The William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching

2012 Ryan Award Recipient

Yueming Yu

Teaching Professor of Chinese Studies and Coordinator of the Chinese Studies Program, Department of Modern Languages

Yueming came to the U.S. in 1988 after 24 years of teaching in China. She received her Ph.D. in education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1996. She started her second stage of a teaching career in 1992 at Carnegie Mellon as an adjunct faculty when the Modern Languages Department decided to offer the first course in Chinese. She then became a full time faculty member in the Chinese program in 1998, and after an early promotion she was appointed to teaching professor in Chinese in 2008. Over the years she has also worked as the coordinator of the Chinese Studies Program to expand it from five students at its beginning to the largest language program in the department with nearly 800 students per year at its peak time. The program now offers both a major and minor in Chinese Studies with a total of 24 courses at four different levels. Yueming has taught all levels of Chinese courses, and in the past decade has been focusing on advanced level courses which embrace various themes of Chinese culture and society. In 2001, she also initiated the Modern Languages Department Summer Study Abroad Program in China and has coordinated the program's work to send approximately 30 students to study in China every summer.

Yueming's major teaching and research interests include the integration of language and culture, content-based language instruction, as well as curriculum design and development.