Senior Lecturer in the Middle Eastern Studies Department, Professor Jamila Chahboun, has been awarded the 2023 Dean of the Faculty Teaching Award.
Jamila Chahboun is a senior lecturer of Arabic in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College and a former Fulbright Scholar. She is a co-advisor of the Arabic Language Community-Global Village. She teaches all levels of Arabic language instruction at Dartmouth. This month, Chahboun received the 2023 Dean of the faculty teaching Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and education.
Chahboun's research interests encompass proficiency measurement, Arabic language teaching methods and pedagogy, and teacher training. She has co-authored a Darija (Moroccan Arabic) instruction book titled "Labass" and currently applies her expertise in Arabic pedagogy to incorporate Darija into the Arabic curriculum at Dartmouth. Additionally, she is actively engaged in the development of an upper-level Arabic course specifically designed for heritage students at Dartmouth.
With a master's degree in social justice in Intercultural Relations from the SIT Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, VT, Chahboun brings a comprehensive understanding of intercultural dynamics to her teaching and research. She also holds a BA in English linguistics from Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra, Morocco.
Before joining Dartmouth, Chahboun accumulated over a decade of experience as a language instructor, cross-cultural educator, and language trainer at the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning in Rabat, Morocco. She was a program coordinator for various international exchange programs, including SIT Study Abroad, Elderhostel, and Experiment in International Living (EIL). As a Fulbright scholar in 2003, she taught Arabic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Chahboun also contributed to the Arabic programs at Marlboro College and the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont, where she played a pivotal role in redesigning the Arabic curriculum.
Chahboun's expertise extends to her role as a consultant and curriculum design specialist at SIT Study Abroad, where she actively participated in conceptualizing and designing Arabic language programs in North Africa and the Middle East. In addition, she serves as an applications reader for the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), a cultural and educational program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Her responsibility involves selecting deserving students who will receive the scholarship.
An active member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Chahboun has presented on various topics related to study abroad, language pedagogy and curricula, and languages and dialects in the Middle East and North Africa. At Dartmouth, she contributes to the American University - Dartmouth project as a reader, assisting in the selection process for Funded Leave-Term Internships and the For-Credit Exchange Program in the American University of Kuwait.