COD ESL Professor John Stasinopoulos Named Fulbright Alumni Ambassador
College of DuPage Academic ESL Professor John Stasinopoulos was recently selected by the Institute of International Education as a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador.
"I feel honored to have been selected to serve as a Fulbright Ambassador," Stasinopoulos said. "I am very happy to be a part of such an international organization and I look forward to acting as a spokesperson."
The Fulbright Alumni Ambassador Program was created by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a department within the IIE, to support increasing the diversity of the scholars who participate in the program and the range of U.S. higher education institutions represented overall. Alumni Ambassadors are selected competitively to present information about their Fulbright experience at campus workshops, academic conferences and other venues. Over a two-year period, they promote
Fulbright grants to other faculty and campus administrators and raise the visibility of the program nationally.
Click here for more information about the Fulbright Alumni Ambassador Program.
Stasinopoulos earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature and Greek Language and Literature at the University of Athens in Greece. He then earned an M.A. in Foreign and Second Language Education and a Ph.D. in Foreign and Second Language Education and Linguistics at Ohio State University. After holding positions as an ESL professor in several institutions in Greece and the U.S., Stasinopoulos joined College of DuPage in 1999 where, in addition to teaching Academic ESL, he has taught Linguistics and Modern Greek.
In 2010, he served as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in Irkutsk, Russia, where he lectured undergraduate and graduate students on linguistics and second language acquisition, trained prospective teachers on innovative teaching methods, delivered lectures on American culture, and conducted teacher training at area high schools.
In his role as an ambassador, Stasinopoulos looks forward to meeting scholars from a variety of academic fields who share his excitement for other cultures and mentoring individuals who are interested in the Fulbright program.
"This will continue to be a learning experience for me just as my experience as a Fulbright Scholar was," Stasinopoulos said. "I will have the opportunity to share with others my experience and through that, I hope to show them what a life-changing experience being part of the Fulbright program can be."
Stasinopoulos added that his selection as a Fulbright Ambassador is due in part to the excellent reputation of COD.
"My selection says a great deal about College of DuPage," said Stasinopoulos, "It is the reputation of this school that helped me become a Fulbright scholar and eventually an Ambassador. I am thankful not only to the Fulbright organization but also to COD for making such an opportunity possible."