Sarah J. Klinghammer, Ph.D.

Country of Service: Turkey
Program: Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
Current Work: Director of the Department of Linguistics new MA degree with a language teaching specialization

Sarah J. Klinghammer, Ph.D., is currently the Director of the Department of Linguistics’ new MA degree with a language teaching specialization, after having both taught in and directed the American English Institute here on campus for many years. She has been at UO since 1978.

Dr. Klinghammer served in the Peace Corps from 1964-66 with Turkey IV, which was the third TEFL group to be sent to Turkey after the inception of the Peace Corps in 1963. She taught English in public high school in Bolu (year 1) and middle school in Keles, a lovely mountain village near Mt. Uludag. During the summer she worked with a community development team in Banaz, a small village near Pamukkale, doing basic first aid and sharing health information through daily social visiting with women of the village.

Immediately upon returning from Peace Corps, Dr. Klinghammer worked with pre-service training of the first volunteers for Micronesia. Many years later (1990-91,92), while on a Fulbright in Czechoslovakia, she did pre-service training for the first groups of TEFL Peace Corps volunteers to be assigned to that country after the “Velvet Revolution” – and before it became two countries.

In 2002, she returned to Turkey on a second Fulbright, directing the TESL MA program at Bilkent University. While there, she and her husband revisited Keles. To her surprise, she was remembered by people there and had a pleasant, relaxing “reunion tea”, sitting and talking in the village square with former students.

Dr. Klinghammer believes that working in the Peace Corps can be a life directing experience. Even if it does not determine one’s ultimate profession as it did in her case, it changes and expands the Volunteer’s worldview. Once you have been a Volunteer, you will never see things in quite the same way again.