Tag Archives: scholar

Ayan Omar – Alum and Leader

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This week, the SCSU English Department feels very fortunate to feature one of our past graduates, Ayan Omar.

Ms. Omar currently teaches Language Arts at St. Cloud Technical High School. Her students are very fortunate to be learning from such a tremendous leader.

In her words:

“When I was a little girl, a black-Somali-Muslim refugee little girl, earning a master’s degree in English never seemed imaginable. Earning a master’s degree in English Studies at St. Cloud State solidified my ambitious refugee narrative and community efforts. Like many great writers, growing up, reading became my vehicle to success. Books buried my failures and inspired my successes. Gifted writers taught me how to express myself more eloquently. I fell in love with language as an art. Even today, amid the chaos and division of society, I maintain my faith in a better world by reading one book at a time. In my earlier years, Maya Angelou, in her book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, validated that all my experiences color the storyline of my life. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his book The Scarlet Letter, branded my otherness as a pearl, despite what those in power might think. Lastly, the great writers, Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau satiated my curiosity of transcendence. Their writings inspired me to practice intentional listening in search of a universal truth. Reading provided me a clear path to knowledge and pushed me toward civic engagement.

The English Studies graduate program at St. Cloud State fostered my personal growth. For instance, my thesis evaluated the goodness of black women using three of Toni Morrison’s greatest artifacts: The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Sula. These three creative works expose the conflicting disposition and the unconscious bias held toward black women’s goodness by society. With the help of Dr. Monica Pelaez, I uncovered how Morrison writes progressively and pragmatically about black women and for black women. The continuous support, patience, hard questions, and immense knowledge of Dr. Pelaez allowed me to narrow down my topic, structure my thesis, and revise continuously. Her insightful comments allowed me to learn and produce throughout the entire experience.

I am forever grateful to Toni Morrison and the faculty at St. Cloud State’s English department, specifically Dr. Monica Pelaez, Dr. Constance Perry, Dr. Judith Dorn, and Dr. Christopher Lehman, for their insightful guidance.”

If that isn’t inspiring, then I don’t know what is. We have such an esteemed faculty in our English department, and Ms. Omar does a great job highlighting that fact. We are so proud, as a department, to have been a part of Ms. Omar’s life and we are excited to see where her journey takes her.

Are you interested in learning more about Ms. Omar? 

Click here to read more about Ms. Omar and her journey!

Check out this video to hear her TED Talk!

Ms. Omar also had the opportunity to write a compelling article for the Washington Post where she discusses explaining her “faith to fearful Americans.”

If you’re still itching for more, please take the time to watch this video, a recording of “Face Value: Communication on a Human Scale,” a presentation she delivered at St. John’s University in 2019. Her story and

Last but not least, we highly encourage you to read her thesis, “What does it mean to be a good black woman?”, a study of the writings of Toni Morrison.

Former Student Published in TESL Canada Journal

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The SCSU English Department has some really amazing students, both current and former. Many of our students go on to accomplish great things! An education from St. Cloud State provides students with the skills and opportunities to reach these accomplishments.

We were recently informed of one of these accomplishments. Darren LaScotte, former SCSU English Department student, recently had one of his papers accepted for publication.

Mr. LaScotte was a student in Dr. Kim Choonkyong’s ENGL 670 (Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition) course during the Summer 2019 semester. Following the course, he submitted his final paper, a perspective piece, to TESL Canada Journal. The paper was well received and was published on their site on July 31, 2020.

The abstract to Mr. LaScotte’s piece, “Leveraging Listening Texts in Vocabulary Acquisition for Low-literate Learners” is as follows:

To date, the vast majority of research in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition has looked at reading, but relatively few studies have explored the potential for vocabulary acquisition through listening. As for participants involved, studies concerning first language (L1) acquisition have mainly focused on pre- and emergent-reading children, whereas those concerning L2 acquisition comprised learners already highly literate in their L1. Like other research areas of second language acquisition (SLA), learners with low or no literacy in their L1 have been virtually neglected in these studies. Clearly, who we study determines what we know in SLA, yet there exists a significant gap in research literature regarding how understudied, low-literate (and illiterate) populations with strong oral traditions may acquire L2 vocabulary through listening. This paper attempts to bridge the gap in research on cognitive processing and L2 vocabulary acquisition through listening. In light of this, relevant pedagogical implications for low-literate populations are discussed.

Let’s support Mr. LaScotte by heading over to TESL Canada Journal’s website and reading his piece!

You can also go straight to the PDF of his article by clicking here.

If you’d like to learn more about Mr. LaScotte, click here to view his Google Site.

If you liked “Leveraging Listening Texts in Vocabulary Acquisition for Low-literate Learners,” click here to see his other publications!

Visiting Scholar from China Researches Sinclair Lewis at St. Cloud State

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Dr. Chen in front of SCSU huskyCentral Minnesota’s literary claim to fame again attracted international attention this Spring. The author of the book Sinclair Lewis and American Popular Culture, Professor Ying Chen, came from the University of Inner Mongolia, China, to spend six months as a visiting scholar in the English Department in order to work with the Sinclair Lewis Papers in University Archives.

You won’t easily find her book on Amazon.com since it is written in Chinese, but Dr. Chen is an authority in, among other things, the reception of Nobel Laureate Lewis in China after the country’s turning to the outside world during the 1980s.

Despite disruptions to her library access during Spring 2020 from COVID-19, Dr. Chen forged ahead with three articles and her first Zoom presentation to the Sinclair Lewis Society of America. Her current research focuses on comparing the Lewis’s novel and play production versions of Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. But she has made efficient use of archive time to collect electronic copies of all the documents our library holds relating to Lewis. Encountering these original papers has transformed her understanding of the novelist and enabled to discover many Sinclair Lewises in this one writer. “Before coming here, I thought of him as a hero – and now I see him as we are, ordinary people…You would think from his novels that he was very serious and skeptical, criticizing everything, but when you read his letters you find him like a kid looking for attention from others,” she added. She sees this youthful characteristic as admirable, as a driver of his open and exploring mind.

Dr. Chen in front of Ruby Cora Webster HallThe half year here, which included sitting in on TESL classes and Monica Pelaez’s advanced Literary Theory and Criticism course was a “very difficult but rewarding experience” during an era that showed both “the best and the worst of America in an important year in American history.” Dr. Chen expressed her thanks for all the support from English and from Tom Steman of Archives. The Center for International Studies assisted her with all the unexpected COVID paperwork.

 

When at her home university in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, Dr. Chen teaches the extremely popular course, Introduction to Contemporary Writers in Foreign Cultures.

If you’d like to read more about Sinclair Lewis, a native to Sauk Centre, Minnesota (roughly 45 miles from SCSU), click here!