- Email:
- bokelo@iu.edu
Beatrice Ng’uono Okelo is a Swahili Lecturer and the Assistant African Languages Coordinator in the IU African Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics, with a concentration in African Languages and Linguistics, and a Minor in African Studies, from Indiana University. She also holds an M.A. in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor of Education (Arts) degree in Music and Kiswahili from Kenyatta University (Nairobi, Kenya).
Dr. Okelo has taught Swahili both as a second language in Kenya, and as a foreign language in the United States. Since 2007, she has worked in various instructional roles in the U.S., offering Swahili courses to learners of different language levels and age ranges from elementary school through postgraduate studies. She has taught Swahili at various U.S. universities and for a number of language programs, including University of Wisconsin-Madison; Indiana University; Baylor University; Fulbright FLTA program; Princeton University Swahili Summer Study Abroad program; Yale University’s Yale African Language Initiative (YALI); Swahili STARTALK programs at Indiana University and at the Belanno Language School in Neenah, Wisconsin; and the Indiana University Project Global Officer (Project GO) program, a Department of Defense initiative for Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) students. She has also taught Swahili for specialized fields such as cellular biology, American history of education, and inorganic chemistry to Indiana University Swahili Flagship students.
Dr. Okelo has participated in a number foreign language teaching training workshops focused on African languages and Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs). For example, “Second Language Acquisition Certificate Training for African Language Instructors” and “Swahili STARTALK Summer Professional Development Program” that were both offered by the National African Languages Resource Center’s Summer Institute. She is also a trained Master-Teacher of Swahili instructors and other instructors of Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) in the U.S. She has trained language instructors on different language teaching and learning topics in various workshops, for example, the 2022 African Flagship Languages Initiative (AFLI) Program Instructors’ and Language Partners’ Workshop, organized by the University of Florida and during the 2019 International CHAUKIDU (“The Global Association for the Promotion of Swahili”) Conference which was held in Kyambogo University, Uganda.
Dr. Okelo also has extensive qualifications and experience as a Swahili linguist, Swahili pedagogist, and as a trained and certified Defense Language Proficiency Test (5th generation - DLPT5) external reviewer and Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) tester for Swahili, among other qualifications. As a DLPT5 external reviewer for Swahili, she has occasionally reviewed Swahili proficiency tests that are mainly taken by military linguists and other linguists working for the U.S. Department of Defense. She has worked as a consultant, language tester, test reviewer, test developer, and as a Dholuo and Swahili linguist with several organizations in the U.S. and Australia.