Curriculum Vitae

 

 

Georgia Smyrniou, Ph.D

 

P.O. Box 5059, Mayaguez, PR 00681

E-mail: smyrniou@aol.com, smyrniou@uprm.edu

Phone:  787 834-5069 (H) 787 504-3810 (C)

 

 

1993

Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA

Research Focus: International Teaching Assistants

 

1984

MA in Linguistics

University of Reading, Oxford Shire, England

Research Focus: Language Structure and Sociolinguistics

 

1982

BA in Archaeology, Minor in Historical Linguistics

University of Athens, Greece

Research Focus: The Semantics and Morphology of the Gender in Indo-European Languages

 

 

Academic/Teaching Experience

 

1994 - present

Associate and Assistant Professor in Linguistics/ESL

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (UPRM)

Taught courses in:

Undergraduate composition and basic English

Advanced undergraduate linguistics and syntax, psycholinguistics, research methods, current topics in linguistics and communication

Graduate research methodology, second language acquisition and TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language)

 

Served as an advisor and chair on MA student thesis committees and constructed test items for MA exams

 

1992 - 1994

Supervisor at the Teaching Techniques Lab

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

Supervised and evaluated student teachers in Teaching Methods courses before they were sent to student teach in public schools.  Micro teaching techniques were used, including supervision of student teachers while they were teaching and review of the videotaped lesson.  Through comparison of their self-evaluation with the evaluations of their students, along with the videotape review, the student teachers were led to discover for themselves the good and difficult points of their teaching effectiveness and experience

 

1987-1992

Programming and Administrative Assistant, Department of Student Affairs Housing Division,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

 

Managed, with the director, an international community of over 500 residents

 

Acted as a liaison between the Housing Division and the Departments of Education, English as a Second Language, Linguistics and Intensive English Institute 

 

Conducted a variety of multicultural programs with the cooperation of the offices of: Coalition Against Discrimination, Foreign Student Affairs, Study Abroad, Women’s Studies, African American Association, Hispanic Students Association, Counseling Center, and the Department of Health and Safety Studies

 

Managed the hall budgets, hired, trained, evaluated and supervised clerks

 

Advised students on academic and personal issues

 

1986-1987

Instructor of Modern Greek, College of Arts and Sciences

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

Designed and developed a course in Modern Greek along with a seniors’ level Modern Greek proficiency test

 

1982-1984

Tutor in Field Phonology Research,

Reading University, Reading, Oxford Shire, England

Conducted tutoring sessions in field research in the areas of Phonology and Phonetics under the supervision of Dr. Frank Palmer, Department of Linguistics, University of Reading, England

 

 

Research and Professional Development

 

Designed and implemented Ph.D. research on foreign teaching assistants’ accents and their influence on American undergraduates’ evaluations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The research was commented on favorably, in writing, by the Teaching and Resource Center of the University of California, Berkley

 

Designed and implemented research on different styles of teaching between the North American and Puerto Rican ESL professors at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez and Cayey campuses

 

Exhibited students’ work on web publishing as part of research in Technology Integration.  The exhibition was held in the Library of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, in Fall 2003 and was covered by a UPRM press article entitled: “Integracion de la Technologia al Curriculo de Ingles” by Magda Morales Valentin (http://www.uprm.edu/news/articles/as0942003.html).  Some visitors’ comments:

           

“All the works were excellent with a good understanding and fine way of expression.”

“I think exhibitions like these are necessary to motivate the rest of us to create something equally special.”

“The exhibition presented by the students on the third floor of the library presents great quality and we can understand that the students have surely passed through many difficulties because the exhibited works involve lots of effort.  Their topics are very interesting and they are presented in an organized manner.  Summing it up in one word: Great!!”

            “First of all I want to congratulate the organizers of this activity for the job they

did because it was well organized and it showed to us the students’ talent and

 creativity.”

 

Organized cross campus seminar on distance education.  Delegates from the University of Sacred Heart visited the UPRM campus to present their distance learning program. These delegates have been the leaders in distance education in Puerto Rico and their work has been presented and recognized internationally

 

Cooperated with the Laboratorie de Informatique de l’ Universite Du Maine, France, to test the SAAFIR learning environment, which makes online course curriculum available to students in the form of a concept map.  Students designed their own study, based on their interests and needs, using adaptive hypermedia

 

Received a certificate for 48 hours of training in Using Web Tools to Enhance Learning, from the School of Education, Harvard University. This certification included, in part, web searching skills, virtual trips, electronic portfolios, rubrics, copyrights and creating online teaching units

 

Participated in the Icarus on line seminar sponsored by the European Community

(http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/socrates/socrates_en.html), as a member of the Technology Team, working on: the evaluation of learning environments, creating courses online, examining security issues, broadband realities, and investigating how technology pedagogy and the law interact in e-learning communities.  Completed the certification with 18 out of 20 maximum points, working collaboratively - around the clock - with people from all over the world, using Moodle environment

 

Conceived and realized action research on Captology (Computers as Persuasive Technology).  Personal communications took place with the head of the Stanford Captology Lab, JB Fog, for the realization of this research

 

Designed course proposal on Integrating Technology into Teaching, which was accepted by the Department of Continuous Education of the UPRM.  The proposal included: concepts of hardware and software, how to create lesson plans including technology, pedagogy, educational foundations, how to evaluate software, how to use educational games, what is their place in the curriculum, and the understanding and use of sites such as Webquests, Kidspiration, Kidpix, Filamentality and Cyberguides, in relation to teaching

 

Was commended in writing by the director of the English Department to the Dean of Arts and Sciences, to give training programs in technology for faculty development

 

Spent the sabbatical 2001-2 in Florida International University (FIU), Miami, as a visiting professor, working with Professor Thiru, head of the Learning Technologies program of the Curriculum and Instruction Department.  During the year:

 

Attended seminars on the most recent computer packages such as: Access, FrontPage, Netscape Composer, Dream Weaver, Adobe, Power Point, Excel, HTML, File Management, Windows 2000, Microsoft Word,Outlook Express, Blackboard, Web CT (basic and advanced)

 

Participated in technology integration workshops on: How to Use Email in Online Teaching, Quality Internet Resource Selection in Online Teaching, and the Pros and Cons of the Online Teaching

 

Programmed Java Script and HTML templates for exams and quizzes (see http://www.oocities.org/gsmyrniou/report/finalreport/atTACHMENT.ppt)

 

Interviewed Educational Technology Authorities of the Dade County school system to report on the reforms for Technology integration across the curriculum

 

Created web pages

           

Supervised online graduate classes discussions

 

Taught a course on the World Web to undergraduate students

 

Currently:

 

Working on a certificate in early education literacy

 

Serving on the editorial board of the Association for the Advancement of the Computing in Education (AACE) 

 

Investigating the Computer Clubhouses in Massachusetts contacting MIT’s

Professor Michael Resnick and Computer Clubhouses’ Director for the Boston

Area, Daphne Griffin

 

Participating actively in the International Forum of Educational

Technology and Society (IFETS) and the Web CT forum, as a regular member

 

 

Participation and Presentations in Conferences and Seminars, and Publications in Proceedings

 

Participated in many conferences and seminars, including:

 

Linguistic Circle of the University of Athens, Greece, 1982 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Text-Linguistics in the Work of Odysseus Elitis” (2nd Nobel Prize winner of Modern Greek Literature), under the auspices of the Department of Linguistics (http://www.nglt.uoa.gr/diarthrosi_en.html)

 

The 3rd National Association for the Foreign Students Affairs (NAFSA) Conference, Chicago, December 1991 (participant)

 

The 4th National Conference on the Training and Employment of Graduate Teaching Assistants, Oakbrook, Chicago, 1993 (as a presenter, table host, session monitor and Pew Fellow)

Paper presented: “Students’ Perceptions of Varying English Proficiency Levels of their International Teaching Assistants (ITAs)”

Published in the proceedings: Teaching Graduate Students to Teach: Engaging the Disciplines, November 10-13, 1993 by Thomas Heenan and Kenneth Jerich. 

Quoted by Karron Lewis from the Center for Teaching Effectiveness, the University of Texas at Austin, USA, in his work:  “Training Focused on Postgraduate Teaching Assistants: the North American Model”  (www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/lewis.htm)

 

The 8th Annual International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, Division of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March 31-April 2, 1994 (presenter)

 Paper presented: “Culture-Based Classroom Behaviors of TAs at UIUC and their Influence on the TAs’ Use of Language”

 

Speaker’s Plenum Seminar, Department of English, University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, September 1994 (presenter)

Paper presented: “The Communicative Competence of the International Teaching Assistants of the UIUC”

 

The 5th Annual Conference of the Speech Communication Association of Puerto Rico, San Juan, December 1995 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Equality vs. Equity Between Male and Female Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign”

 

UPRM Professors workshop entitled, “Curriculo Para el Fortalecimiento de la Docencia en el Area de la Metodologia,” UPRM, May 1995 (participant)

 

Puerto Rico TESOL 22nd Annual Conference, Hilton Ponce, October 1996 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Different Styles of Puerto Rican vs. American Professors in the UPRM”

 

The 17th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, March 1996 (presenter)  

Paper presented: “Different Classroom Interaction Patterns of Puerto Rican vs. American Instructors in Basic ESL Classrooms”

 

Puerto Rico TESOL 24th Annual Conference, Hilton Caribe, November 1997 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Foreign Teaching Assistants’ Attitudes and Students’ Evaluations about the English Skills of These TAs”

 

The 20th Annual Regional Conference at Inter American University, San German, Puerto Rico, April 1997 (participant)

 

The 5th Meeting of the Congresso Puertorriqueno de Investigacion en la Educacion, University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Rio Piedras, 1997 (participant)

 

Department of English, UPRM, Research Seminars, March 1999 (presenter) 

Paper presented: “Do Puerto Ricans have Instrumental or Integrative Motivation to Learn English?”

 

The 3rd Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Athens, Greece, July 2003 (participant)

Worked on networking with the University of Lium Institut d'Informatique, France, and met with, among others, Kathleen Norris and Eliot Soloway, both recognized for their research in Technology Integration.  For more visit: http://english.uprm.edu/066DOCS/Intconf.html)

 

Western Puerto Rico TESOL 26th Annual Conference, Inter American University, Aguadilla, April 26, 2003 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Web CT and Collaborative Learning”

 

The 4th International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education (supported by the Research and Training Institute of East Aegean, the University of Athens Greece and the University College of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada); Samos Island, Greece, July 2003 (presenter)

Presented a workshop Teaching College Composition Using Web CT

 

Puerto Rico TESOL 30th Annual Conference, San Juan, November 2003 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Using Web CT for Partial Online Courses”

 

Tercer (3rd) Congresso Puertorriqueno de Web E-ducacion, Hilton Caribe, San Juan,  April 2004 (presenter) 

Paper presented: “Are the Benefits of a Platform Translated into Instructor’s Skills in the Students’ Evaluations?”

Published in the Actas del Tercer Congresso Puertorriqueno de web e-educacion, April 30, 2004. 

Paper also presented at: The 3rd Feria de Tecnologia y Educacion, “La Ruta Del e-nlace,” UPR, Rio Piedras, May 2004

 

ED-Media World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Lugano, Switzerland, July 21-26, 2004 (presenter)

Paper presented: “Could the Benefits or Shortcomings of a Platform Affect Students’ Evaluations of the Instructor’s Skills?”

Published in the conference proceedings after a double peer review that satisfied the

following criteria:

Value or usefulness to the field or profession

Adequacy of design/accuracy of analysis

Presentation and interpretation of findings, discussion, and conclusions

Inclusion of appropriate implications for practice and/or policy

Consistency with existing literature

Overall clarity of ideas and expression

The acceptance rate for the current conference was 25-39% (check http://aace.org/reviewpolicy.htm)

 

 

Virtual Seminars

 

Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives, offered by the Technology Source Journal from Michigan Virtual University, June 2003

Featured seminar titled article by Marc Prensky as the topic of the seminar, with the author as the invited speaker.  The seminar, questions by Smyrniou and others, and discussion were archived at: http://ull.horizonlive.com/launcher.cgi?channel=tsprensky_0603_2003_0611_1506_32

 

Using Web CT Quizzes in a High Demand Environment, offered by

the Technology Source Journal from Michigan Virtual University, June 2003 Featured seminar titled article by Thomas Brothen and Catherine Wambach as the topic of the seminar, with the authors as the invited speakers. The seminar, questions by Smyrniou and others, and discussion were archived at: http://ull.horizonlive.com/launcher.cgi?channel=tsbrothen_0603_2003_0611_1401_7

 

Preparing Students to Take an Online Course, by the Web CT Institute and Alan Shapiro from St. Petersburg College, December 2003

The seminar, questions by Smyrniou and others, and discussion were archived at:

http://webct.rsc02.net/servlet/cc5?OJlQWUDQUVkuPjgphmxmijuQLKmV2VS

 

Building and Using Cool Interactive Learning Objects for Online Courses, by Kevin Reeve and Marc Hugentobler, Utah State University, September 2003

The seminar, questions by Smyrniou and others, and discussion were archived at:

http://webct.rsc02.net/servlet/cc5?OJlQWUDQUVkuPjgphmxmijuQLKmV2VS

 

Learning Objects and Web CT, by Andrew Zeilman, Web CT and Malden Maljkovic, January 2004

The seminar, including topics on issues of modularity and granularity of online courses, questions by Smyrniou and others, and discussion were archived at: http://webct.rsc02.net/servlet/cc5?OJlQWUDQUVkuPjgphmxmijuQLKmV2VS

 

 

Faculty Training Seminars

 

Presented many seminars regarding technology integration by the faculty

The most important given through the Department of English, UPRM, are:

 

Will Web CT Make you a Better Teacher? September 9, 2004

 

Empowering Electronically a Very Busy Faculty, Using…Hot Potatoes, October 9, 2004

 

Has Anybody Seen Any Professional Standards of Technology Integration in our Curriculum? March 2003

 

Toward a Definition of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), November 2002

 

A Hands on Seminar in Web Page Design Without Using HTML, November 2002

 

 

Awards, Scholarships, Fellowships, Grants

 

2003, 2004

Conference Grants for Presentations issued by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Centro de Investigation y Desarollo UPRM

 

1995

Conference Grants for Presentations issued by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, UPRM

 

1993

Chicago Regional Conference Grant; National Association for Foreign Student Affairs, Chicago, IL

 

Pew Teaching Leadership Award. Received at the fourth National Conference on Training and Employment of Graduate Teaching Assistants, Oakbrook, IL

 

1992

Verdal Frazier Young Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

 

1991

NAFSA (National Association for the Foreign Students Affairs) Regional Conference Grant)

 

1990

Thesis Grant, College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL

 

1986

New York University Scholarship, New York

 

 

Publications not in Proceedings:

 

“How I Feel Can Make a Difference in How I See You Teach” in Resources in Education, ERIC Clearing House, Number of Microfiche: ED 383265. 1994

 

“Equality vs. Equity Between Men and Women Students in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,” in Resources in Education, ERIC Clearing House, Number of Microfiche: ED 386 125, 1994

 

“When it Comes to My Major it Matters if You are Foreign or Not,” in Reading Improvement, Vol. 32, Winter 1995, No 4

 

“Increasing Authentic Speech in Classroom Discussions,” in The Internet TESL Journal http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Smyrniou-Discussion.html, April 2003.  Professors from the University of Baranquilla, Colombia commented in writing on the similarities between the language issues presented in the paper and the language issues of their own institution.

 

 

Committees

 

University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Department of English

Language Lab Committee: Worked on issues of equipment and lab curriculum

 

Grievances Committee: Was available to work on issues of conflict

 

Orientation Committee: Directed students in selecting and registering for courses

 

Technology Committee: Worked on issues of technology integration and technology equipment

 

Activities Committee: Worked on department programs and social events such as the Judith Ortiz Cofer Forum

 

Curriculum Committee: Worked on evaluations of course proposals and issues of the multi-sectional linguistics courses

 

Linguistic Committee: Worked on issues of reorganization of the linguistic program of the English Department

 

Basic English Committee: Chairperson of the Basic English Exam Subcommittee

 

Exam and Textbook Committee of Basic English writing

 

Registration Committee of Peter Elbow’s symposium on writing

 

Counselor of the English Graduate Organization:

Served as the graduate students’ advisor regarding personal, academic and social issues and activities

Facilitated meetings and presentations of students and faculty, such as the writing of presentations and the new students’ initiation ceremony

 

 

Societies

 

Puerto Rican TESOL

 

International TESOL

 

American Educational Research Association (AERA)

 

Association for the Advancement of the Computing in Education (AACE)

 

Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE)

 

 

Major Professors

 

University of Reading, England, Department of Linguistics

Frank Palmer (Semantics/Phonology)

David Crystal (Phonology)

Peter Trudgil (Socio-linguistics)

 

 

University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Department of Linguistics

Jerry Morgan (Syntax/Artificial Intelligence)

Mike Kenstowich (Phonology/Mathematical Linguistics)

Braj Kachru (World Englishes)

Georgia Green (Pragmatics)

Charles Kisseberth (Phonology)

Sandra Savignon (Communicative Competence)

 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Bob Stake (Research Methods)

Mobin Shorish (International Education/Economics of Education)

Steve Tozer (Foundations of Education)

James Anderson (Minority Education)

 

 

Travel Experience

 

Asia Minor

 

Caribbean/Latin America

 

North and South Europe

 

Russia

 

USA

 

 

Special Interests

 

Statistics in educational and social research

 

Student teacher supervision

 

Teacher training programs and faculty development

 

Technology integration and reaching the community with technology

 

MIT’s initiative for the creation of computer clubhouses

 

Early childhood literacy and respective technology

 

 

Evaluations

 

Tenure and promotional reports of the department’s personnel committee and director:

 

Teaching ability: 5 out of 5

 

Research: 5 out of 5

 

Students’ evaluations: 4.7 out of 5

 

Departmental work: 5 out of 5

 

 

 

References

 

Available upon request

 

Portfolio with all the original proofs of the above work is available upon interview