New Leadership at CIUS's Ukrainian Language Education Centre
29 August 2013
29 August 2013-The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) is pleased to announce the appointment of a new acting director for the Ukrainian Language Education Centre (ULEC) at the University of Alberta (U of A). Dr. Alla Nedashkivska is taking on the leadership of ULEC, on a part-time basis, and will be supported by Dr. Olenka Bilash as senior advisor to ULEC for the 2013‒14 academic year.
ULEC was founded in 1987 to develop Ukrainian language education resources, promote the professional development of Ukrainian language educators, and administer the collection of Ukrainian language educational materials at CIUS. For more than two decades ULEC was successfully led by Marusia Petryshyn, providing invaluable support for educators.
With the appointment of a new acting director, CIUS would also like to announce that ULEC's activities will align with the University's mandate in the areas of teaching, research and service. ULEC will continue to support its core mission of advancing pedagogy for Ukrainian language learning through learning resource promotion, professional development, community liaison, collaboration with educational partners and research in second language acquisition and bilingualism. In addition, ULEC's support for Ukrainian-language education will be extended to the post-secondary level.
Dr. Nedashkivska is a linguist of Ukrainian and Slavic philology. She is an Associate Professor of Slavic Applied Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies (MLCS) at the U of A. Dr. Nedashkivska publishes in the areas of Slavic linguistics, discourse analysis, political and media language, children's media, as well as language pedagogy. She is also the author of Ukrainian Through Its Living Culture, an advanced Ukrainian language textbook published by the U of A Press in 2010, and which won the 2012 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages book prize for Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy.
At the U of A, Professor Nedashkivska teaches various Ukrainian-language courses, such as Ukrainian Media and Internet, Ukrainian on TV and in Film, as well as Business Ukrainian, a subject in which she is currently finalizing an electronic textbook. She also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in applied linguistics.
For over a decade now, Dr. Nedashkivska has led the MLCS department's study abroad language initiative in Lviv, Ukraine. Aptly named Ukrainian Through Its Living Culture, the course is one of the many components of the U of A's forward-thinking process of internationalizing its teaching and learning process. The program is very popular among students, who experience rich personal and academic growth through such study abroad opportunities. Dr. Nedashkivska is also the recipient of the 2008 Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Faculty of Arts at the U of A for her excellence in undergraduate teaching and dedication to language instruction.
Since 2011, Dr. Nedashkivska has been serving as the chair of the Curriculum Committee in MLCS, which led several projects in the department on curriculum development, studying student demographics, as well as analyzing internal and external mechanisms that affect the department's activities with respect to curriculum planning. From 2008 until 2010, Dr. Nedashkivska chaired the Language Coordinator's Committee in MLCS, which is closely engaged in teacher training activities for foreign language instructors. For several years since 2001, Dr. Nedashkivska has been active as a consultant to Alberta Education and the Institute for the Innovation in Second Language Education on projects related to the Ukrainian Language Arts and Culture Curricula Development, and Ukrainian Language Assessment Procedures.
Dr. Olenka Bilash is a specialist in second language methodology and pedagogy, qualitative research methodology and teacher education. She is professor of second language education at the U of A and has served as teacher, consultant, supervisor, curriculum developer, and methodologist for second language projects on five continents. She is also the North American representative to Linguapax, a UNESCO affiliated organization designed to promote plurilingualism as an approach to intercultural understanding and world peace.
During her three year tenure as associate dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the U of A, she helped to develop and implement strategies for internationalizing the campus. As coordinator of second languages and international education, director of the Visiting Student Certificate Program, the Hokkaido Teachers of English Project, the Kangwon Teacher Education Program and the Gyeongin Student Teachers of English Program, a cross cultural facilitator in Mexico and a member of CIDA projects in South Africa, she has contributed to the Faculty of Education's reputation as a leader in international programs at the U of A.
Before receiving the prestigious 3M national teaching fellowship in 2010, she was awarded the U of A's coveted Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Faculty of Education Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Northern Alberta Heritage Language Association 20th Anniversary Award, and the Joshua Fishman Award for contribution to minority languages. She is also the conceptual designer and chief instructor of the award winning SL professional development program in Hokkaido, Japan.
In 2004 she published the results of a five-year research project on Cree language revival, curriculum development and community involvement. Working with a team of instructors of first nations languages, she has also authored handbooks for Alberta Education, was the conceptual designer for an award winning Blackfoot aboriginal language resource and received the Tribal Chiefs' Association Award for her contribution to Developing Cree Language Materials.
Dr. Bilash completed a Canada Ukraine Foundation-sponsored research project on characteristics of high school students in Ukrainian Language Arts in 2005, taught a qualitative research methodology course at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, in 2008, and has published several articles related to Ukrainian Bilingual education, including "Planning for Writing Instruction in a Middle-Years Immersion/Partial Immersion Setting" for which she received an international research award.
Dr. Bilash is author of the NOVA series, a Ukrainian Language Development program for children in grades 1‒6 of the Ukrainian Bilingual Program, has inserviced teachers of Ukrainian in Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States and has mentored thousands of Alberta teachers through undergraduate and graduate courses and professional development seminars.
Dr. Bilash looks forward to assisting ULEC and considers it a homecoming since from 1977‒79 she served as the first bilingual coordinator and director of the Ukrainian Language Resource Centre at CIUS under the directorship of Dr. Manoly Lupul. During this time she laid the foundation for what would eventually become ULEC and its unique collection of text and media resources.
Steeped in system's thinking and ecological perspectives, she also acted as liaison between school jurisdictions, government, parents and community groups, providing groundwork for what would two decades later become the Ukrainian Language Education Consortium. In these formative years of CIUS she initiated a number of resource development projects which eventually led to NOVA.
CIUS is also pleased to announce that Dr. Mykola Soroka, CIUS development coordinator, has agreed to allocate half of his work time to ULEC to support its fundraising, educational, and research activities. Dr. Soroka received his PhD in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the U of A (2005). In Ukraine, he was chair of the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation at the Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Dr. Soroka has taught Ukrainian literature at the Shevchenko University as well as courses in Ukrainian language and Slavic literature at the U of A and the University of Toronto. He is the author of numerous publications in Ukrainian literature, language, and culture, Ukrainian contacts abroad, and issues of diaspora and displacement, including two monographs: Visual Poetry in Ukrainian Literature in the End of the 16-18 Centuries (Kyiv, 1997) and Faces of Displacement: The Writings of Volodymyr Vynnychenko (McGill UP, 2012).
Dr. Soroka has also served as editor of the latest volumes (5 and 6) of Zakhidniokanadskyi zbirnyk, which contained articles on Ukrainian life in Western Canada. As a development coordinator at CIUS since 2008, he coordinates fundraising efforts of the Institute, and contributes to its communications and community outreach.
Ms. Halyna Klid, who has been a publishing, financial and administrative assistant assigned to ULEC since 2006, will devote half of her time to ULEC-related work. Ms. Klid, who has worked on the design and layout of ULEC publications, is a specialist in graphic communications, computer design and layout. She also has experience in radio and print media journalism and communications, has written and translated in both the Ukrainian and English languages, and has edited a Ukrainian-language publication called Visnyk in the early 1990s, which was aimed at CIUS donors. Ms. Klid has authored many feature stories and commentaries for CBC-Radio Canada International, and has written press articles and conducted interviews, which were later published. Recently, she also assumed the role of CIUS and ULEC social media content manager and creator, and is responsible today for the ULEC and CIUS Facebook pages. Ms. Klid hopes in this way to promote news on research and other activities at CIUS.
Having her time equally split between work for ULEC and CIUS, Ms. Klid will continue working on design and layout projects for ULEC publications, on promotion and distribution of ULEC resources, assisting in ULEC marketing, as well as internal and external awareness campaigns across a variety of communications channels.
Under the leadership of Dr. Nedashkivska and Dr. Bilash, with the support of Dr. Soroka and Ms. Klid, the work of the Ukrainian Language Education Centre will continue to fulfill its mandate of supporting Ukrainian language education, focusing on the development of language resources at the primary, secondary and post-secondary school levels. CIUS is very pleased to announce this new chapter in ULEC's activities.