Shannon Millikin

Experience

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  Mercy Home for Boys and Girls

  Nov 2005 - May 2015

  Youth Mentor, Volunteer

  Mentoring one-on-one with at risk youth. Being a consistent, dependable adult role model, exploring, learning, teaching, talking about goals. My last mentee and I were together for 6 years!After my last mentee and I graduated from the program, I continued to volunteer at the new mentor training sessions.

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  Loyola University Chicago

  Aug 2011 - Dec 2012

  Instructor

  I instruct the graduate course on foreign language teaching methodology. It is a course on second language acquisition research and how that applies to the foreign language classroom. Much language knowledge is implicit/unconscious and to foster that type of language fluency you need a unique classroom and instructional practices that are informed by the learner's mental processes.I am happy to report that Loyola has hired a full time, tenure-track linguistics professor to continue this work! Show less

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  Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights

  Oct 2014 - May 2016

  Refugee Family Mentor, Volunteer

  Helping refugees get established in Chicago - collecting donations, setting up their home, empowering them with the ability to navigate the city and it's infrastructure, being a warm, friendly contact, etc.

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  Northwestern University

  Sept 2016 - now

  First and foremost - Teaching Spanish language and culture. You may have noticed that language knowledge is different than other types of knowledge. Often speakers can tell you when something is right or wrong grammatically or phonetically and yet, they can't tell you why. This is implicit linguistic knowledge and develops through acquisition, not memorization or traditional learning. Second Language Acquisition research informs my teaching and curricular design. Curricular development includes redesigning the Intermediate Spanish curriculum to prioritize comprehensible input, functional tasks and the three modes of communication, and the development of cross-cultural competence. I also created and teach Northwestern's first Spanish Phonetics and Phonology course, a special topics course on Colombia, and completed 2 large video streaming projects with supporting materials. Most recently I have secured two grants to improve representation and equity in our Intermediate Spanish curricular materials. These projects brought our students in contact with diverse social, racial, and linguistic identities within the Spanish speaking world through film and real conversation with native speakers. The inaugural eTandem project created 400+ hours of contact between our students and students in Colombia and Mexico in the first quarter!*Course Coordinator, Intermediate Spanish 121, 2020-present*Spanish Placement Coordinator 2014-present*Equity Representative, Search Committee, 2019, 2022*Assistant Director of the Spanish Language Program 2016-2020*Council on Language Instruction, member and Funds Committee member*International Studies Residential College, fellow*Knitwestern, faculty advisor Show less

  • Associate Professor of Instruction

    Sept 2019 - now

  • Associate Professor of Instruction

    Sept 2019 - now

  • Assistant Professor of Instruction

    Sept 2006 - now

  • Assistant Director of the Spanish Language Program

    Sept 2016 - Aug 2020