Alumni Connect
Johnny Alex Laforêt, MA Romance Languages, French, 2012
My name is Johnny Laforêt. I was born in a small town, Berquin in Paillant located
in the southern part of Haiti. I completed my primary school at École Nationale de
Paillant and most of my high school years at Lycée National de Pétion-Ville. After
leaving Berquin to continue my schooling in the capital city Port-au-Prince at the
age of 12, life became very difficult very quickly, because living away from my parents
had become very tough.
As a result, I took school very seriously at a very young age because I understood
that in a country like Haiti where resources are scarce, a good education is one's
only way forward. So, life has trained me to be highly competitive.
In high school I would spent at least four hours daily at the library and I ran special sessions to help my classmates with math and science on weekends. I was very good at both science and languages, however my first choices were to study medicine, chemistry or biology, but I ended up studying linguistics at the State University of Haiti. At the college of Applied Linguistics, I made myself known very quickly through my love of books and my outstanding performance in the classes in which I enrolled. That's why just on my second year there I was chosen by the dean of the college, the late Pierre Vernet, to join the Master's program in linguistics.
Furthermore, in 2010, through a highly competitive process, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to do an MA in Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University. I graduated in 2012 after spending two wonderful years there and moved on to pursue a PhD in French, Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was one of the very few students in the department who managed to complete a PhD in four years. In August 2016, I joined the French department at Princeton University as a full-time Lecturer in French. My job at Princeton consists in teaching French in the Language Program, developing instructional materials, tests and curricula, training and overseeing assistants in instruction.
Cristina Diordieva Receives Diplôme de Français Professionnel
Cristina Diordieva earned a BA in French in 2013 followed by a M.ED. in Instructional Technology in 2016 at Texas Tech University. While currently pursuing an EDD in Instructional Technology, she became the first Texas Tech student to take and earn the Diplôme de Français Professionnel from the Chamber of Commerce of Paris Professional French.
Laura Schuster, MA Languages & Cultures, German 2017 Awarded U.S. English Teaching Assistantship
Laura Schuster graduated with a Master of Arts in Languages & Cultures with a German concentration in August 2017 and soon after departed for Austria where she will teach English. She is an awardee of the US English language teaching assistantship for the 2017-18 academic year. The Austrian Ministry of Education and Fulbright Austria coordinate the applications of US citizens for the Austrian Fed Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship Program of Austria Federal Ministry of Education. As one of the 140+ college graduates from the United States awarded a teaching assistantship, she will teach in the Salzburg region at two different schools. The purpose of the program is to bring talented and enthusiastic young people from abroad into the classrooms of secondary schools in communities large and small all over Austria. The awardees take the challenge to make learning a foreign language a lively cross-cultural encounter for their students.
Emeline Têtevuide, Romance Languages French MA, 2017
Upon completion of a Master of Arts degree at Texas Tech University in December 2017, Emeline Têtevuide defended her thesis entitled, "Les Britaniques et le champagne" under the direction of Dr. Carole Edwards. Her thesis was published by Editions Universitaires Europeenes.
Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures
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