Celina Costa, this year’s Educator of the Year award winner, is a professor at the School of ESL. Celina has worked at George Brown College since 2005, and over the years, she has had the privilege of participating in a variety of committees, being academic coordinator, teaching most of the levels at the School of ESL and spending one year teaching communication courses at the School of Hospitality and the School of Social and Community Services. Currently, Celina is the lead professor for a new course at the School of ESL for early childhood educators.
In recent years, Celina has become very interested in exploring technology in education. As a result, she created two different technology-forward newsletters for the School of ESL: Celina’s Ed Tech Corner which focuses on educational technology that language professors can leverage for optimal language acquisition, and AI Bytes which includes different artificial intelligence (AI) tools and resources for the language learning classroom. Celina is also a frequent presenter at TLX conferences having presented on digital field trips, digital escape rooms, accessibility tools, and, more recently, LUDIA – an AI-powered Universal Design for Learning (UDL) chatbot. In May and June 2024, Celina planned and facilitated a 3-part workshop series on UDL and AI tools through the TLX. These workshops enabled participants to explore different AI tools that can support in the implementation of the UDL framework. Celina also had the honour of speaking about artificial intelligence to the college’s deans and associate deans at George Brown College’s Academic Leadership Retreat.
Outside of the college, Celina is an active member of the TESL Toronto executive committee, a frequent presenter at both TESL Toronto’s and TESL Ontario’s annual conferences, and a very busy mother of two teenagers and one very cute labradoodle.
