Department Head; Professor, German
chalupcs@jmu.edu
Contact Info
Office
Keezell 301
Education
Ph.D., Germanic Languages & Literatures, The Ohio State University
M.A., Germanic Languages & Literatures, The Ohio State University
University Fellow, Germanistik, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
B.A., English and German double major, University of Michigan (first-generation)
Bio
Cynthia Chalupa is Academic Unit Head and a Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She received a B.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with a double major in English and German and M.A. and doctoral degrees from The Ohio State University in German Studies. She has taught all levels of German language and culture as well as language teaching methods and general education courses. She has served as an AP Reader and co-chair of the AP German Exam Development and the National German Exam Committees. She has been a board member to WVFLTA, NECTFL, AATG, and ACTFL and served in numerous other leadership capacities in the profession. She is the lead author on four German language and culture textbooks and has published on twentieth and twenty-first century literature and culture, assessment, second language pedagogy, GTA training, and media literacy in the classroom. She has presented at regional, national, and international conferences and held workshops on a wide variety of topics related to language teaching. She has taken students to Germany for eighteen years and serves regularly as a faculty member in the Fulda University International Summer and Winter University programs.
Research and Teaching Interests
19th-20th century Germanic languages and cultures;
second language pedagogy; assessment
Recent Publications
Interkulturell 3/4. German Language Textbook, Novice-High to Intermediate-Low (Freeport, ME: Wayside Publishing) (August 2025).
Interkulturell 2. German Language Textbook, Novice-High to Intermediate-Low (Freeport, ME: Wayside Publishing) (August 2024).
Interkulturell 1. German Language Textbook, Novice-Low to Novice-High (Freeport, ME: Wayside Publishing) (October 2023).
“Putting the Coronavirus to Work: Developing a Global Engineering Program during a
Pandemic.” Journal of International Engineering Education, 4.1 (2022).
“Increasing Motivation among Language Learners through Individualized Assessment.”
Central European Journal of Educational Research, 3.2 (2021).
World Languages and Cultures
