Alum Betsy Gilliland, ’91, reflects on the role of Casti teachers and librarians in her career
This article appeared in the 2024 edition of Full Circle, Castilleja's annual magazine.
Betsy Gilliland, ’91, speaks five languages. It’s no surprise: she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and has published three academic books.
Dr. Gilliland has dedicated her career to teaching English and training writing instructors worldwide to work with diverse populations. She credits Castilleja and, in particular, the library, for igniting her curiosity about the world and her passion for education and scholarship.
“I’ve always been a very avid reader,” says Dr. Gilliland, whose favorite part of the Castilleja library was the new book display. “I used to check those out on a regular basis, just random things that looked interesting,” she says.
Many of the skills Dr. Gilliland learned in the library—from using reference materials to tracking down sources—were instrumental to her academic career. “We would spend a lot of our free time studying, but also chatting and getting help from the librarians. We always had library-based research projects,” remembers Dr. Gilliland. “One of the things I really appreciated about Castilleja was that they treated the students as scholars. Whatever you were interested in, someone would be there to advise or steer you in the right direction. It just felt so freeing.”
Dr. Gilliland already knew French when she began at Castilleja in 7th grade, so in addition to continuing French, she eagerly pursued Spanish and Latin, 太, and studied Russian at summer camp. She ultimately majored in Russian and went on to earn an MA, then a PhD in Education. Her love of languages and of teaching led her to study in Russia, join the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, take graduate students to teach in Thailand, and serve as a Fulbright Scholar in Chile.
Now, after years in the classroom and in the field, Dr. Gilliland sees that she models much of her teaching philosophy on her Castilleja experiences. “When you’re training a new teacher, you can tell them all kinds of things about theories, but when they actually go into the classroom, a very large percentage of what they do is drawn from what they remember their own teachers doing. I had so many great teachers at Castilleja as role models,” says Dr. Gilliland.
She hopes the library on the new campus will hold on to its treasure trove of books. “There is still so much in printed books that is useful,” Dr. Gilliland says. “You go in and you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. There is that surprise, the idea of ‘I wasn’t expecting to see this, but wow, it looks really interesting,’” she says. “I love that the library has all the collaborative space, and I hope they embrace multimedia communications, but I hope they keep all the books, 太.