How do you best teach foreign languages and literatures to University students?
Fordham’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) will host two special events on March 25 and 26designed to help faculty members answer that question.
The agenda includes a Friday, March 25 lecture, “Researching the (Disconnection): Developing Advanced Language Proficiency in the Foreign Language Literature Class,” by Richard Donato, Ph.D., associate professor of linguistics and chairman of the Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education. The lecture will be held at 3 p.m. in Campbell Commons, on the ground floor Campbell Hall.
On Saturday, March 26, Donato will offer a hands-on workshop for faculty members on “making language, literature and culture connections.” It will take place at 10 a.m. in the O’Hare Special Collections Room in the William D. Walsh Family Library.
Donato is the recipient of several awards in foreign language research and teaching.
“This is the first of what we intend to be a yearly series of foreign language pedagogy workshops,” said Erick Kelemen, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of English and assistant director of Fordham’s CTE. “Moreover, we hope the event provides a model for other faculty units to develop programming with the CTE as well, on those topics that they want and need.”
Kelemen added that these workshops very possibly include some “crossover appeal for professors in English and in classics, and to people in the Graduate School of Education.” The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (MLL).
The CTE was launched at Fordham in 2008 as a comprehensive resource center for the University’s faculty, aimed at helping faculty foster ideas, find support and share or receive guidance and mentoring. Kelemen said that plans are underway to sponsor a workshop with the Gabelli School of Business, and that new initiatives to tailor more department-specific faculty workshops are welcome.
“We’d like to get the word out that the CTE is here to provide support, connections and to lay groundwork for faculty to run their own pedagogy development programs,” he said.
For more information, contact the CTE via email (CTE@fordham.edu) or on the web or email Susan Dudash, Ph.D.
