SAFLI Staff

Razima Chowdhury

SAFLI Pedagogy Coordinator

Razima Chowdhury is the senior lecturer of Bangla/Bengali at Cornell University. She also speaks Hindi. She received her MA in TESOL from the Institute of Education, University College London. Ms. Chowdhury also has an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT, and a BA in the English Language from the University of Dhaka. She received the Fulbright FLTA in AY 2007-08 and the Centenary Scholarship for MA program for AY 2008-2009 awarded by the Centenary Scholarship Award, Institute of Education, University College London (UCL).

Ms. Chowdhury’s career spans over 17 years as an instructor of ESL and Bangla, tester, teacher trainer, translator, and interpreter in Bangladesh and the US. She is a certified ACTFL ILR OPI tester and WPT SOBL rater. She worked as the LCTL Pedagogy Coordinator for SASLI in 2021and 2019. Prior to her position as a Pedagogy Coordinator, she taught Bangla at SASLI from 2016 to 2018. In addition to her teaching experience in the US, she administered and developed intensive immersion language programs for Bangla in Dhaka, Bangladesh for Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program, Fulbright, Boren, and Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) award recipients as the CLS institute director and as the Deputy Director of Bangla Language Institute at Independent University Bangladesh from 2010-2016.

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Purnima Thakur

RFLI Program Coordinator

pthakur4@wisc.edu

Purnima Thakur is the Program Coordinator for the Regional Flagship Language Initiatives (RFLI) servicing Indonesian (IFLI), South Asian (SAFLI), and Turkish (TURFLI) programs. She holds an MPhil in Linguistics (Graduate Center, CUNY) with a focus on Second Language Acquisition and Phonology. She is certified to teach German as a foreign language (Grünes Diplom, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Pune), and English as a Second Language (CELTA, New York).

Purnima grew up in Pune, India, speaking Marathi, Hindi, and English. Before moving to the United States, she taught German at the Max Mueller Bhavan, Pune for two years. In the United States, she has taught ESL, Hindi, Marathi, and Introductory Linguistics. A language teacher at heart, she is also an avid language learner and has studied some French, Italian, Gujarati, and Punjabi. Outside of work, you will find her catching up on the latest movies and shows, reading poetry, or taking long walks.

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Michael McPhee

RFLI Administrative Assistant

mjmcphee@wisc.edu

Michael McPhee is the Program Administrative Assistant for the Regional Flagship Language Initiatives (RFLI) and American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS). In his RFLI role, he services the Southeast Asian (SEAFLI), South Asian (SAFLI), and Turkish (TURFLI) programs. Before working at UW-Madison, he served as the Program Coordinator for Student Affairs at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington where he also graduated with a B.A. in Criminology. He has traveled extensively to 27 countries, including a 4-month solo backpacking excursion across Africa, Asia, and Europe in 2023. As an aspiring polyglot, he speaks Spanish proficiency and is currently learning Arabic. Outside of work, you can find Michael playing tennis, reading, or biking the urbanist streets of Madison.

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Ryan Goble

SASLI Program Coordinator

rgoble@wisc.edu

Ryan Goble is the WISLI coordinator for the South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI) and the Less Commonly Taught Languages Career Fair. Before joining the Language Program Office, Goble served as the project coordinator for the Wisconsin Language Roadmap Initiative at the UW-Madison Language Institute, collaborating with diverse leaders and lending logistical support to promote, strengthen, and expand equitable access to world language education. In addition, as a project assistant at the UW-Madison Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA), Goble carried out the communications strategy for this Title VI National Resource Center, and he coordinated the Pushkin Summer Institute-Abroad of the National Security Language Institute for Youth, an intensive language learning opportunity for high schoolers to advance their Russian-language skills in Latvia. With an educational background in applied linguistics and second language acquisition, Goble has extensive experience teaching English as an additional language in various settings, including here at UW-Madison and abroad in Peru, and his research specialization focuses on intersections between bi/multilingual and professional development in the career advising context. You can connect with Ryan Goble on LinkedIn here.

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Sarah Beckham

Associate Director, Center for South Asia

sbeckham@wisc.edu

Dr. Sarah Beckham has previously served as the Hindi-Urdu Pedagogy Specialist for the South Asian Flagship Languages Initiative (SAFLI), South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI), and Project Global Officer (GO) programs at UW-Madison, and she has also been a Hindi Lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.  Beckham specializes in sound systems of South Asian languages, with a research focus on contact linguistics and loanword phonology in Marathi.  In addition, she is co-founding member of the Punjabi Boliyan Research Initiative (PBRI).

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Laura Hammond

Director, Language Program Office (LPO)

laura.hammond@wisc.edu

Laura Hammond is the Founding Director of the Language Program Office (LPO – launched in January 2021) and won the Chancellor’s Award for excellence in leadership in 2020. She has been the SASLI program coordinator since the inaugural Summer of SASLI in 2003. Laura has a BFA in ceramic art from the University of Washington-Seattle and is working towards an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Laura has been overseas for work, travel, and education. As an art student, Laura completed a semester in Rome with the University of Washington – Seattle. Besides learning how to drink Chianti and order pizza by the ounce, Laura traveled throughout Italy delving into the art and architecture. From 1990-1991, she taught English in Taipei, Taiwan and travelled extensively throughout Asia, where she learned Mandarin and Indonesian. In 1986-1987, she also lived and worked in London as a work exchange student on the Council for International Educational Exchange. These travel experiences have given her an important edge in understanding the specific challenges of language acquisition as well as the need for language skills for any student who is interested in study, work, research or travel abroad.

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Felecia Lucht

Director, Wisconsin Intensive Summer Language Institutes (WISLI)

felecia.lucht@wisc.edu

Felecia Lucht is the Director of the Wisconsin Intensive Summer Language Institutes (WISLI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Dr. Lucht has an MA and PhD in German Linguistics with a PhD minor in Second Language Acquisition from UW-Madison.  She holds an MA in International Affairs with a concentration in Comparative and Regional Studies from the School of International Service (SIS) at the American University in Washington, DC.  She has a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where she completed a double major in German and International Studies, and a minor in Russian.  Prior to her role as WISLI Director, Lucht taught language classes and courses in second language acquisition, foreign language methodology, and foreign language testing.  Lucht has studied German and Russian (and some Dutch), and is currently learning Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese.

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