Élodie Phan is a true intercultural personality; born while her family fled Communist rule in Viètnâm, raised in France, and educated in the United States. A US citizen, Élodie is keenly interested in all things American and loves to infuse her varied interests with her own particular French cachet. She is especially drawn to US military and intelligence history and tactics. She describes her friends as mostly police officers and security operatives and is as happy at the pistol range as she is conjugating irregular French verbs or throwing chalk at her students.

Élodie was a cheerleader in high school, and as she puts it, was "small enough to be thrown... and dropped." Following high school in the Seattle area, Élodie earned her BA in French literature at the University of Washington. She also earned her MA from the University of Washington, while teaching undergraduate French classes during her own graduate work.

Élodie has been at SFCC for six years, is the current Foreign Languages Department Lead. She has also developed and taught a class on French Cinema, from its birth to the present, for Whitworth College. In addition to advising the French Club and the national honor society, Phi Theta Kappa, Élodie works for SFCC’s International Education Committee and is involved in Student Government as a faculty representative.

One of her two favorite projects is the SFCC Winter French Film Festival, held at The Met starting this January 2006, that she developed with Mary Hyatt. However, closest to her heart is the Gérard H. Phan Scholarship for SFCC French language students. Élodie created this scholarship in 2005 as a memorial to her father, whose guidance and example she credits for her own determination and success.

More information and insight to Élodie’s approach to French language instruction can be found at her SFCC faculty website.