Florida StarTalk for Teachers of Chinese

Faculty and Staff

Program Director

Dr. Chennault (Ph.D., Stanford University), is an Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, and past director of UF’s Asian Studies Program. She began conducting outreach as a graduate student working for the Bay Area China Education Project and has regularly organized public lectures and cultural events. In March 2007, she was co-chair and organizer of the "Florida Statewide Chinese Competition" for high-school students. The three-day competition featured testing in all four skills, with materials keyed to the beginning through third-year levels of grades 9-12 instruction. Some 120 students from fifteen schools across the state of Florida participated in the event.

Her research specialty is Chinese poetry and society during the period between the Han and Tang dynasties. She has written dozens of articles, book chapters, reference-book entries, and translations concerning the culture of this period, and edits the multidisciplinary journal Early Medieval China. Current courses at the University of Florida include “Classical Chinese 1, 2” and a variety of classes about pre-modern Chinese literature.

Assessment Specialist and Instructional Lead

Dr. Danling Fu (Ph.D, Reading and Writing Instruction, University of New Hampshire) is a Professor of Education who specializes in writing and language instruction. Her graduate and undergraduate classes include composition theory, writing/reading in content areas, and literacy/language/culture, as well as teaching methods in these areas.

She provides in-service and consultancy to public schools nationally, with a focus on literacy instruction for new immigrant children. She serves on the advisory committee of the NYC Teacher Institute, and for the past decade has been engaged in developing a literacy program for the New York City school districts (a project involving reform, implementation, and assessment to meet needs of students with little home support). She has worked extensively with teachers who seek effective ways to improve outcomes of low-achieving students. She has published 3 books and over 60 chapters, articles, and reviews. In 2008, to recognize her extensive research and successful results in improving literacy education for children in poverty, DePaul University in Chicago awarded Dr. Fu an honorary doctoral degree in Humane Letters.

As Instructional Lead, Dr. Fu will coordinate the program contents, and oversee the assessments of the program and the participants’ learning outcomes.

Instructor of “Foreign Language Teaching Methods”

Dr. Jodi Eisterhold (Ph.D., University of Florida) is a visiting scholar at UF’s School of Teaching and Learning. Prior to completing the doctorate in linguistics, she earned the M.S. in TESOL from Florida International University. During 2001-2007, she was an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and ESL at Georgia State University.

She has taught ESOL curriculum and methods at the university level, as well as second-language acquisition. She has also worked as an ESOL trainer of public school teachers throughout school districts in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Her publications include a co-authored book on topics in language and culture; articles about discourse and markers of saliency, humor, and irony in narrative speech; and two book chapters. She has presented over two dozen talks at linguistics and educational conferences. Among many honors and grants, she was a member of the “Project DELTA” team awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2008.

Instructor of “Chinese Pedagogy”

Ms. Elinore Fresh (M.A., Univ. of Hawaii, Chinese LL), will teach "Chinese Pedagogy” together with Ms. Han Xu (see next section). A Senior Lecturer with nearly 20 years of experience teaching Chinese at all levels, she has been responsible for training and supervising novice TAs in the University of Florida’s B.A. program in Chinese.

Her teaching is noted for the use of media resources, and she was a Co-PI for a recent Department of Defense contract to produce "A Model Immersive Cultural Learning Environment for China," a project integrating 2D webpage content with the 3D virtual environment of Second Life. One of her roles in the Startalk program will be to demonstrate and teach the use of programs and technologies in the Chinese-language classroom.

Ms. Fresh was a founding board member of the Florida Chinese Language Teachers Association (FCLTA), and has worked with schools in Gainesville and Jacksonville for the purpose of integrating Chinese language and culture into the curriculum. In 2004, with funding from the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, she led a group of middle and high school teachers from Florida on a 3-week study tour of China and Japan.

Co-Instructor of “Chinese Pedagogy”

Ms. Han Xu is the co-instructor of “Chinese Pedagogy.” A Lecturer in Chinese, she graduated from Beijing Language and Culture University with a major in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language and TESOL. She earned a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University (2007), and taught at Beloit College and the University of Notre Dame before her hire to UF in fall 2008. She also has taught various levels of Chinese to international students at Tsinghua University and at World-Link, Beijing.

Ms. Xu is experienced in uses of the language lab and technology in the classroom, and is currently developing a combined online and video-conference course in “Beginning Chinese” for UF's Division of Continuing Education. Since Ms. Xu's arrival at UF last semester, she has updated the Chinese placement test (speaking, listening, reading, writing) that is given to incoming freshmen and returning study-abroad students. She is now responsible for administering the test, and for organizing the extra-curricular "Chinese Conversation Hour" program. She is the supervisor for the Intermediate Chinese classes.

Support Staff of the Asian Studies Program

Ms. Pat Bartlett earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University. Before her employment at the University of Florida six years ago, she directed the Fort Myers Historical Museum, and the Matheson Historical Center in Gainesville. She was previously an editor at Great Outdoors Publishing Company and has authored or co-authored dozens of books on Florida history, reptiles, and amphibians. Ms. Bartlett is the Coordinator for Outreach and Education at UF’s Asian Studies Program.

Ms. Bodo Randrianasolo earned a M.A. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She is Program Assistant for the Asian Studies Program as well as the France-Florida Research Institute. She has 15 years of experience at UF in administration and grant management.
 

Email this