Smith earns honor from Indiana Chapter of American Association of Teachers of German

Alexis Smith, Ph.D., associate professor of German, has been recognized as the collegiate German teacher of the year by the Indiana Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG).

AATG is a professional organization for primary, secondary and university teachers of German in the U.S. and Europe. The organization promotes the study of the diverse German-speaking world and strives to prepare students as multilingual participants in a globalized society.

Smith has revitalized the German major since joining Hanover’s faculty in 2019. She has created two tracks for majors, German and German studies, and a slate of new courses. Her array of German-language courses range from beginning and intermediate German to “Cities and Regions,” “Crossing Boundaries,” “Intercultural Communication” and “German for the Professions,” among others.

In addition to her classroom efforts, Smith has both taken the College’s Modern Languages and Cultures Department into the local community and brought German educators and creators to campus.

Since her arrival on campus, she has organized a series of free German-language classes for area residents and directed after-school classes for local K-12 students through SPARK for German, a joint project of AATG and the Goethe-Institut. She arranged presentations by German slam poet Eva-Lisa Finzi and German comic artist and author Illi Anna Heger, as well as a screening of the short film “Masel Tov Cocktail.” Last September, she served as co-leader of the AATG Indiana Chapter’s on-campus immersion workshop, “Theaterpädagogik,” which focused on the incorporation of theatre into German education.

Smith will be recognized and presented with a plaque during AATG’s business meeting at the annual Indiana Foreign Language Teachers Association (IFLTA) conference in November. Through the AATG honor, she is eligible for the IFLTA’s Foreign Language Teacher of the Year Award, which will be selected in August.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in music and German from the University of Northern Colorado. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Oregon.