Ten Ivan Allen College Faculty Members Earn Promotion

Posted April 13, 2022

Ten Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts faculty will be promoted to senior academic professionals and senior lecturers prior to the beginning of the fall 2022 semester. 

Promoted to Senior Academic Professional – effective July 1, 2022 

Whitney Buser, School of Economics 

Whitney Buser is associate director of academic programs in the School of Economics at Georgia Tech. Buser has published and presented research on gender differences in financial literacy, performance evaluation, confidence in mathematical abilities, and participation in academic discussions. Further research interests include behavioral economics as well as formal and informal institutional impacts on policy and economic wellbeing. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2020, Buser was the Chair of the Business and Public Policy Department at Young Harris College and as well as an Associate Professor of Economics. 

Bradley Rittenhouse, School of Literature, Media, and Communication 

Bradley Rittenhouse is the Lab Manager of the Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center. His work looks at the use of literary aesthetics as data management strategies in nineteenth-century American writing. He has upcoming chapters in volumes with Oxford University Press, Cornell University Press, Routledge, and Elsevier on topics such as quantitative approaches to Ralph Waldo Emerson, story gating in interactive narrative, and increasing diversity in digital research labs. He has recently won the Buzz Award for Administrative Excellence and received recognition as one of the Faces of Inclusive Excellence at Georgia Tech. 

 

Promoted to Senior Lecturer – effective August 1, 2022 

Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, School of Literature, Media, and Communication 

Rachel Dean-Ruzicka is a Lecturer of Writing and Communication specializing in co-requisite course design and instruction. She has been in this role at Georgia Tech since 2016, after serving as a Marion L. Brittain Fellow from 2011-2014. Her teaching focuses on using popular culture artifacts to teach multimodal communication, with an emphasis on process through analysis and scaffolding. Dean-Ruzicka has presented her work on this pedagogy at the National Organization for Student Success and the USG Teaching and Learning Conference. The bulk of her publications covers young adult literature and comics. Her book, Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature: Engaging Difference and Identity, was published by Routledge in 2017.  More recently, she has published on paranormal teenagers and serial killers in Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Young Adult Literature and is currently completing an essay on the podcast My Favorite Murder for a collection on feminist detectives.  

Danielle Geary, School of Modern Languages 

Danielle Geary is a lecturer of Spanish and the coordinator of GT Spanish Online in the School of Modern Languages. Her extensive international travel experience includes living in Spain, directing study abroad programs in Spain and Mexico, and conducting ethnographic field research in Costa Rica. Geary is co-director of the Spain Visit & Live it! Study Abroad program and the coordinator of the Introductory Spanish Program. Her teaching interests include online learning and conversation courses, and her teaching style is featured in six chapters of more than 30 original Spanish video lessons she created for Study.com. Since joining Tech in 2010, Geary has been awarded multiple CETL certificates for excellence in teaching. Her scholarly articles address the topics of study abroad, online learning and international students. She serves on the editorial board of the Academic Leadership Journal of Student Research. Geary holds a Master's in Spanish from the University of Salamanca in Spain and a Doctor of Education with research concentration in study abroad and foreign language acquisition from Nova Southeastern University. 

Yi-Hsien Stephanie Ho, School of Modern Languages 

Yi-Hsien Stephanie Ho is coordinator of the Chinese program and lecturer of Chinese. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Ho was a senior instructor and lecturer in various prestigious Chinese programs in all-level course teaching, including National Taiwan University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the UC Berkeley Business Summer Program. She also participated in Chinese teacher training workshops as a trainer in numerous South American countries. After joining Georgia Tech in 2014, Ho helped establish a robust and sustaining heritage track for online courses in the Chinese program.  Ho has an M.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL) and received TCSL certificates from various prestigious institutes. 

Jong Hyun Lee, School of Modern Languages 

Jong Hyun Lee is a lecturer of Korean. After completing his master’s degree in English linguistics at Yonsei University in Seoul, Lee started working at a multi-national company specializing in speech and language technologies. His specialty at the company was planning edutainment products, featuring speech recognition and language technologies targeting at English language learners. Lee’s academic interest in speech and language technology led him to Carnegie Mellon University, where he further studied the technology and earned another master’s degree in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL).  His current research interests include features and computational semantics, automaticity in language learning, and multimedia contents for education. 

Chao Li, School of Modern Languages 

Chao Li, lecturer of Chinese, joined the School of Modern Languages in 2001 and has taught the language at all levels. He has served as co-director of the Chinese Language for Business and Technology (LBAT) program since 2006. He has played an important role in developing Georgia Tech’s Chinese online language courses, including the creation of course content, drill sections, multimedia production, and grammatical notes compilation. Li has become a key instructor in online Chinese teaching. His focus is on teaching Chinese as a second language and creation of effective Chinese language teaching and learning materials. Li received his M.A. in International Relations from the Beijing Institute of Foreign Affairs; and B.A. in Economics and Chinese from Yunnan University, China. 

Aya McDaniel, School of Modern Languages 

Aya McDaniel (Nakanishi) joined the School of Modern Languages as a Japanese language instructor in 2014. She started her teaching career as a fellow at Emory University, where she continued to teach as a full-time instructor until she came to Georgia Institute of Technology. McDaniel’s research interest is in the development of classroom activities and materials.  She has presented her papers at the ACTFL Convention, AATJ Conference and others. She has made a kanji textbook and a workbook for Intermediate Japanese with Dr. Masuda. She also re-designed the curriculum for the JAPN1002 to make the course hybrid.   She was the president of Georgia Association of Teachers of Japanese from2020-2021.  She was awarded the GATJ Teacher of The Year in 2019.   

Melissa Pilkington, School of Modern Languages 

Melissa Pilkington, lecturer of Spanish at Georgia Tech, has been teaching Spanish since 1971, and at Georgia Tech since 2005. She has studied extensively in many Spanish-speaking countries and has continued to travel to Spain every summer for continuing education. She also has co-created and taught Georgia Tech students in a study abroad program entitled Spain: Visit and Live it! (Summer of 2017) in Sevilla, Spain with colleague, Dr. Danielle Geary. Pilkington and Geary continued this successful program in 2018 and 2019. Throughout her years at Tech, Pilkington has received numerous teaching certificates for excellent teaching. She was honored with several Teaching Effectiveness Awards by the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 and the Georgia Tech Class of 1940. These awards were given to those who have consistently scored between 4.8 and 5.0 on the CIOS survey regarding effective teaching. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in April 2022.   

Satomi Suzuki-Chenoweth, School of Modern Languages 

Dr. Satomi Suzuki-Chenoweth is a lecturer of Japanese and Linguistics at the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Institute of Technology, and currently serves as the Introductory Language Program Coordinator of the Japanese Program. She received a PhD in Linguistics with an emphasis on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Foreign Language Pedagogy from the University of Georgia in 2011. She has been (co-)developing and teaching online courses for the Japanese and Linguistics Programs since 2003. Her research interests are in the theories of second language acquisition (SLA), particularly, in the area of conversation analysis, technology-enhanced foreign language education, and pedagogical application of SLA theories. Her research on language learning and technology has been disseminated in national and international conferences. Her 2013 publication in the CALICO journal entitled, Private turns: A student’s off-screen behaviors synchronous online Japanese instruction, was selected as the journal's best article of the year. She is a multi-year recipient of Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 Award.