Ava Belisle-Chatterjee

Chairperson, Education Department
B.A. Spanish Language and Literature
Loyola University of Chicago
M.A. Linguistics, University of Chicago
Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction
University of Illinois at Chicago
E-mail: achatterjee@colum.edu

 Ava Belisle-Chatterjee, Ph.D. has been chairperson of the Education  Department at Columbia College Chicago for the last 15 years.  Prior to that, she was a bilingual teacher at the elementary school level for 12 years with the Chicago Public Schools.  In addition to her administrative duties, Dr. Belisle-Chatterjee teaches courses in the Educational Studies Graduate Programs, which include Methods and Materials for Teaching Mathematics at the Elementary and Middle School Levels and Methods and Materials for Teaching Social Studies at the Elementary School Level.  Her research interests include the processes of constructing teaching practices; linking ESL (English as a Second Language) strategies with standards-based approaches to the teaching of math to English-language-learners (ELL’s); integrating the arts into teachers and furthering the professional development of veteran teachers; assessing teaching competencies; and alternative teacher certification.  Dr. Belisle-Chatterjee is a member of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Association for Bilingual Education, the National Staff Development Council, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Educational Research Association, and Phi Delta Kappa. She has served on several committees for the restructuring of teacher preparation in the Illinois State Board of Education, as well as on the Elementary School Teacher Standards Drafting Committee for the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC)