Rate My Professor Hannah Sullivan

Dr. Hannah Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Languages and Chair of the Department of Languages at Charleston Southern University, where she has taught since August 2021 and assumed departmental leadership in 2023. She coordinates Spanish 110 and sponsors the Sigma Delta Pi honor society. Sullivan earned her Ph.D. in Secondary Education, Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Alabama in 2021, with a content area in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching; her dissertation addressed micropolitics and teacher induction. She also holds an M.A. in Spanish with an emphasis in linguistics from the University of Alabama (2012, GPA 3.833) and a B.A. in Spanish Education from Lee University (2010, GPA 4.0), with minors in English, TESOL, and Bible. Prior to CSU, she served as Spanish Teacher and World Language Department Head at Tuscaloosa Academy (2013-2021), developing curriculum and teaching from exploratory Spanish to AP Spanish Language and Culture for grades 6-12. She taught Spanish courses at the University of Alabama as a part-time temporary instructor (2014), graduate teaching assistant (2010-2012), graduate research/teaching assistant (2017-2020), and ACCESS distance learning teacher (2012-2017). Additionally, she has experience as a high school Spanish teacher at Hueytown High School (2012-2013) and various tutoring and enrichment roles.

Sullivan's research specializations include cross-cultural teaching, improving distance learning, and differentiated language instruction. Her key publications are "Revealing the Human and the Writer: The Promise of a Humanizing Writing Pedagogy for Black Students" co-authored with L. P. Johnson in Research in the Teaching of English (2020) and a related chapter in Special Issues: Racial Literacy (2021). She has presented on language pedagogy, including "From Kindergarten to College: Engaging Activities for All Ages and Proficiency Levels" at the South Carolina Foreign Language Teachers’ Association conference (2023), "The Climb: Differentiated Instruction and Choice in the Language Classroom" at the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (2019), and others. Major awards include the Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (2020), Teacher of the Year from the Alabama World Language Association (2019), Department of Language and Literature Distinguished Alumna from Lee University (2021), and several scholarships from the University of Alabama. Since 2016, she has served as an AP Spanish Language and Culture exam reader. Sullivan holds Alabama and South Carolina teaching certifications in Spanish (6-12) and English as a Second Language (K-12).