Romance Studies Departmental TF Awards

We are thrilled to award Evgeniya Prikhodko with a teaching prize this academic year. Genia taught LF111 in the fall and spring semesters, and from the very beginning her dedication to her students and desire to develop as an instructor was evident. She worked closely with coordinator Kirby Chazal and fellow instructors and was an excellent team player and colleague. She showed a great deal of growth in the classroom from first to second semester and she successfully rose to the challenge of adapting her course to teach remotely this spring. Her lessons were consistently thoughtfully conceived and she able to effectively incorporate teaching technologies and new media in her classes, especially this last term. She has a promising future ahead and is well poised for success as she prepares to teach LF212 in the fall. Her hard work and collaborative efforts showed and paid off in her growth this, her first year of teaching, and we in French want to congratulate her and encourage her to keep up this excellent work. Bravo Genia! 

We are very happy to present Teresa Gelardo-Rodriguez with a ‘Departmental Outstanding TF Award’ this year. All of the coordinators who have worked with Teresa, as well as her mentors in LS 311 (Spanish through Performance) and LS 308  (Spanish through Film and New Media) concur that Teresa is an engaging, inspiring and passionate teacher. Teresa is truly dedicated to her students, as her glowing evaluations attest. One student said of her, “She truly embodies what a good professor should be; she transfers her cultural fervor and love for Spanish to each of her students.”

One of Teresa’s greatest strengths is her creativity, which was evident in the depth of her materials and the variety of her assignments.  She also transitioned smoothly to remote teaching this spring, skillfully maintaining space to make adjustments as needed. In addition to her classroom work, she has contributed greatly to creating a wonderful working environment during in meetings with her enthusiastic participation and collegiality.

Teresa is a wonderful team player, generous and collaborative, open to other people’s ideas and willing to challenge herself to continue growing personally and professionally.

Thank you, Teresa for your great contributions to our students and our Department.

We are very happy to present Yuliana Ramos Orta with a “Departmental Outstanding TF’ award this year. She has taught LS 111 and LS 211 during the two past years and her coordinators have been very impressed with her both as an instructor and as a colleague. Yuliana is bright, engaging, and highly responsible, and her teaching skills since she began at BU have not only improved but have exceeded our expectations. She has become an excellent facilitator in the classroom, one who listens and is able to make her students feel comfortable when speaking a foreign language.

Her students characterize her not only as communicative, enthusiastic and engaging, but also as caring, with a wonderful understanding of the course materials. As one of her students put it: “Ms. Ramos Orta had a really contagious level of enthusiasm that helped the class to be engaged. Being in a foreign language class, everyone makes a lot of mistakes, so it was very helpful that she made everyone feel comfortable enough to try and try again without worrying about being laughed at.”

Not only has she been a great educator who was able to move smoothly into remote teaching this semester, but Yuliana has shown that she masters technology well and she was able to share ideas for working around the issues we might have encountered during this unusual semester. Yuliana is very excited to be teaching her new LS 307 course in the fall, ‘Beyond Paradise: Contemporary Representations of the Caribbean’ and we wish her all the success for the coming year.