Celebrating Excellence: Teaching

Teaching	Research	Service

All teaching evaluations are collected and analyzed by the Language Center before being forwarded to the Registrar's office for university evaluation. This procedure enables an internal evaluation of all language teaching at Stanford, not generically, but against the backdrop of language teaching. On the first day of each quarter, language department chairs receive an aggregated report on the language teaching in their departments, course by course. This report includes the quantitative data generated, an assessment of students' qualitative comments, and recommendations from the Language Center Director for programmatic directions and instructional improvement.

All of the data are also consolidated across departments in order to analyze the general performance of language instruction at Stanford. Data are reported against the backdrop of previous quarters so that the Language Center can trace strengths and weaknesses over time.

Stanford asks students to report on 17 different questions grouped into five categories. In all cases, Stanford language teaching gets high marks from students. Here are the distributions of student responses to 17 questions about teaching for Academic Years (AY) 1995 to 1999; 1999 to 2004; and year 2005-2009.

A number of Language Center lecturers have received prestigious university teaching awards. Ali Miano, coordinator of Spanish, received the Gores Award in 1997. The Gores is the university’s highest teaching award. Ramzi Salti has received a Knight Fellow award for his teaching of Arabic. Rima Greenhill (1995), Hisayo Lipton (1998), Hong Zeng (2002), Momoyo Lowdermilk (2003), and Ramzi Salti (2004 and 2005) have all received the Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

The following instructors are ACTFL-OPI certified testers:

• Spanish: Ali Miano, Vivian Brates, Maria Cristina Urruela, Hae-Joon Won, Irene Corso, Veronika Reinhold, Kara Sánchez, Citlalli del Carpio, Carimer Ortiz Cuevas, Ana Vivancos
• Portuguese: Agripino Silveira, Lyris Wiedemann
• French: Maria Comsa, Heather Howard, Marie Lasnier, Vera Shapirshteyn
• Italian: Marta Baldocchi, Anna Cellinese, Alessandra McCarty, Giovanni Tempesta
• German: Paul Nissler, Veronika Reinhold
• Hebrew: Vered Shemtov
• English for Foreign Students: Kristopher Geda, Phil Hubbard, Carole Mawson
• Korean: Hee-Sun Kim
• Japanese: Momoyo Kubo Lowdermilk, Emi Mukai, Michelle Rogoyski, Yoshiko Tomiyama, Emiko Yasumoto Magnani
• Chinese: Marina Chung, Michelle DiBello, Nina Lin, Le Tang, Huazhi Wang, Youping Zhang, Hong Zeng, Xiaofang Zhou,
• Russian: Rima Greenhill, Eugenia Khassina
• Arabic: Salem Aweiss (DLI), Khalil Barhoum, Thoraya Boumehdi, Khalid Obeid, Ramzi Salti
• ILR-Greek: Eva Prionas
• ILR-Cantonese: Sik Lee Dennig
• Swahili: Samuel Mukoma
• Hindi: Brajesh Samarth
• Turkish: Ebru Ergul

In addition, other lecturers are currently pursuing certification in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Persian, and Portuguese.

Our ACTFL-certified raters in Writing Proficiency are:

• Spanish: Ali Miano, Kara Sánchez, Maria Cristina Urruela, Vivian Brates, Citlalli del Carpio, Veronika Reinhold, Hae-Joon Won
• Portuguese: Agripino Silveira, Lyris Wiedemann
• French: Heather Howard, Vera Shapirshteyn
• German: Paul Nissler, Veronika Reinhold
• English for Foreign Students: Phil Hubbard
• Italian: Marta Baldocchi, Anna Cellinese
• Korean: Hee-Sun Kim
• Japanese: Yoshiko Tomiyama, Emiko Yasumoto Magnani, Emi Mukai
• Chinese: Nina Lin, Sik Lee Dennig, Hong Zeng, Youping Zhang, Huazhi Wang, Michelle DiBello
• Arabic: Khalid Obeid, Thoraya Boumehdi, Ramzi Salti
• ILR-Greek: Eva Prionas

A number of the current OPI testers are pursuing additional certification as Writing Proficiency raters in their respective language.

The following instructors are certified OPI Tester Trainers:

• Spanish: Ali Miano
• Korean: Hee-Sun Kim

 

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