Potter College News

The Department of Modern Languages in the Potter College of Arts and Letters (PCAL) at WKU was awarded a $200,000 Teacher Training Workshop grant from the Institute of International Education (IIE).

The grant will allow the department to host a five-day residential program workshop on May 31 to June 4, 2023, that focuses on the best practices to teach Chinese literacy. The workshop will be sponsored by the National Security Education Program (NSEP). Dr. Ke Peng, Associate Professor and Director of the Chinese Flagship Program at WKU, spearheaded this initiative.

“With this grant, we hope to educate teachers of Chinese the importance of being sensitive to the needs of first-time Chinese learners,” says Dr. Peng.

During the workshop, participants will brainstorm lesson plans that integrate research-based literacy instruction and receive mentorship from leading Chinese language professionals including Dr. Jianhua Bai from Kenyon College, Dr. Liwei Gao from the Defense Language Institute (DLI), Dr. Claudia Ross from College of the Holy Cross, and Dr. Meng Yeh from Rice University.

Currently, teachers from the University of Mississippi, University of North Georgia, and Indiana University are sending their teachers and professors of Chinese to the workshop.

“Our Chinese program at WKU is in a great position to host this workshop,” says Dr. Alexander Poole, Department Chair for Modern Languages. “Since many of our students are first-time speakers of Chinese, we have discovered that they need a strong support system throughout the process of learning a new language.”

In addition to teaching the importance of Chinese literacy-based instruction, Dr. Peng hopes that this workshop will allow participants to experience and appreciate both the Bowling Green area and Kentucky as a whole.

To be eligible for this workshop, participants must be teaching Chinese as a foreign language for either a flagship community, ROTC Project GO program, Language Teaching Center (LTC) program, or Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) program.

The workshop will cover room and board, dinner, and the program fee. If the participant is a U.S. citizen, they will receive a $500 stipend to incorporate what they have learned from this workshop to their teaching.

The deadline to sign up is December 15^th. Click here to view the flyer. If you have questions, please contact Dr. Ke Peng at ke.peng@wku.edu for more information.