On Friday, February 16, 2024, the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Program, Department of English and Applied Linguistics, College of Liberal Arts, welcomed Dr. Muhammed Kamal Khan, Associate Professor at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Islamabad, Pakistan University to Hawaiʻi Pacific University's campus.
Dr. Khan gave a presentation in the TESOL Program's Applied Linguistics Talks series on "Re)creating the multilingual TESOL classroom: Using materials based on indigenous languages in EFL setting," sharing his research on designing teaching activities to empower minority language speakers in the English classroom in Pakistan.
During a Meet and Greet prior to the talk, Dr. Khan interacted with members of the HPU 'ohana including Prof. Marc Gilbert, Associate Vice President of Advancement Tara Wilson, Vice President of Marketing Jeff Rich, and TESOL faculty and students.
On Saturday, February 17, Dr. Khan joined TESOL faculty and students for a full day at the annual conference of Hawaii TESOL at Brigham Young University - Hawaii, Laie, where he presented another talk on reflective practices for English teachers.
Dr. Khan is the founder and president of PakTESOL, a national organization for English teachers in Pakistan. His home university, AIOU, is a public university with a focus on distance education, delivering more than 2,000 courses to an average student enrollment of more than 1 million students. It has earned UNESCO NOMA award and Raja Roy Sing award for innovative strategies for imparting literacy to the rural masses.
Dr. Khan is currently a Fulbright scholar at the University of Maryland College Park, and his visit to Hawaiʻi Pacific University is funded by Fulbright's Outreach Lecturing Fund.