Dr. Sarah Dietrich of Southeast Missouri State University has been selected to the U.S. State Department’s English Language Specialist Program. Dietrich will develop and facilitate a 12-week project teaching language for civil society and media literacy in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Dietrich’s appointment came after interviewing with Regional English Language Officers and U.S. embassy representatives. In summer 2023, Dietrich was also a finalist for a project in Chile.
“This project creates opportunities for international recruitment and to build the foundation for future intercultural collaborations,” said Dietrich. “Personally, this project allows me to build on my experience with English language teaching and online collaborations as I learn about, with, and from a new group of students.”
Dietrich has been a part of the English Department at SEMO since 2017, serving as co-coordinator of the master’s in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). She has taught English and served as a teacher educator in Brazil, France, the U.S., and Mexico where she was a Fulbright Scholar in TESOL/Applied Linguistics. In 2014, she was co-director of a Fulbright grant which brought eight Iraqi scholars to the U.S. for ten weeks. Her publications include Person to Person Peacebuilding, Intercultural Communication and English Language Teaching: Voices from the Virtual Intercultural Borderlands, a book she co-authored, which explores a seven-year collaboration between TESOL students in the U.S. and adult learners of English in Afghanistan.
The English Language Specialist Program is the premier opportunity for leaders in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) to enact meaningful and sustainable changes in the way that English is taught abroad. Through projects developed by U.S. embassies in more than 80 countries, English Language Specialists work directly with local teacher trainers, educational leaders, and ministry of education officials to exchange knowledge, build capacity, and establish partnerships benefiting participants, institutions, and communities in the United States and overseas.
For further information about the English Language Specialist Program or the U.S. Department of State, please visit elprograms.org/specialist, contact us by telephone at (202) 632-6452, or e-mail ECAPress@state.gov.