Welcome to UChicago’s Office of Language Assessment!
At the OLA, we:
- develop strategies to greatly expand and integrate the University’s language testing programs, for language courses offered during the academic year and for the Summer Language Institute and English Language Institute.
- develop and update exams in consultation with language instructors and language program directors; recruits and coordinates test developers and raters; maintains accurate records of test results and provides those results to appropriate parties; schedules and facilitates testing, including preparation of materials and communication with students.
- undertake appropriate research and development projects to ensure the validity of the interpretation and use of the test scores that CLC administers. This includes the analysis of test data, including scores and ratings earned by individuals and groups, scoring reliability by individual raters and across individual tests and their different versions.
- design and implement evaluative instruments to conduct empirical research to evaluate the tests so that test users feel confident that the scores are valid for their intended purposes.
Meet our Team
Ahmet Dursun – Executive Director
Ahmet Dursun is the Executive Director of the Office of Language Assessment at the University of Chicago. He is responsible for establishing and maintaining the Office of Language Assessment and the University as innovative leaders in language learning and assessment, both in terms of the design and development of new learning and assessment strategies, systems, and instruments and in the research that brings them to fruition and ensures their validity. His research has explored computer-assisted language instruction, language testing research and practice, test validation, AI-supported automated scoring of constructed-response assessment tasks, and language-for-specific-purposes domain analysis.
Phuong Nguyen – Language Assessment Specialist
Phuong Nguyen has been working as the Language Assessment Specialist in the CLC since January 2020. She uses her expertise in language assessment and testing to help language instructors with test development projects, develop new language tests, and conduct test validation research. Before joining the CLC, she taught ESL, ESP, English teaching methods, and introductory linguistics courses. She received her Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics in Technology in 2021 from Iowa State University with a specialization in Language Assessment and a minor in statistics. Her research interests include performance assessment, technology-mediated learning and assessment, program evaluation, and corpus linguistics. Phuong speaks Vietnamese as her first language and some basic Chinese. She enjoys camping, playing the guitar, and crocheting.
Eduardo Suh-Chavez – Operations Manager
Eduardo Chavez joined the CLC in 2021 as the Operations Manager for the Office of Language Assessment, where he provides specialized operational support for all language testing conducted on the UChicago campus. Prior to joining the CLC, he worked for the Center for World Languages and Cultures at the University of Denver managing supplemental, community-based language programs. He holds an M.A. in International Studies and Human Rights and studied Japanese throughout college. If not on campus, you will find him kneading pasta dough, de-stressing in a cycle studio, or ordering puppachinos for his French bulldog, Lita Bonita.
