Online Degrees

Bonnie Odiorne, Ph.D.
Associate Faculty

Contact info:

Phone: 203.596.4629
Email: bodiorne@post.edu

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Biography

Academic Background:

• PhD, MA in French.  The Johns Hopkins University
• B.A. magna cum laude Allegheny College, Phi Beta Kappa, Alice Kemp Moessner prize in foreign languages.
• PhD focus: “M’introduire dans ton histoire: Mallarmé, Critical Theory, and Poetry’s Political Economies” late 19th century French literature, and time period, the belle époque; critical theory including philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalytic theory, political economy theories.

Teaching Background:

Dr. Odiorne is currently the Director of the Writing Center at Post University. She is also an adjunct professor of CSA, French, English Composition, Composition and Literature, Reading Comprehension and Critical Thinking;

Dr. Odiorne has also held teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley as an Associate Professor of French and The Johns Hopkins University as an Acting Instructor of French.

Professional Background:

After teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Odiorne held varied positions in adult community education, integrating basic literacy and English as a Second Language instruction, technology, workplace competence and preparedness, and family involvement in adult and children’s education. Positions included training of volunteer tutors, administration of tutor/student pairing, assessment, and other record-keeping; development of basic skills (Reading, Writing, Math, Communications) curricular development and program design integrating technology basic skills and employability/employment competencies. Positions also included benchmark, formative as well as formal assessment, and project-based education with a constructivist student-centered emphasis.

Teaching Philosophy:

Because of her unique background combining the ‘reality’ of goals-based adult community education, and integrating a foreign language teaching background into the demanding task of teaching speaking and writing skills to underserved and undereducated adults, Dr. Odiorne brings a skills set of theoretical and research-based best practices in basic skills instruction along with the discipline and rigor of the highest academic standards. Thus she is able to integrate writing center best practices with a broad experience of academically underperforming students, as well as lending her expertise in teaching English as another Language (she prefers the term ESOL, as many International students have more than one language before learning English). While Post International students are currently the Chinese students, Post nevertheless has a ‘hidden’ ESOL population whose language proficiency issues usually do not surface in speaking, but in writing, and thus her time at the Writing Center is often spent assisting these students. Her philosophy of education is of necessity student centered; having taught adult puts aside the “Sage on the Stage” mentality in favor of ‘meeting students where they are,’ Facilitating student needs, goals and interests. She elicits active student participation in a variety of activities (discussion, group work, projects, online or print-based) and, having acquired a depth of experience in online and hybrid teaching, she believes in an integration of traditional print-based and online instruction. “Digital Natives” may be fluent in web-based activities and other forms of telecommunication, but their facility with applications software (e.g. MS Word) may often be weak, making it necessary for “Digital Immigrants” to form a bridge between traditional academic expectations and new ways of thinking, learning, and processing information and language. Applicable YouTube references are “Did you Know?” and “Pay Attention!”

Personal Background:

Dr. Odiorne hobbies include reading, singing. She is also very involved in volunteer work.