People
Necmi Aksit
Necmi Aksit holds a PhD in Educational Science, and an MA & BSc in English Language Teaching (ELT). He starte working at Bilkent University in 1990, and worked at BUSEL for 12 years as Curriculum Coordinator, Head of Teaching Unit (pre-sessional), and Head of English Language Support Unit (in-sessional). In 2002, Dr. Aksit joined the Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Education, and since then he has been teaching pre-service and in-service graduate level courses, holding several positions of responsibility. He is now Director of MA in TEFL program, Director of Teacher Education, Asst. Director of Graduate School of Education, and Assoc. Dean in the Faculty of Education. His research interests include educational policy, EAP, critical literacy and language teacher education.
Contact
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Contact
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Tijen Aksit
Tijen Aksit holds a PhD in Educational Sciences, and an MA and a BSc in English Language Teaching. She has been affiliated with Bilkent University for more than thirty years. She started her career working as an English language instructor for 6 years at the English language preparatory program. Before holding various administrative positions at Bilkent, she was also employed as a full-time teacher, and as a Director of Language Studies at a K-12 school in Ankara for a year. Over the years she has taught tertiary level general English, and English for Academic and Specific purposes classes to undergraduate, and teacher education courses to graduate students. She has been teaching at Graduate School of Education since 2003. She is also Director of School of English Language and its Faculty Academic English Program. Dr. Aksit has been heavily involved in the design of quality assurance systems for tertiary level English language preparatory programs in Turkish universities working with Higher Education Quality Council Turkey. She is an Advisory Board Member of Association for Evaluation and Accreditation of Language Education. She is the author of the book titled Characteristics of Effective Schools and the Co-editor of Bridging Teaching, Learning and Assessment in the English Language Classroom and The Future of Teaching English for Academic Purposes. Aksit has also published on teacher appraisal systems, teacher action research, teaching English for academic purposes and English-medium instruction. Her research interests include Teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English Medium instruction (EMI), Language teacher development, Quality assurance in English language teaching / education, Teacher leadership, Teaching English / Turkish as a foreign language.
Contact
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Contact
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Christine Coombe (Part-time)
Christine has lived and worked in the Gulf for the past 27 years. In this capacity, she has served as the President and Conference Chair of one of the largest TESOL affiliates in the world and is the founder and co-chair of its Testing Special Interest Group.
During her tenure in the Middle East, she has won many awards including: 2002 Spaan Fellowship for Research in Second/Foreign Language Assessment; 2002-03 TOEFL Outstanding Young Scholar Award; TOEFL Board Grant for 2003-04, 2005-06, 2007-08 and 2009-10 for her work in delivering assessment training assessment in developing countries. She served on the TESOL Board of Directors as Convention Chair for Tampa 2006 and was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Teacher of the Year for 2003-04. She served as TESOL President (2011-2012) and was a member of the TESOL Board of Directors (2010-2013). Christine received the British Council’s International Assessment Award for 2013. Her most recent honor was being named to TESOL’s 50@50 which “recognizes professionals who have made significant contributions to the TESOL profession within the past 50 years.” Dr Coombe is the 2018 recipient of the James E. Alatis Award which recognizes exemplary service to TESOL.
Paul K. Matsuda (Part-time)
Paul K. Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, where he works closely with doctoral students specializing in second language writing from various disciplinary perspectives.
Paul is Founding Chair of the Symposium on Second Language Writing and Series Editor of the Parlor Press Series on Second Language Writing. Former President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, he has also served as the founding chair of the CCCC Committee on Second Language Writing and the chair of the Nonnative English Speakers in TESOL (NNEST) Caucus.
Paul has published widely on various topics on language, writing and professional development in applied linguistics, rhetoric and composition and TESOL, and has received a number of prestigious awards for his publications. He has been invited to present keynote and plenary talks as well as lectures and workshops in various countries and regions, including: Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Denmark, Germany, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and throughout the United States.
Paul has previously directed writing programs at the University of New Hampshire and Arizona State University. He has taught a wide variety of courses in applied linguistics, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, and TESOL at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), Purdue University (USA), Jilin University (China), Kanda University of Foreign Studies (Japan), Mae Fah Luang University (Thailand), Miami University (USA), Nagoya University (Japan), Nanjing University (China), Shih Chien University (Taiwan), Tamkang University (Taiwan), Thammasat University (Thailand), the University of New Hampshire (USA), the University of Utah (USA), Xi'an Jiao Tong University (China), and Xidian University (China).
In addition, he has held visiting professor positions at Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), Henan University (China), Nagoya University (Japan), Nanjing University (China), Penn State University (USA), the University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), Xidian University (China), Zhengzhou University (China), where he gave lectures and workshops and provided consultations for doctoral students and faculty members.
In addition to teaching, research and professional service, Paul has served as a program developer, evaluator and consultant for various language programs and graduate programs throughout the United States and around the world.
Burcu Yücel (Administrative Assistant)
Burcu Yücel graduated from Bilkent University, Department of Banking and Finance in 2006. Burcu worked at Akbank and Garanti Bank, private and retail banking. In 2014, she started to work at Bilkent University as an administrative assistant at the department of Psychology. Since August of 2016, she has been working as an administrative assistant at the Faculty of Education.
