Dr. Gillian Weatherley

Gillian Weatherley is the 200-level French Language coordinator at the University of Kansas. She completed her PhD at the University of Kansas, in seventeenth-century short stories, exploring several authors’ approaches to cultural identity and the desire to change these designations.  She teaches language and literature courses in the department of French, Italian and Francophone Studies. Dr Weatherley has taught French and Spanish in various countries. As a result of her teaching experience in New Zealand, which has a national curriculum, but no textbooks aligned with it, Dr Weatherley became interested in Second Language Acquisition, its methodology and best practices to help students acquire language. Since her time at KU, she has piloted an intermediate book and provided extra materials to fill in gaps to ensure that sequencing of material helps students master and deepen their knowledge.  As the coordinator of the 200- level of the French Language Program she is responsible for the second-year language curriculum and supervision of GTAs and lecturers who teach at that level.  She has also worked to produce a two semester 300-level course for bridging the introductory courses to higher courses for majors and minors. She has also included a Digital Humanities project in a 400-level literature course, to help the students engage with texts in a different way, and work collaboratively to produce maps of the texts. She enjoys helping students master the intricacies of language, understand cultural differences, and literature, and likes to find ways in which they are active learners in the class.