Elena is an Education Program Specialist. She has been teaching graduate level courses in the International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Program since 2001. She trains new graduate students from different countries and various departments in college teaching methods and English for academic purposes. She provides consulting and facilitates workshops for instructors and serves as the testing coordinator for the ITA Program. Elena also supervises the work of several undergraduate teaching assistants who play an important role in the ITA program by providing feedback on international graduate students’ teaching.
Elena’s background is in Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She received a BA and MA in TESOL from Moscow State Linguistic University in Russia and PhD in Linguistics from Kiev State University in Ukraine. Having taught English in a number of European countries and in the United States, she has developed a variety of collaborative techniques that help her students become successful educators at the University of Minnesota and wherever they may work in the future.