This week North West University in South Africa appointed Associate Professor Andrea Parmegiani of BCC’s Department of English Language and Literature as an “Extraordinary Professor in the Research Focus Area: Understanding and Processing Language in Complex Settings.”

”This title will make it possible for me to obtain research funds from the South African National Research foundation to support the scholarly projects I have been involved with in collaboration with colleagues from this institution,” says Professor Parmegiani. “These projects focus on multilingual pedagogies and are of relevance for BCC too because they will help educators use their students’ native languages and dialects as resources mastering academic English and content across disciplines.”

Professor Parmegiani will be involved in the training of undergraduate and, in particular, postgraduate students who are training to become language specialists and educators.

“This appointment means a lot to me because I went to graduate school in South Africa and although I moved back to the U.S., mainly because I was hoping to get a job on a tenure-track at BCC, South Africa continued to have a special place in my heart, my mind and my research.”