Dean's Fellows

TLTC offers a Dean's Fellowship to a tenured or tenure-track Liberal Arts faculty member who proposes an innovative project for the research, development, and assessment of instructional technology for foreign languages.  The TLTC Advisory Committee selects a candidate for approval by the Dean of Liberal Arts.

This page will highlight TLTC Dean's Fellows, as they are selected.

Dean's Fellow, Fall 2008: Orlando Blum

Professor Orlando Blum is the recipient of the TLTC Dean's Fellowship for Fall 2008.  The fellowship will allow Orlando to work full time on the on an ambitious and innovative project ,"Conversa Brasileira"--Brazilian Conversations.

Orlando has been one of the most prolific developers of online foreign language learning content at UT. Building on his previous technology successes (e.g., Tá Falado, etc.), Orlando hopes to create an online Portuguese learning community where students and teachers will interact via wikis and blogs.

Orlando's ideas are in keeping with the major trends in foreign language social software.  Orlando has mentioned as an example Live Mocha, a private, for-profit site that blends self-paced lessons, a learning community and online tools to facilitate interaction.

Dean's Fellow, Fall 2007: Zsuzsanna Abrams

Professor Zsuzsanna Abrams was the recipient of the TLTC Dean's Fellowship for Fall 2007.  The fellowship allowed Zsuzsi to work full time on the online German curriculum, Deutsch im Blick.

Zsuzsi received her Ph. D. from the University of Arizona in 1997 from the Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching.  After teaching German at UCLA and language pedagogy and research design at Purdue University, she joined the UT Faculty in August, 2001. 

She is an associate professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and director of the Lower Division Program in German.  She specializes in second language acquisition theories, foreign language pedagogy, the development of foreign language communicative competence, and computer-mediated communication.

Her main research interest is the use of computer-mediated communication for promoting the development of communicative competence in beginning and intermediate German language courses.  She is also interested in the development of cross-cultural awareness and the deconstruction of negative cultural stereotypes through the use of Internet-mediated communication.