Language Resource Center
Faculty and Staff
Stéphane Charitos, Director
Phone: 212-854-6341
Email: sc758@columbia.edu
Bio »
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.
Stéphane 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, Stéphane 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 oversees language instruction in less commonly taught languages and provides training and assistance to language faculty integrating media-rich applications into the second-language teaching curriculum.
Stéphane 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.
Piero di Porzio, Associate Director
Phone: 212-854-3326
Email: pdp@columbia.edu
Darcy Pleckham, Systems Administrator
Phone: 212-854-9028
Email: dfp2111@columbia.edu
Simon Zuberek, Educational Technologist
Phone: 212-854-9227
Email: sez2117@columbia.edu
Bio »
I have always been interested in language. From undergraduate seminars in German and Latin to graduate work in applied and computational linguistics – that interest has slowly evolved into passion. My graduate degree in German and language acquisition has led me into the field of linguistics, where I concentrated on computer-assisted language learning. My recent work focuses on the applications of speech technologies in the training of supra prosodic speech features in non-native speakers. In addition to computer-assisted language learning, I am also interested in natural language processing, machine learning, computational phonology and phonetics, language acquisition, and historical linguistics. In my career I have taught university-level English (ESL), Polish, and German at colleges and universities in and around Chicago. As an educational technologist at Columbia, I work with foreign languages faculty on fostering language learning through thoughtful and creative application of technology in language classroom. If you would like to learn more about me, please visit my website at zuberek.net.
Christopher Kaiser, Shared Course Initiative Program Manager
Phone: 212-854-6132
Email: ck2831@columbia.edu
Bio »
Christopher Kaiser is the Program Manager of the Shared Course Initiative, which connects less commonly taught language classrooms at Columbia, Cornell, and Yale using high-definition videoconferencing. His areas of interest include second language pedagogy, distance learning, presence in the distance environment, inter-institutional collaboration, and language-learning advocacy. He received his B.A. in Italian and Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, his M.A. in Italian Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, and his Ph.D. in Italian Literature from Yale University.
Rashan Thompson, Administrative Assistant
Phone: 212-854-9224
Email: rt2655@columbia.edu
Dwijen Bhattacharjya, Instructor of Bengali
Phone: 212-854-9224
Email: db174@columbia.edu
Mona Momescu, Instructor of Romanian
Phone: 212-854-9224
Email: mmm2120@columbia.edu
Sandeep Singh, Instructor of Punjabi
Phone: 212-854-9224
Email: ss2343@columbia.edu