Agnes Nemeskeri has a “love affair with teaching.”
Although she says she has spent “several lifetimes at Carleton,” she has finally begun a full-time teaching career at the university in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies as an Italian instructor. “Back in ’87 I wanted to teach full-time, and now I have finally reached my goal,” says Nemeskeri with a smile.
“I feel [teaching] is my calling,” she confesses. Proof of this is that a former student was so inspired by her teaching that she enrolled in the University of Bologna in Italy to study translation. Nemeskeri receives periodic updates from her and two of the student’s postcards from Italy are proudly displayed on her desk.
Nemeskeri says she does her best to encourage the students to “make Italian their own.” Her approach is designed to involve everyone in the classroom work while creating a comfortable atmosphere in which ideas can be openly traded.
Nemeskeri completed her Master’s in Italian in Europe where she received a teaching certificate at the same time. She then completed her second Master’s in Canadian Studies at Carleton and went on to complete coursework toward a doctoral degree at the University of Ottawa. Nemeskeri intends to complete her doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics at Carleton when the program receives approval at the doctoral level. Nemeskeri explains that she became involved in teaching here as a grad student by volunteering to do whatever was needed in what was formerly the Italian department and was then offered some teaching opportunities.
Although the instructor is quite busy teaching the equivalent of four credits each term, her research interests play a great role in her classroom teaching. Her interests include teacher education, methodology of foreign-language teaching, and contemporary Italian literature as her first thesis focused on an early 20th Century Italian literary movement.
Nemeskeri has just completed teaching an intensive beginners’ course, and will continue teaching a beginner’s and an intermediate class, along with a new intensive course at the intermediate level, in the winter term. She is looking forward to the challenges of the next semester.