subject matters. Her dissertation looks at a function of poetics: that the voice of the poet and the voice of the poem's speaker are not one but rather two separate voices, and yet appear closer together than in prose. Using this framework, she explores how the poetry of George Moses Horton, Frances Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Jean Toomer works within and against black literary conventions, producing shifts in poetic voices that were further complicated by the public readings these poets performed.
Nina Lin Nina Yuhsun Lin teaches first year Chinese, first year Chinese for bilingual students, first year intensive Chinese, and the southern-Min conversation classes at Stanford University.  She has also taught at Claremont Colleges and University of California at Davis.  She is a certified OPI tester, OPIc rater, and WPT rater for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Photo of Joshua Mann Joshua Mann is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at Stanford University. He specializes in 20th century American literature with concentrations in Naturalism, Modernism, Critical Theory, Eco-criticism, and Disaster Studies. His dissertation project "Creative Destruction" tracks how the inter-war American novel engages with issues of relief, response, and research in offering its unique understanding of disaster.
Cici Malik is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. She is currently finishing her dissertation on how the poetry of Ausiàs March problematizes the notion of fifteenth-century Iberia as part of a linear transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. During her time at Stanford, Cici has taught several Spanish and Catalan language classes as well as a survey course on medieval and early modern Iberian literature. Prior to beginning her graduate study, Cici worked as a paralegal for a nonprofit immigrant rights organization in Chicago, Illinois. She holds a BA in Biology and Spanish from Colby College.
Ali Miano Ali Miano holds a PhD in education from the University of California, Berkeley, along with a master's in Romance linguistics and a bachelor's in Spanish and linguistics from UCLA. She studies immigrants in the United States and their interactions with U.S. school systems, as well as adult literacy, bilingualism, biliteracy, and second language acquisition. A lecturer in Spanish at Stanford since 1991, Ali has coordinated the Spanish language program since 1996. In 1997 she won the Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching.
Photo of Paul Nissler Paul Nissler has taught as a lecturer at Stanford for nearly 10 years. He coordinates the German Language Program and is active in the broader German learning community, both in the S.F. Bay Area as well as in national and international conferences and events. He also publishes and presents on a broad range of academic topics within the German and Language Learning/Teaching field. He obtained his Ph.D. at Penn State University in 2006. He previously had studied at UW-Madison. He also teaches Spanish.
Photo of Khalid Obeid Khalid Obeid holds an Ed.D in Organization and Leadership from the School of Education at the University of San Francisco and a MPA from Notre Dame de Namur University. He received his B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature from Bir Zeit University in Palestine. Dr. Obeid is an ACTFL Certified OPI and WPT Tester/Rater in Arabic. Currently, Dr. Obeid service as the Arabic Language Program coordinator and African and Middle Eastern Minor advisor. He enjoys literature and loves teaching the Arabic language. In his spare time, he enjoys watching, playing and coaching soccer.
Anna Ovsepian was a Fulbright FLTA during the 2013-2014 academic year. She was teaching Russian language and culture at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. In her host institution, in addition to teaching, she also organized cultural events like Russian conversation table, Russian Club and Russian and Soviet Film Club. Anna’s main hobbies are travelling, playing tennis and watching tennis championships. Because of her interest in sports, Anna volunteered for the Olympic Games in London 2012 and Sochi 2014. She is now a teacher of English at Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University, she has been teaching there since 2012, right after she graduated her Specialist’s degree. She is currently working on her PhD in Linguistics.
Eva Prionas Eva Prionas is a Lecturer in Modern Greek Language and Culture and the Coordinator of the Special Language Program at Stanford. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University and advanced degrees in Classics (Stanford University, National University of Athens, Greece). She teaches Modern Greek language, culture and literature courses and serves as an undergraduate academic advisor. Eva Prionas is responsible for the design and evaluation of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) curriculum, student assessment, the planning and coordination of workshops, colloquia, and staff development programs, and for introducing innovative technologies to the LCTL classroom. Her research and teaching interests focus on the development, implementation, and evaluation of multimedia-based materials and their effective uses in the LCTLs. She serves as a mentor to the FLTAs and works closely with them during the academic year. She teaches a three quarter sequence course/practicum designed for the FLTAs focusing on the effective teaching and learning of the LCTLs. She is a Certified ILR/ACTFL OPI and WPT Tester.
Ken Romeo Ken Romeo is the Associate Director for the Stanford Language Center in the Office of the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning. His primary role is to facilitate the integration of technology into foreign language programs in accordance with pedagogical and methodological criteria proposed by the Language Center. He provides on-site consulting and support for Stanford's language instructors and is also a Lecturer in English for Foreign Students. He specializes in applied linguistics, second language pedagogy, and technology in language education. He has experience living in China and Japan and is fluent in Japanese. He obtained his Master’s and Doctoral degrees FLTA Orientations since 2007 in the area of Academic Culture, language pedagogy and cross cultural awareness.
Mackenzie Russell is a fifth year PhD candidate in the department of Comparative Literature. Her dissertation project, which focuses on literature of the United States and the Caribbean, argues for a sensory basis to the problem of authenticity in the American literary voice. She holds an AB in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, and currently works as a Graduate Associate in the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, where she works on a variety of projects related to graduate professional development at Stanford. In her spare time, she practices ballet and nourishes a newfound barre addiction.
Connie Rylance Connie Rylance teaches courses in discussion, oral presentation, listening, academic writing, speaking and teaching in English, and American humor, as well as a methodology course for Stanford undergraduates planning to teach English in other countries.  During the summer, she coordinates the Academic Orientation program for graduate students.  She has also taught EFL in Spain and ESL in corporate settings.  Her special interests include helping students develop interpersonal communication strategies and international TA training. She is proficient in Spanish.
Photo of Takeshi Sengiku Takeshi Sengiku joined Stanford in October 2013 as the Digital Language Lab Service Manager. He comes to us from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where he was the Director of the Language Resource Center. He has also been involved as a lead technical support and consultant for the online professional development program “JOINT” by American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ). Prior to Gettysburg College, he has worked as technical assistant as well as research assistant at Academic Center for Computing and Multimedia Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. Originally from Kyoto, Japan, Takeshi has a BA in Linguistics from the University of Oregon where he also worked as an executive assistant and a teaching assistant at indigenous language revitalization institute “Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI)” and he completed a MA in Computer-assisted Language Learning at Carnegie Mellon.
Lyris Wiedemann Lyris Wiedemann is Coordinator of the Portuguese language program at Stanford. She earned a B.A. in romance languages and an M.A. in the teaching of languages and literature in her native Brazil. She received an M.A. in linguistics and a Ph.D.in education from Stanford. Before joining the Language Center at Stanford, Dr. Wiedemann taught at UC-Berkeley for nine years. She is certified as an ACTFL OPI tester and as a translator by the American Translators Association. In 2005, she was awarded the prestigious Baker Fellowship by Middlebury College, and in 2009, the AATSP Maria Isabel Abreu prize for the best research article on the teaching of Portuguese. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, the acquisition of cognate languages, the development of cultural competence, and translation. She is one of the creators of the international series on Portuguese for Spanish speakers: Acquisition and Teaching, which had its fourth edition in 2011, and an author and editor of several scholarly articles and books.
Nihan Yilmaz was a Fulbright FLTA during the 2013-2014 academic year. She was teaching Turkish language at the University of Texas at Austin. Nihan was born and raised in Turkey. She completed both her bachelor's and Master's degree programs in the Department of English Language Teaching, Middle East Technical University. Back at home in Turkey, she's been working as a lecturer of English at Hacettepe University since 2012. After her return to home, she got accepted to the PhD program in English Language Teaching at Hacettepe University.