Gulizar Otcu-Grillman

Dr. Bahar Otcu-Grillman is an Associate Professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education in the Literacy and Multilingual Studies Department. She mainly teaches bilingual education, ESL teaching methods, clinical practices, and linguistics. Her profession started as a Research Assistant in the Middle East Technical University in Turkey in 1997. She came to the US to pursue her doctoral studies at Teachers College Columbia University in 2004. She received her doctorate in 2009 from the program in International Educational Development with a focus on Language, Literacy, and Technology.

Dr. Otcu-Grillman’s dissertation was published in 2010 as a book entitled Language Maintenance and Cultural Identity Construction, and is the first case study of Turkish language maintenance and development in a Turkish community school in the US. Dr. Otcu-Grillman is involved with the Turkish community, and is the author of several book chapters, journal and newsletter articles. She co-edited Bilingual Community Education and Multilingualism: Beyond Heritage Languages in a Global City. She has also been the Turkish Language Delegate of New York State Association of Bilingual Education (NYSABE) and served on the Editorial Board of NYSABE Newsletter The Bilingual Times as a contributor. She is an affiliated faculty within the Office of Global Engagement at Mercy College and strives to reach out to not only local communities but also overseas for international collaborations on the teaching of English and bilingualism.