Language partner coordinator leaves legacy

Most people want to get ahead. Some also want to leave something behind. That’s how Katie Feeley feels about ELI’s Language Partner Program.

Sitting at a computer in a first-floor office, Katie points proudly to the names on screen of more than 100 ELI students she matched with language partners -- UD students who agree to meet with ELI students once a week for conversation. She was a senior majoring in international relations and Latin American studies when she began coordinating the program in February 2007. In May, Katie was looking forward to graduation and also busy documenting procedures and contacts for her successor.

“I am passionate about this,” she said. “It’s a legacy I want to leave for the next person in my situation, someone like me looking for a niche on campus in international relations.”

Language partner coordinator Katie Feely (right) at a "Meet-and-Greet" event

Katie stumbled upon ELI when she was a junior. A friend she’d met during a semester abroad program in Mexico told her about the Language Partner Program and, when she returned to campus, she signed up.

“I wish I had known about ELI as a freshman,” she said.

Prior to joining the university, Katie had loads of international contacts. Her mother is from Ecuador and her grandparents were Germans who immigrated to that country during the Holocaust. But growing up in southern New Jersey, Katie was not brought up speaking Spanish.

“My father is a New Yorker and Irish. We were all-American,” she said, smiling. But following her first trip to Ecuador at the age of six, Katie decided to learn Spanish.

“My own pride made me want to study it,” she said. In high school she participated in exchange programs to Mexico and Argentina. As a sophomore at UD, Katie spent the summer assisting geography professor April Veness on a project in Guatemala. There she learned about building partnerships with NGOs [non-governmental organizations], an area she hopes to pursue in graduate school.

As language partner coordinator, Katie looked for new ways to both recruit students and support them as language partners. Each week she emailed American language partners, attaching the Orientation Express newsletter and pointing out opportunities for them to meet their partners.

“I’d say, ‘Maybe you could come to the party at Pat’s Pizzeria’ or ‘Look on page two of the newsletter. Maybe you could participate in such and such an event,’” she explained.

She talked up the program with all of her professors as well and passed out flyers in every class she had. On Facebook, she created a language partner page where students can put their pictures and profiles and linked it to the ELI home page. And she helped get the program listed as a volunteer opportunity on the university’s Career Services site.

“The Language Partner Program is fantastic,” she said. “I hope it continues to allow ELI and UD students––who need each other––to meet each other.”

For more information on the Language Partner Program, visit www.udel.edu/eli/programs_partners.html   • BM