Alumna Sophia Romanic selected by U.S. Department of State for prestigious teaching fellowship
While working on her doctorate, Sophia Romanic’s fellowship in Ukraine will focus on introducing English courses to university students to make the graduates more competitive in the job market.
The U.S. Department of State announced the selection of University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo alumna Sophia Romanic for a virtual fellowship engaging with English language learners and teachers online in Ukraine at Zaporizhzhya National University (ZNU). Romanic is among the first to be selected for the Virtual English Language Fellow Program, a new program created for the 2020-2021 academic year.
Romanic earned her bachelor of arts in sociology with a concentration in international relations from UH Hilo in 2012 and her masters in teaching English to speakers of other languages from Westcliff University in 2016. She is an assistant professor at the College of Education, Westcliff University, Irvine, California, focusing on international development programs and the Westcliff International Journal of Applied Research while completing her doctorate in applied linguistics with Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece.
While an undergraduate at UH Hilo, Romanic interned at the Center for Global Education and Exchange (CGEE).
“Her experience working with international students on our campus through her TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) program and CGEE internship was instrumental in her decision to teach English in Budapest immediately after graduation,” says Todd Shumway, director of global exchange at UH Hilo. “That experience helped give her the direction that has led to the doctoral program she is in now. I’ve stayed in touch with her since that time and she is an excellent example of how the diversity of UH Hilo and international student presence on our campus can inspire students to seek their own careers in international education.”
Romanic’s areas of expertise are in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, teaching English as a second language, intercultural communication, curriculum design, distance education, virtual communication, and intercultural communication. She has taught abroad at an international kindergarten and bilingual high school in Budapest, Hungary, and has worked extensively online with adult International English Language Test Students, business English students, and young English language learners from China.
Her fellowship in Ukraine will focus on working with the ZNU foreign languages department introducing English courses for students majoring in all fields to make the graduates more competitive in the job market. She will be teaching communicative English and writing to undergraduate students, English for academic purposes to graduate students, conducting weekly speaking clubs focused on American culture, and participating in a regional training webinar for 700 in-service teachers and professors across Eurasia.
