Staff

Program Director

Stephane Charitos, Director of the Language Resource Center.

After studying Statistics and Econometrics at the U. of Athens, Greece, Stéphane Charitos earned a B.Sc. in Data Processing and Quantitative Analysis from the U. of Arkansas. He took his M.A in French and Philosophy from the same university in 1983 before completing a Ph.D. in French and Spanish from the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992.
He taught French and Modern Greek at a number of universities including UNC-Wilmington, NC Trinity College, CT and Hollins College, VA before becoming Assistant Professor of French at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia in 1991. At ODU, he taught throughout the French language, literature, and culture curriculum as well as helping design, implement and deliver distance-learning courses in conjunction with the school's Darden Department of Education.
In 1996, he moved to the U. of Memphis, TN and was hired a year later by Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL to design and direct the university's Foreign Language Media Center. In 1998, Columbia University hired him to design and direct the Language Resource Center, a Mellon funded initiative which serves as the university digital language lab, the administrative center which oversees language instruction in the less commonly taught language and provides training and assistance to language faculty integrating media-rich applications into the second-language teaching curriculum.
He has given papers and published in areas as diverse as 16th and 20th-century French and Francophone literature, Cultural and Film Studies, Modern Greek Studies, Critical Theory as well as on issues related to technology and language instruction.

Lead Instructor

Mr. Bill Koulopoulos, Educational Technologist

Bill came to the Language Resource Center and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) to fill a joint position between the two groups in June 2005. His goals are to help faculty integrate technology in the curriculum, create pedagogically sound applications of technology in the classroom, and develop a strong relationship between the LRC and CCNMTL. Bill has taught English as a Second Language for thirteen years, including six years at Columbia, and has participated in curriculum design projects in Canada and the US. He has an M.A. in Instructional Design and Media from Teachers College.

Program Coordinator / Instructor

Ms. Maria del Pilar Valencia, Ph.D. candidate (Spanish).

Pilar has been the coordinator of the Language Maintenance Tutorials at the Language Resource Center since 2004, and the coordinator of the FLTA Orientation Workshop at Columbia since 2007. She received her B.A. in Spanish Literature from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and has worked in arts management both in Bogotá and in New York. She holds an M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia University. Pilar has taught Spanish at Columbia University since 2001, and she is currently teaching Literature - Humanities , a course of Columbia's Core Curriculum. She is currently working on a dissertation titled "Galician-Portuguese Poetry: Love and Homeland in the Courtly Lyric."

Additional Instructors

Dr. Teresa Ko, Ph.D. (Spanish).

Teresa Ko’s interests are in the areas of Afro-Argentines in 19th-century Argentina, theater of the "grotesco criollo", race in contemporary Argentine fiction, and institutionalized "cultural pluralism" in contemporary Argentina. Teresa’s dissertation, entitled "Invisibilizing and Visibilizing Identities in 19th- and 20th-century Argentina" will examine the act of rendering invisible racial differences in 19th- and early 20th-century Argentina to consolidate a homogenous national identity, and will question recent cultural and institutional efforts to reverse this act.

Dr. John Mtembezi Inniss, Ph.D. (African Studies).

John Mtembezi Inniss has taught on the university level since 1973 and is currently teaching at Columbia University in New York. He has a B.A. in General Linguistics and a Ph.D. in African Studies. His interests, aside from teaching, are creative writing in Kiswahili, producing documentary/educational videos in Kiswahili. Aside from teaching, he is also interested in sociolinguistics, translating, and lexicography.

Annie Falk, Ph.D. Candidate

Annie Falk is a doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. She received an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College and an M.A. and M.Phil from Columbia University. She has taught Beginning and Intermediate German language courses at Columbia since 2005. 

Presenters

Fay Ju
Columbia University Office of Global Programs
Fay Ju is the Associate Director in the Office of Global Programs at
Columbia University. She taught English in Taiwan and also participated
in the Fulbright International Administrators Program to Germany. She
received her M.A. in International Educational Development from Teachers
College, Columbia University.

Bathabile K. S. MThombeni
Columbia University Ombuds Office

Marsha Wagner
Columbia University Ombuds Office

Workstudy - Receptionists

Wendie Saxton

Wendie has been working for the Language Resource Center at Columbia University since 1987 as Administrative Assistant. She is the point person for many of the faculty and students at the Center because she schedules the lab and classrooms, coordinates the working shifts of the LRC student assistants, and keeps track of their hours for payroll. When time permits, she enjoys using the learning tools at the LRC.

Silvia Puma

Silvia is a senior at Columbia College concentrating in Hispanic Studies and planning to apply to medical school. Even though she speaks Spanish fluently she has taken some Spanish classes to improve her writing and reading skills. In the future, she hopes to continue working on her Spanish as well as learning other languages.

Bruno Guaraná

Bruno holds a B.A. degree in Film Studies and Production, and has written, produced, and directed three short student films while in Hofstra University. He is currently working towards his master's degree at Columbia, which focuses on contemporary Brazilian films and the cinematic representation of children. A former Fulbright scholarship recipient, Bruno is thrilled to be part of the FLTA Orientation program.

Suraiya Afroz

Suraiya is a senior in Columbia College studying pre-medicine with a concentration in Anthropology. She speaks several languages including Bengali, Hindi and Urdu. Her concentration in Anthropology has broadened her interest in learning more about other languages and cultures.