Southeast Asian Language Instruction
The Harvard University Asia Center and the Department of South Asian Studies are pleased to announce the hires of Lady Aileen Orsal as Preceptor in Filipino Languages (Tagalog) and Sakti Suryani as Preceptor in Indonesian. Beginning in Fall 2023, Elementary and Intermediate Filipino (Tagalog) courses and Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced Indonesian courses will be offered. These two languages will join Vietnamese (taught by Senior Preceptor Hoa Le in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations) as the for-credit Southeast Asian languages currently offered at Harvard.
Filipino (Tagalog) is currently the fourth most spoken language in the U.S. (after English, Spanish, and Chinese) and will be taught for the first time at Harvard in its nearly four-hundred-year history. Thanks to a generous gift, this new Preceptor position is funded through an endowment that ensures that Filipino languages will always be taught at Harvard.
Lady Aileen Orsal began her teaching career as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University in 2018, where she assisted in the teaching of Filipino at the introductory and intermediate levels. Since then, she has taught Filipino at Cavite State University in the Philippines and this summer she was an Instructor in the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prior to coming to the U.S., Lady Aileen received her B.A. in Mass Communication from Cavite State University in the Philippines in 2012, and her M.A. in Philippine Studies in 2017. She also earned an M.A. in Communication from Northern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in Philippine Studies from De La Salle University in the Philippines.
Lady Aileen is a dedicated, creative, and effective teacher who is committed to being a leader in Filipino language pedagogy. She also has an impressive background in Philippine Studies, including Philippine culture, history, and politics. She has conducted research and published on traditional tattoo art, the coffee culture of the Philippines, and the use of music in political campaign jingles.
Sakti Suryani is from Wonogiri in Central Java. She began her academic career at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she earned a B.A. in English in 2011. After graduating she returned to Indonesia to teach English in Central and East Java. In 2014, Sakti came back to the U.S. and began teaching Indonesian at the University of Wisconsin and for the Defense Critical Language and Culture Program (DCLCP). She has taught previously at the University of Montana, Missoula, and, more recently, became a Lecturer in Indonesian Language at the University of Wisconsin. During her time at the University of Wisconsin she also pursued an M.S. degree in World Language Education (with a focus on Curriculum and Instruction), which she completed in 2022. She has earned a well-deserved reputation as a dynamic and enthusiastic teacher of Indonesian and has experience teaching Javanese.
Sakti's academic work supports her commitment to teaching language and culture, which is evident from her leadership role in the Indonesian Language Team at the Southeast Asian Language Council (SEALC) symposium, where the focus is on developing new reading materials for use in Indonesian language instruction. Sakti has also served for two years as the Indonesian Language Coordinator for the well-regarded Southeast Asian Summer Institute (SEASSI) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has just begun a three-year term as Secretary of the Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages (COTSEAL). She has a long-standing interest in Indonesian Gamelan music and has performed with University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Javanese Gamelan Music Ensemble.
We are extremely happy to welcome Lady Aileen Orsal and Sakti Suryani to the Harvard community. We also look forward to working with them to develop, highlight, and showcase the richness and variety of the history and cultures of their respective countries through events on the Harvard campus.
....................................................................................................................................................................................................
Please consider subscribing to the Southeast Asia Spotlight, the Asia Center's weekly mailing of Southeast Asia events and resources.