Marlboro Celebrates TESOL Graduates

On Friday, August 19, faculty, family, and friends gathered at the graduate center to recognize the commencement of the fourth cohort of students from MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program. Nine graduates were celebrated, representing a wide range of backgrounds and with roots in the U.S., Morocco, Chile, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina.

“We have a wonderfully diverse group of graduates from the MA-TESOL program this year,” said Kate Jellema, associate dean of graduate and professional studies, who presided over the ceremony. “This international representation speaks to Marlboro’s global reach in the field of TESOL and the importance of communicative use of language and cultural understanding around the world.”

The graduates also included two recent alumni from Marlboro’s undergraduate program, Geordie Morse ’13 and Courtney Varga ’15. Geordie spent a year abroad in Japan teaching English as a second language (ESL) and most recently taught ESL in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Courtney teaches English to adult immigrants and refugees in Framingham.

The ceremony was preceded by the annual Bridges Conference on Thursday, when each of the graduating students gave a presentation on their individual explorations of TESOL and language learning. Subjects ranged from “Can TESOL pedagogy apply to the teaching of other languages?” by Nan Hyde who teaches Chinese in Keene, New Hampshire, to “Pathways in the labyrinth: My lessons from neuroscience,” by Nicolas Cardenas of Chile.