Tri-State University’s newest language instructor will help students from Japan, China, Korea, and Saudi Arabia bridge the language gap when they begin classes on the Angola campus this fall.

The director and instructor for TSU’s English Language Center, Gail Lugo will bring international teaching experience and an advanced degree in linguistics with her as tools to equip the new TSU students with the skills they need to perform in an English-speaking college classroom.

She directed the English as a Second Language program at Indiana Tech from 1996-2004, following that with three years at the Equal Opportunity Center in Fort Wayne. Prior to that, she earned a graduate degree in linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington before embarking on a Japan missionary trip in 1987. That led to a three-year stint teaching English at a combined private junior-senior high school in Japan..

She’ll employ an intensive English program of 25-29 course hours per week to prepare them in one year for the rigor of an American college classroom. She also hopes to implement a Conversation Partner program in the community to introduce the students and help them grow accustomed to small town Indiana. She will also initiate Friday afternoon field trips to the bank and post office for education, and to Pokagon State Park and miniature golf courses for fun.

A cultural mission to Washington, D.C. last week acquainted Lugo even more fully with her future students’ needs. Almost all of her international students wish to study in TSU’s engineering programs, in all of the fields, she said.