Biography

Dr. Troyan is no stranger to Western PA, having been born and raised in Johnstown, where he attened Greater Johnstown High School and religiously attended the APPLES Language Festival, which was then hosted at Saint Francis University in Loretto!

Troyan received his B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and both MA in French and his PhD in FL Education from the University of Pittsburgh. So, he certainly feels at home here in Indiana! Before beginning at Ohio State in 2013, where he is Associate Professor of World Language Education, Francis Troyan was a classroom teacher of French, Spanish, and ESL in Portland, Maine; Burlington, Vermont; and Pittsburgh, PA. At the University of Pittsburgh, Troyan also taught French in the French Department. At Ohio State, his primary role is coordinating the Bachelor and Masters programs in World Language Education.

Along with his passion for pre-service world language teacher education, Troyan is committed to expanding opportunities for in-service world language teacher development. To this end, Troyan collaborated with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and several regional and national language teaching associations around the country to host the inaugural Leadership Institute for Language Learning (LILL) at Ohio State in July 2015. Building upon the experience of LILL in 2015 and his work in core practices for world language education, Troyan developed and launched an online Graduate Certificate Program in Core Practices for World Language Education in Summer 2020.

Additionally, he recently published an edited book entitled Genre Matters in World Language Education: Contextualized Assessment and Learning. This book combines his work in genre pedagogies with the performance assessment in the world language classroom. The book articulates the genre-based approach and links it to the ACTFL Can-Do Statements and performance assessments. Further, it includes as contributors scholars from the United States and other countries who are experts in genre-based pedagogies in a particular world language (i.e., Arabic, English as a Foreign Language, French, German, Italian, Spanish,) to exemplify the approach across a variety of languages and serve as a resource for world language teacher candidates and in-service world language teachers alike.