Her pure honesty and intention was always felt by students and colleagues alike. To know Wendy was to be a better you.”
About Wendy
The Yang Liu Award for Excellence in Teaching International Students was created in memory of Yang (Wendy) Liu in recognition of her leadership among IP-IALC faculty in a number of capacities.
Wendy was an Office of International Program’s Intensive American Language Center (IALC) faculty member who taught Intensive English at WSU for nearly a decade. She was a bilingual Chinese/English speaker with a fervent passion for teaching Intensive English. She loved WSU, her students, and the IALC faculty.
Wendy demonstrated grace, empathy, and excellence in her teaching and service to the university. She helped pioneer many of our best practices in working with Eastern Asian students and helped engage students and faculty outside of the classroom. She always paid particular attention to creating an excellent teaching and learning environment for linguistically and culturally diverse students.
Wendy passed away from complications due to cancer in 2019.
Wendy’s life calls on us to be our best selves, to give to our students freely, and to look at each and every person in their best possible light.
Our first award winner
Bala Krishnamoorthy, PhD, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, WSU Vancouver
Bala Krishnamoorthy, PhD, professor of mathematics and statistics at WSU Vancouver, has been named the first recipient of the Yang “Wendy” Liu Award for Excellence in Teaching International Students.
Krishnamoorthy received the award at the International Students’ graduation gala on May 6, 2022. In a videotaped acceptance, he said, “I am incredibly honored to accept the Yang Liu award from International Programs. Wendy set a really high standard for teaching international students well. It is a great honor for me to even be considered for filling the shoes that she left.”
In nominating Krishnamoorthy for the award, Ph.D. student James Asare noted, “In all three of Bala’s classes I took, what struck me the most was his careful approach in recognizing his classroom mix of international and local students and leveraging well-thought-out pedagogies to create a space that was expressive of understanding through active engagement. His style was very different from what I was used to, especially in advanced math classrooms – that he will take extra time in every class to explain plagiarism, appreciate the difficulty of what he was teaching, where a student was at in understanding, give extra time for assignment turn in to promote academic integrity, give make-up credit chances, respond to course emails at odd hours (I was guilty of sending some of these), and even drive to Pullman (he taught the classes from Vancouver) for sit-ins where students could chat with him in-person about their concerns.”
Read the entire nomination (pdf).
