Fall 2018

LITE Newsletter
Fall 2018 Issue

The Westcliff University Learning, Innovation and Teaching Excellence (LITE) Center aims to educate, inspire and empower faculty and students through the pursuit of innovative teaching excellence.

Professor Highlight

Prof. Evelin Suij-Ojeda

Question: What program do you usually teach in?
Answer: I teach in the MA TESOL program and TESOL certificate program.

Question: What course do you enjoy teaching most?
Answer: Without any doubt, the Practicum. During that course, I can witness how much our students have progressed and the different ways they put theory into practice.  In the practicum, everything they studied and discussed in the different courses is now tangible, applicable and practical. I just love seeing teachers in action learning from one another!

Question: List 5 adjectives that describe yourself as a professional / as a person.
Answer: Hard working, friendly, proactive, passionate, curious. I think those 5 adjectives apply to both facets of me: as a person and as a teacher.

Question: What are your hobbies?
Answer: I love reading, dancing, playing with my kids and going to the beach with my family.

Question: If you could give one piece of advice to a new professor at WU, what would it be and why?
Answer: Dare to innovate! Try different strategies, approaches. Don’t play by the book and discover by yourself what’s the best for your students.

Question: If I walked into your classroom / VCS on a typical session, what would I see going on?
Answer: Lots of discussions dealing with real life scenarios. For me, learning has to be applicable, connected to the reality my students deal with everyday.

Question: How do you connect your lessons to the “real world”?
Answer: I keep up to date, I read a lot and I keep myself active in the education field so as to see what’s on the table at that moment. I ask my students who work in different contexts about their current situations.

Question: What do you think educators need to do to be part of the future of this profession?
Answer: Keep on studying (teaching is ongoing learning!) and be able to share their expertise with other educators. They need to create a community where teachers help other teachers grow professionally. They also need to disseminate their classroom research in order for local knowledge to be widely spread.

If you notice your students are struggling with a specific element of writing or you want to give your students the tools to succeed in their assignments, please look through the variety of tutorials we have available through the Writing Center. Here is a list of a few new as well as some of the most popular tutorials that we have created. Save yourself time and energy by using the resources we have available to you!

This tutorial will walk you through a typical business assignment that requires citations and the incorporation of resources as support. We will look at what would be considered plagiarism, how it happens, and what to do to avoid it. This tutorial will show you how to develop an outline by searching for relevant resources, taking the main idea, and formulating a plan of action.

This tutorial will walk you through a typical TESOL assignment that requires citations and the incorporation of resources as support. We will look at what would be considered plagiarism, how it happens, and what to do to avoid it. This tutorial will show you how to develop an outline by searching for relevant resources, taking the main idea, and formulating a plan of action.

Has your professor ever asked you to make sure to use in-text citations both by citing and quoting? If you are confused about the difference between citing and quoting, this tutorial is for you. This tutorial will show you exactly how to take information you find in an article and incorporate it into you paper by using both citations and quotations.

This tutorial will explain how to effectively paraphrase information to include as support in your academic writing.

For a complete list of tutorials, please see our Writing Center page on GAP.
For any questions or extra assistance, email writinghelp@westcliff.edu

What a better way to keep on working on your professional development than submitting an article to the Westcliff International Journal of Applied Research.

Journal Call closes on Wednesday, October 17, 2018.

Find out more by clicking on the button below.