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Ryan is currently an assistant professor of English Language Acquisition at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He studied at the University of Wyoming, The University of Iowa, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma  in Heredia, Costa Rica and holds an M.A. in Foreign Language Education, a B.A. in Spanish, and a B.A. in Secondary Education/Spanish. 

 

He has experience teaching world languages at the K-12, community college, university, and federal government levels. Before Kirkwood, he taught Spanish at Laramie High School, supervised student teachers at The University of Iowa, and trained military English instructors at the Defense Language Institute's Instructor Development Branch.

 

He has resided in England and Nicaragua, and explored many parts of Europe, Central and South America, Australia, the Middle East, South-Central Asia, and Africa.

 

His professional interests involve teacher mentoring, building cross-cultural understanding, working with refugee populations, L2 curriculum design, L2 methodologies, language for specific purposes, distance learning, and oral proficiency assessment.

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Ryan developed this website by way of Kirkwood Community College's Endowed Faculty Chair Award program.

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More about Ryan

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Recent Awards:

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• John and Suanne Roueche Excellence Award, The League for Innovation in the Community College

• Endowed Faculty Chair Award, Kirkwood Community College

• Global Service Award, Kirkwood Community College

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Recent Presentations:

• Unifying program instruction with SPOT-On professional development resources. TESOL. Chicago, IL.

• Turning your students into global citizens in only 55 minutes. Mid-TESOL. Kansas City, MO.

• Using SoundCloud to assess students in F2F or online classes. The League for Innovation in the Community College. Boston, MA.

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Recent Accomplishments:

• Designed a competency-based model of language learning

• Developed an in-house oral proficiency placement test, rater training curriculum, and calibration protocol based on ACTFL's Oral Proficiency Interview© (OPI)

• Developed and implemented a robust series of professional development videos called SPOT-On (Supporting Proficiency through Outstanding Teaching - Online) for new and veteran instructors

• Designed, trained instructors for, and delivered an online language curriculum for students in Lavras, Brazil

• Implemented campus-wide a cultural exchange initiative called K-ACE (Kirkwood Academic Cultural Exchanges) that bridges cross-cultural understanding between immigrant students and domestic students

• Rated as Advanced-Mid in Spanish on ACTFL's OPI©