GSC Steering Committee

Haoshan (Sally) Ren

Co-chair

Haoshan (Sally) Ren is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL at Georgia State University. Her prior professional experience includes instructing undergraduate and graduate-level academic writing and speaking courses, item design and rating for English proficiency tests for adult L2 speakers, and leading research-based ESP workshops for international working professionals in fields such as law, economics, and biomedical sciences. Currently, at Georgia State, she serves as the president of the Graduate Students Association and the graduate student representative of the Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL. She is also the graduate student representative of the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests include language assessment, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, and teacher education. She is a strong proponent of interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research collaborations. As the Co-chair of the GSC Steering Committee, her responsibilities include serving as the graduate student representative in the AAAL Executive Council, serving as a voting member of the Fund for the Future of Applied Lingusitics (FFAL) Board of Trustees, collaborating with the AAAL conference planning committee, co-leading Steering Committee meetings and tasks, and overseeing the planning of graduate student events at the AAAL conference. She can be reached at hren2@gsu.edu.

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Laxmi Prasad Ojha

Co-chair

Laxmi is a PhD student in Curriculum Instruction and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His prior experiences include working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Minnesota State University, Mankato,  Lecturer at Department of English Education, Tribhuvan University, Nepal and teaching in K-12 contexts in Nepal. Laxmi also served Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) as secretary, membership secretary and member. His research interests include multilingualism, language ideologies, bilingual education, language policy, TESOL, and teacher education. His current projects include investigating family language policy and identity in transnational families, teacher agency in language policy appropriation, and social media as a site for youth activism and promotion of minoritized language and culture in multilingual contexts. As a co-chair on the GSC steering committee, Laxmi's responsibilities include co-planning and co-leading Steering Committee meetings, overseeing the graduate student events at the AAAL conference, collaborating with the AAAL conference planning committee, and attend AAAL conference and business meetings. He can be reached at ojhalaxm@msu.edu.

Josiah Murphy

Secretary

Josiah Murphy is a doctoral student in the Linguistics program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, where she studies how to document and advocate for endangered languages. She has worked with the Deaf community in Northeast Ohio, and taught English in China, Cambodia, and Ohio. Her research interests also include translanguaging in the writing of multilinguals; the effect of individual differences on vocabulary acquisition; and the intersection of translation, religion, and language loss/preservation in ethnolinguistic minority communities. As secretary of the GSC Steering Committee, Josiah’s responsibilities include providing logistical support for GSC meetings, co-leading planning of conference events for grad students, leading the Diversity Subcommittee, and spearheading graduate student initiatives. When she’s not working, Josiah can be found performing folk music, tabletop-gaming, and punning around. She can be reached at murphyj2@hawaii.edu.

Svetlana Koltovskaia

Member-at-large

Svetlana Koltovskaia is a Ph.D. candidate in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Her research interests include computer-assisted language learning, L2 writing, intercultural pragmatics, and genre analysis. Her research on student engagement with automated feedback has been published in Assessing Writing Journal. As a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) at the OSU English Department, Svetlana currently holds the position of the Assistant Director of the International Composition Program (ICP). Apart from that, Svetlana also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses to domestic and international students, including Grammar (ENGL 4013), Technical Writing (ENGL 3323), Research Writing for International Graduate Students (ENGL 5695), and Composition II (ENGL 1223). Svetlana held multiple administrative and leadership positions throughout her studies at OSU, including a Multilingual Specialist, Online Supervisor, and Multilingual Inquiry Group Leader at the OSU writing center as well as a Vice President of TESLing Student Organization and Program Chair of TESOL & Applied Linguistics Spring Forum at the OSU English Department. Svetlana is a former Fulbright FLTA who taught Russian at Marshall University, West Virginia. Svetlana holds M.A. in TESOL from Central Michigan University and M.A. and B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literature from Mirny Polytechnic Institute (Yakutia, Russia). She can be reached at skoltov@okstate.edu.

Stefan Markus Vogel

Member-at-large

Stefan is a PhD candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. A member of the Writing Program since 2014, he teaches professional and technical writing as well as first-year composition to domestic and international students. Stefan’s professional and academic interests include language program administration and educational leadership, second language teacher professionalization, second language writing, discourse studies, and multilingualism. In his dissertation, Stefan explores L2 writing teachers’ leadership roles and practices in their institutional contexts, particularly as they are shaped by, emerge from, and intersect with professional development in collaborative spaces. Throughout his graduate career, he has held multiple service, admin, and leadership positions, including co-chair of the University of Arizona’s English Graduate Union (EGU), co-chair of EGU’s Committee for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI), and Writing Program Placement Advisor. Stefan holds an M.A. in English as a Second Language from the University of Arizona and an M.Ed. in English, French, and Educational Studies with a concentration in foreign language teaching from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He can be reached at stefanvogel@email.arizona.edu.

Lupe Rincon-Mendoza

Member-at-large

​Lupe Rincon-Mendoza is a PhD candidate in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. Her previous professional experience is working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at California State University, San Bernardino, and as Lecturer at the University of La Verne. At Penn State, she assists in the dissemination of scholarship in conjunction with the Migration Studies Project, and also teaches in the ESL writing program. Lupe has also held various service roles, which include being a member of the Graduate Alliance for Diversity and Inclusion (GADI), and in graduate-student led search committees for the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Her research interests include academic socialization, sociolinguistics, and sociocultural theory. Her dissertation focuses on determining how interactions shape how graduate students in the Humanities are socialized into their profession, and how they use language to think collectively with others in seminar and extra-curricular professional development activities. She can be reached at gzr28@psu.edu.