Congratulations to alumnus Dr. Eric Shepherd on receiving tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at the University of South Florida! Shepherd teaches in the Department of World Language Education. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese language pedagogy from The Ohio State University in 2007. He is the author of Eat Shandong: From Personal Experience to a Pedagogy of a Second Culture (Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications, 2005) and has published articles on interpersonal relationships, etiquette and oral traditions in China. Professor Shepherd was trained as a Shandong fast tale performer by master storyteller Wu Yanguo and performs professionally in both China and the US.

Among his other accomplishments, Shepherd was featured in a USF news article about his innovative use of storytelling techniques in language teaching. There are also several videos of him on YouTube that you can find and they are very interesting!