Vardit Ringvald
Office
95 South Main Street
Tel
(802) 443-3574
Email
vringval@middlebury.edu

Vardit Ringvald, Ph.D., was appointed the first director of the Middlebury School of Hebrew in 2008. She served as professor of Hebrew and director of the Hebrew and Arabic Languages Program at Brandeis University until 2013, and she brings years of experience in language program development and implementation. 

In 1996 she founded the Hebrew Language Summer Institute at Brandeis University and created the Master of Arts in Teaching Hebrew in 1998.  Prof. Ringvald served as the acting director of language programs for the Romance and Comparative Literature Department at Brandeis and as director of Oriental Languages.

Prof. Ringvald taught Hebrew language, culture and Hebrew teaching pedagogy at Brandeis from 1985 until 2013. She was a team member for developing the Hebrew Proficiency guidelines for ACTFL, Hebrew proficiency curriculum frameworks for secondary and postsecondary education for ACTFL and the United States Department of Education. She helped oversee development of materials to enhance reading and listening strategies for Hebrew learners at all levels under funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to serving as chair of the SAT II for Hebrew and as advisor for Hebrew to the National Middle Eastern Language Resource Center (NMELRC), based at Brigham Young University, Prof. Ringvald serves on the committee for Hebrew language pedagogy for the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH). One of the developers of the Oral Proficiency Interview for Hebrew and an OPI trainer, she is the primary author of Brandeis Modern Hebrew. This volume, the first to be based on the proficiency method, is rapidly becoming the most-used modern Hebrew textbook in the United States.

As consultant to a wide range of schools and organizations that teach Hebrew, Prof. Ringvalds’ areas of expertise are curriculum development and assessment. Her current projects include completing the second volume of the Brandeis Modern Hebrew textbook; a joint project with Snunit at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to develop an on-line resource for teaching and learning Hebrew as a second language, under funding by the NMELRC; and independent research on language and identity.