Stacy E. Fifer has a Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign where she specialized in Sub-Saharan African Francophone literature. She has over 15 years of experience teaching beginning, intermediate, and advanced language courses, women’s studies, French literature, and Francophone African and Caribbean literature and culture at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Stacy has held faculty positions at Millikin University, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Stacy's language teaching philosophy privileges communication skills as the primary goal for students. She uses a communicative approach to language pedagogy in order to encourage meaningful language learning in the classroom. In her literature and culture classes, Stacy leads student discovery by providing context, guiding structured discussions, and creating directed activities.