EDSURGE -- At San Francisco State University, Associate Professor of Journalism Rachele Kanigel says the diverse student body makes for a rich learning experience, but also means names on the roster that are difficult to pronounce.
“I struggle every semester when I get a new batch of students with names and trying to remember how to pronounce them,” Kanigel says. “Usually what I do is I’ll call out the roll, apologizing for mispronouncing their names, and then I’ll encourage students to say their names in the first couple of weeks when they’re speaking in class.”
Kanigel she believes the issue of name pronunciation is growing as diversity is growing within higher education.
“At San Francisco State, we’ve always had a diverse student body, and we’ve always had a lot of immigrants and international students, but I would say even though we’ve always had it, it's getting more diverse,” she says.