Concordia Nebraska Professor of Education Vicki Anderson shares TESOL expertise at university, in Ethiopia

Concordia University, Nebraska Director of TESOL, ESL and Modern Language Programs Vicki Anderson also serves the university as a professor of education. She is responsible for overseeing the operations, academic content, recruitment of students and accreditation reporting of the undergraduate and graduate TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and ESL (English as a Second Language) endorsement programs. She also writes curriculum for and teaches in those programs. In addition, she manages the ASL (American Sign Language) and undergraduate Mandarin Chinese programs on campus and serves on various committees in the education department and for the university as a whole. She has served at the university since 2012. 

This semester, she is serving in Ethiopia and also remotely teaching her Concordia Nebraska education and ESL classes. The Ethiopia opportunity began as a request from the Mekane Yesus Seminary, which is the education arm of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church, a Lutheran fellowship of 12 million plus members.  

“The seminary reached out to Missouri-based Mission of Christ Network to conduct a study to see what the seminary could do about the level of English proficiency on the seminary’s campus,” she explained. “The Ethiopian government requires all post-secondary education to be given in English, but the seminary realized its faculty and students were not up to the needed standards for this to go well.” 

Anderson volunteers with Mission of Christ Network as an ESL teaching consultant. She worked with a small team two years ago to conduct an onsite-in-Ethiopia feasibility study to see what needed to be done. The resulting report suggested three areas of intervention which could improve the English situation: faculty development in teaching techniques that support English learning while teaching in the various content areas, development of an intensive English language teaching program for students to take for one academic year before they begin their theological studies, and the institution of an English language resource center to serve as a writing lab and to provide collaborative help for theology professors with English source materials.  

Concordia Nebraska is blessed with a great many faculty and staff who fervently love God and His people and who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to help students succeed. May the university never lose sight of the ‘big picture’ of how God is using the institution to further His kingdom!

“For the past two summers, I have traveled to Ethiopia to give week-long faculty development seminars to their more than 100 faculty members,” said Anderson. “This semester, I am involved in the kick-off of the intensive English program working as a sort of volunteer director on a team of four teachers, mentoring, helping with assessment and assessment decisions, choosing curriculum and more. We are serving 40 students, teaching classes in reading, writing, listening and speaking, grammar, conversation and vocabulary, giving the students five to six hours per day of English language instruction. There are limited resources, but we are already seeing significant progress!” 

Anderson is teaching writing, grammar review and vocabulary classes as well as overseeing conversation hours, grammar review sessions and input hours where students read together in English from simplified English news articles or Bible readings. Anderson and her team have also introduced students to the Easy English Bible app. 

“They are able to use their phones to access a Bible that they can use to help them learn English, even if we are unable to get them photocopies of Bible texts,” said Anderson. 

Anderson arrived in mid- August for this semester’s classes, flying directly from Hong Kong where she had worked for five weeks with Concordia Nebraska students doing VBS and academic ESL program work in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. She will remain in Ethiopia until about December 22, which is almost the end of their semester. It is interesting to note that Ethiopians do not use the Gregorian calendar. Their semester ends on December 27, and Christmas is celebrated in January.  

“After I return to the United States, I anticipate that I will still be consulting with the remaining intensive English program teachers regularly via video call, providing assistance with assessment and figuring out how to interpret assessment data, writing progress reports for the seminary administration, advising about curriculum and mentoring the teachers,” she said. 

Anderson said there are many things she loves about her work, but said nothing beats using her gifts and skills to train people whose teaching will impact the world as part of God’s kingdom. 

“I enjoy so many aspects of my job, but getting to make connections between different state, regional, national, and international entities as I use my English teaching is pretty special,” she said. “Concordia Nebraska is blessed with a great many faculty and staff who fervently love God and His people and who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to help students succeed. May the university never lose sight of the ‘big picture’ of how God is using the institution to further His kingdom!” 

In addition to her regular job duties, Anderson said she sees it as her responsibility to connect Concordia Nebraska to the work of various mission and professional organizations.  

“I think that we faculty have a duty to share our expertise with those beyond the walls of our university,” she said.  

She currently volunteers in a variety of ways including as an educational consultant for Mission of Christ Network, helping to train their missionaries in ESL teaching strategies and writing a periodic newsletter on teaching techniques and resources. She also directs volunteer efforts in English teaching that connect her Concordia Nebraska education students with English learners in various parts of the world. This academic year, her students are working as teachers for adult English learners in conjunction with a ministry of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Lincoln and as online teachers for Ascension Lutheran Church in Montreal, Canada's adult ESL outreach ministry. Her students will also serve as conversation partners for a select group of her current students in Ethiopia. In the spring, students will also have the opportunity to serve as conversation partners with teens in Costa Rica working with Lighthouse Parrita, the Costa Rican arm of Mission of Christ Network. 

Anderson also regularly provides faculty professional development by invitation to teachers in the many schools run by the Lutheran Church--Hong Kong Synod, as well as to professors at the Mekane Yesus Lutheran Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She will be presenting six workshops on various education topics at a Hong Kong Synod Education conference early this November. She also currently serves as communications director on the board of MIDTESOL (MidAmerica Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, a consortium of ESL professionals in Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa). She has volunteered with that organization since 2016 as conference chair, president and past president before taking on the role of communications director. 

Anderson has been married 34 years to husband Jon, who serves as a computer programmer for the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. They have two grown sons, Jonathon, who is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Rice University, and Sebastian, who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics, philosophy and political science and in global studies from Taylor University in Indiana.  

Anderson and her husband have a background in children's ministry and have been heavily involved for several years with Wednesday night children's ministry for kindergarten-to-2nd graders at Hillcrest Church. 

Since Anderson has taught English in various places over the years, she has had the opportunity to taste a variety of cuisines and has brought home many unique recipes.  

“I love to design and create five-course French-style meals and bake French pastries and breads like croissants, and brioche which go so well with Jon's espresso,” she said. “I also have brought back recipes as souvenirs from my summers with Concordia Nebraska students in China, and I enjoy making barbecue steamed buns, dumplings, steamed cake, and more.” 

Simply put, she said she loves her work and her volunteer involvements. 

“I work shoulder-to-shoulder with other Christian professionals as we all try to figure out how best to use our gifts and time to serve God,” she said. “It is humbling to see how God works through us, sometimes despite ourselves.” 

The Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program at Concordia Nebraska is designed to prepare students to teach English as a second language (ESL) internationally or in adult ESL programs in universities, refugee centers or community centers in the United States. Studying, learning and growing goes beyond classes and experiences on campus. Serving abroad equips students with global life skills that no book or classroom can match. Concordia Nebraska offers many different national and international mission trips to places like Guatemala, China, Haiti and Ethiopia so students can share God’s love while serving the world and discovering a different culture.