English Professor Profiled in Finnish "Reader's Digest"

INDIANAPOLIS - IUPUI English Professor Ulla Connor is one of five expatriate Finns featured in the June 2005 issue of the Finnish edition of Reader's Digest (Valitut Palat, circulation 1 million). Connor is director of the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication, a part of the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.

Others profiled include a Japanese senator, a basketball player in Italy, a business guru in Switzerland and a Hollywood stylist. Each has a successful career abroad, but all are relatively unknown to the general public in their native Finland.

Excerpt from article (translated into English):

"I am just a poor country girl from the village of Kattilainen in the Kymi-valley," says Professor Ulla Connor, who now lives in Indianapolis . . . She is one of the most celebrated Finns to achieve a renowned career at a university overseas.

Ulla Connor is a professor at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). "She is not only a research linguist, but also an educator," says Kari Sajavaara, Professor Emeritus of applied linguistics at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. "As the world becomes increasingly international, linguistic problems in the workplace become more common. Ulla Connor has done pioneering work to solve such problems."