During the 2019-20 academic year, CAS hosted Irma Zavitri, through the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) Program. Irma taught our sequence of Beginning Indonesian language classes and contributed her charm, sense of humor, and friendship to our community over the past 10 months. Now that she has returned to her native Indonesia, we miss her already! Irma enjoyed teaching her classes, loved her students, and felt welcomed by the Boulder community. While we didn’t get to benefit as much from her presence - due to the COVID-19 lockdown - she made a big impression during her stay. She was also active among her fellow Indonesian FLTAs around the country, and helped host a virtual celebration of Kartini's birthday and her contributions to gender equality in Indonesia.
Irma was the first FLTA hosted by CAS. She helped us work out the kinks as there were many aspects of this program that we were unfamiliar with and needed to learn as we went. We can’t imagine a better person to have helped us through our inaugural year than Irma. We wish her the best in her future career (we hear a PhD study in Australia is a possibility), and hope we get a chance to see her again in Boulder some day.