Profiles

Faculty profile:  Susan Coakley

Susan Coakley

Susan Coakley sees life as a series of patterns. She is always interested in finding those patterns, whether in trees and flowers, in student errors or in cultures.

In her professional life, however, Susan eschews repetition. She enjoys her teaching position at ELI because of the variety of responsibilities it affords her. Susan has taught at all levels in the regular intensive program, specializing in English for academic purposes. She has also coordinated special programs, conducted teacher training workshops, and acts as university supervisor for student ESL teachers in Delaware public schools.

Susan is also a master of networking, both as a resource for herself, but more importantly as a means of providing opportunities for others. She frequently collaborates with colleagues on presentations at professional conferences. She has served in leadership roles in professional organizations, both as co-chair of the international TESOL’s Intercultural Communication interest section and as president of the regional PennTESOL-East.

Before becoming a teacher, however, the Smith College graduate says she feels lucky to have spent 15 years as a stay-at-home mom for her three children. She returned to school to get a master’s in education in teaching English as a second language at Notre Dame College and worked in the Milford School District in Milford, New Hampshire, before joining the ELI faculty in 2000.

Very much a family woman, last year she and her entire family traveled to southern Africa to visit her daughter Beth, who was working in the Peace Corps in Lesotho. Susan has a real fondness for the outdoors. With her husband Jim, vice president of finance and operations at Wilmington University, she recently went to Hawaii to enjoy canoeing and kayaking. When not teaching or traveling, Susan can be found exercising in the UD fitness center, bird watching or reading novels. An advocate of healthy living, she is mindful of her diet and exercise.

Susan says she finds satisfaction in helping students who are focused on continuing their education achieve their goals. Furthermore, she especially likes the ELI faculty.

“I have an excellent set of colleagues to work with,” she says. • JL

 

Staff profile:  Baerbel Schuhmacher

In a well-known fairy tale, a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster outwit some robbers, take over an abandoned house and transform themselves from hapless victims to happy homeowners. “The Musicians of Bremen” by the Brothers Grimm is one of Baerbel Schumacher’s favorite stories. And not just because it takes place in her hometown.

Baerbel Schumacher

“It’s a story of empowerment, of taking the initiative and running with it,” said Schumacher, ELI’s program manager for special projects. The theme reflects Baerbel’s own work style and how she seeks to impact participants in programs she manages.

Baerbel likes to joke about how she first came to the University of Delaware.

“It was because of pauses,” she says.

More precisely, because of a linguistics conference on pausology, held in 1980 at Kassel University in Germany, and co-sponsored by the late Robert DiPietro and Baerbel’s linguistics professor at Kassel University. Baerbel was one of two students in a new exchange program between Kassel and the University of Delaware. After completing a language teaching methodology course here, she returned to Germany to complete her master’s degree in teaching English as a foreign language.

But it wasn’t too long before she returned to the United States as a Fulbright scholar and then as an adjunct instructor at ELI, where she helped inaugurate the first study tour with former ELI instructor Molly Gould in 1989. The pair crossed the United States that summer in a chartered Green Tortoise bus. The classroom-on-wheels experience was a good fit for Baerbel, who loves the outdoors and is an avid rower, tennis player and biker.

After a three-year stint in Bulgaria, where she headed up the business English and teacher-training program under a USAID project, Baerbel returned to Delaware, joining the Office of International Studies as a full-time proposal writer and training program implementer. In 2003, when she was working with the continuing education department, she landed a huge project training teachers in the Middle East in collaboration with ELI director Scott Stevens. That project is currently in its fourth year. In 2006, Baerbel transferred to ELI, where she works on developing new training programs and continues to coordinate the Partnership for Teaching program, which currently brings English teachers from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Syria to ELI for summer training. Participants return to their countries and subsequently put on a conference to train other teachers.

“That’s what really makes it worthwhile for me,” she says, “seeing a transformation in people from being teachers to actively becoming leaders. It’s like when a kitten looks in the mirror and sees a lion.

“That’s what I like most in this profession. I like being the coach that pushes people in that direction.” • BM

 

Tutor profile:  Ken Hyde

Ken Hyde

“Be cheerful” is part of a quotation from Max Ehrmann that soft-spoken, popular tutor and teacher Ken Hyde uses to encourage his students. It’s also a motto he follows in his own life.

Although Ken was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, he lived in several states and Germany with his family while growing up and has moved more than 20 times.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in French and comparative literature from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where his family finally settled, Ken taught French for one year before coming to Newark as a graduate student in the linguistics department in 1994. In the summer of 1995 he began tutoring at ELI, which he enjoyed so much he continued year round.

Ken’s research is on theories of teaching grammar. In fact, Ken was one of three ELI teachers and tutors who responded to questions on ELI’s online grammar hotline for several years. While still doing his Ph.D. work, he continues to teach several courses in the linguistics department in addition to tutoring and teaching at ELI, generally at the intermediate level.

Since 1998, Ken has also worked with the international teaching assistants in ELI’s summer program, first as a tutor, then as a culture and pedagogy teacher. He became assistant coordinator of the ITA program in the summer of 2007. Now Ken is coordinator of the Tutoring Center, where he must schedule tutoring hours at the end and beginning of each session. He attacks this task, as well as the inevitable changes throughout each session, as an interesting puzzle to be solved.

“I enjoy helping people,” says Ken about his job. “Showing students of all ages that they can reach their goals is my biggest challenge.”

An active hobbyist, Ken enjoys cooking and the traditional American crafts of quilting and tatting.

“Be cheerful -- and very, very busy” could be Ken’s motto these days.  • WB