New Senior Associate for International Education
Thursday, August 17, 2000
As a response to expanding interest in language issues and needs relative to international education, NFLC has invited Dr. Thomas W. Gething, most recently director of the Southeast Asia Center and chairperson of the Southeast Asian Studies Program at the University of Washington-Seattle, to join NFLC as a senior associate. Gething began his duties on August 1, 2000.
While Gething will contribute broadly to ongoing NFLC projects and planning, his main focus is on matters relevant to international studies and foreign language education. His expertise will be drawn on in developing research, policy, and intervention initiatives for the international education community in order to tap the resources of the NFLC. Gething will also serve as the system manager for the EELIAS ("Evaluation of Exchange, Language, and International Area Studies") project, the on-line system for evaluating the impact of U.S. government-supported efforts under Title VI/F-H.
One of the founding members and current chairperson of the Language Committee of the Southeast Asia Council-Association for Asian Studies, Gething has also been active in NCOLCTL and COTSEAL. In addition, he is the executive director of the Consortium for the Advancement of the Study of Thai and has frequently served as its field director of the intensive Thai program in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Gething has also been the director and the language director for SEASSI, the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute. As a consultant Gething has performed program evaluations on several U.S. campuses and also for private and government institutions in Thailand and Laos.
Gething has taught or directed programs for Southeast Asian languages at the University of Michigan, Ohio University, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, and the University of Hawai'i. His publications deal with language and culture issues, and semantics of Thai and Lao. His textbooks for Thai are used widely in the U.S. and internationally.
