Teaching Professor and Head of the RC French Program
About
Dominique Butler-Borruat has been teaching for more than thirty years in the Residential College where she has been the Head of the French program since 2006. She is also the coordinator for Intensive French II.
An early adopter of learning technologies, she integrated many of these into her courses to enhance her teaching; for example, she implemented flipped classroom pedagogy in her language courses, and, for many years now, has been using a conversational platform that gives her students the opportunity to not only communicate with French speakers from around the world but also to expand their cross-cultural understanding. Her seminar courses draw upon various fields such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and women's and gender studies.
Dominique has also developed a service-learning course to offer advanced students in her program a unique way to apply their language skills in the community. For more than ten years, the experiential component of this course has partnered with Freedom House Detroit, a non-profit organization offering shelter and services, including legal assistance, to victims of persecution seeking asylum in the United States.
In all of her classes, Dominique strives to foster an inclusive and supportive learning environment that encourages students to feel confident in stepping outside their comfort zones in order to develop their full potential.
Course titles (seminars):
- Existentialism: The Human Condition and the Absurd
- « Au Coeur de l’amitié »: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Concept of Friendship
- « Un homme sur deux est une femme »: Are We There Yet? The Status of Women in France and Francophonie
