Karen Marsh Schaeffer portrait
  • Director of Student Success and Engagement, College Of Humanities

Education

  • MA, Linguistics, University of Utah. Project: A Qualitative Analysis of the Impact of Parent ESL Classes on Children’s School Performance and Parent-School Interactions.
  • BA, Linguistics, University of Utah

Biography

Karen Marsh Schaeffer received her BA and MA from the University of Utah in Linguistics: thesis titled ‘the Impact of Parent ESL Classes on Children’s School Performance and Parent-School Interactions’.  As the Director for Student Success and Engagement in the College of Humanities, Karenis responsible for planning and executing strategic and data informed efforts to improve student recruitment, belonging, and successful degree completion.  Karen has enjoyed teaching Linguistics classes to hundreds of students at the University of Utah.  Karen has taught ESL and EFL at multiple levels from preliterate refugees to graduate students and is currently an English Language Specialist with the US Department of State. Research Interests include: minority language issues in education, second language acquisition, second language teacher training, and cross cultural communication.