Elsie Paredes

Elsie Paredes
UCIEP & Virginia Tech Language and Culture Institute

Elsie E. Paredes is the director of the Language and Culture Institute at Virginia Tech, where she leads university preparation programs for international students. With over 35 years in the field of language teaching and international education, she has extensive experience in teaching English as a second language, faculty training, and program administration in both Peru and the U.S. 

Throughout her career, Dr. Paredes has been involved in numerous international capacity-building projects, including program needs assessment and evaluation in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. Notably, she developed and led a teacher training program for the Iraqi Kurdistan Rural University Partnership Program, enhancing faculty skills in English language teaching, curriculum development, and technology for language learning. She is the current president of UCIEP, a consortium of university and college- administered language programs in the US.