Ronald P. Schaefer | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Minnesota, Texas Tech, University of Kansas |
Occupation(s) | Linguist, Professor, Scholar, teacher |
Ronald P. Schaefer (born June 17, 1949), also known as Ron Schaefer is an American academic, English professor, and linguist. He is the first person "to devise a written version of a language called Emai", [1] a language reported in 1997 to be spoken by about 30,000 Emai people in Edo State of Nigeria. [2] [3] He has been described as one with "fevered intellect, the sharp chin, the untamable kineticism." [4]
Schaefer was born in Minnesota in 1949. From 1971 to 1973, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan where he taught English language at Kabul University. [2] Of the experience he said “What it did for me was open me up to the vast cultural currents that traversed Afghanistan over historical time. Alexander the Great and his armies had moved through. Genghis Khan had moved through. The great Mogul Empires had housed themselves there, and various other significant populations that I had read about in school. Now I was able to see the remnants of their buildings, their wells.” [5] [6]
Between 1981 and 1985, he taught in the linguistics department at the University of Benin. It was there he discovered the language Emai, spoken by one of his students Francis Egbokhare. Emai is spoken about 60 miles from Benin, in the Afemmai Hills of Edo State. Schaefer had first planned to study all the languages of the region, but eventually relented. [7] The motivation for his work on Emai, he said, was to prevent the language from going into extinction.
“Right now, it would be very difficult to find a storyteller, a chief who knew the stories and knew how to tell them as the Emai traditionally told their stories. It’s just not possible. So today, you have young people who are training to be linguists, and they work with a native speaker. They will find some piece of information, or they will find a sound pattern or a syntactic pattern and they will think this is brand new. It may be true, but it will probably come about as a part of incomplete learning on the part of young people because parents are not using the language in the home, and schools certainly don’t use it. We have been fortunate that some schools have used our stories to begin to teach the language, but it is really an uphill battle. By studying your language you learn something about who you are, especially at a university,” [5] [6]
Schaefer and Egbokhare have worked together for over thirty years. [8] With Egbokhare, he has produced "a 552 page dictionary of Email, two volumes of oral tradition narratives running to 1,261 pages." Together, they have also published "over 35 books and essays in the space of 20 years." [9]
In 1986, he joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and was promoted in 1990 to assistant professor, and later to full professor in 1995. In 2010, he was recognized as a Distinguished Research Professor. [2] [10]
He retired from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2015.
Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is a public university in Edwardsville, Illinois in Metro-East, near St. Louis. SIUE was established in 1957 as an extension of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. It is the younger of the two major institutions of Southern Illinois University system, and, as of 2018, has the larger enrollment. The university offers graduate programs through its Graduate School.
The Edoid languages are a few dozen languages spoken in Southern Nigeria, predominantly in the former Bendel State. The name Edoid derives from its most widely spoken member, Edo, the language of Benin City, which has 2 million native and secondary speakers.
Stephen "Steve" Trittschuh is an American soccer coach and former player who most recently served as head coach of USL Championship side Saint Louis FC. As a player, he played as a defender in the Major Indoor Soccer League, American Professional Soccer League and Major League Soccer. He also earned thirty-eight caps with the United States men's national soccer team including one game at the 1990 FIFA World Cup.
Sha is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Plateau State and Kaduna State, Nigeria. As of 2018, the language is used for face-to-face communication and lacks a standardized written form. It is spoken by approximately 1000 people and is considered sustainable.
T.R. Carr was an American local politician who served as mayor of the city of Hazelwood, Missouri in northern St. Louis County, Missouri, from April 2000 until April 2009. He is Professor of Public Administration at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Urban Research at SIUE. He has served as Department Chair of Public Administration and Policy Analysis and as Director of the Master of Public Administration Program at SIUE. Carr represents SIUE on the State University Retirement System Member Advisory Board.
Eugene B. Redmond is an American poet, and academic. His poetry is closely connected to the Black Arts Movement and the city of East St. Louis, Illinois.
The SIU Edwardsville Cougars are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), located in Edwardsville, Illinois, United States. The Cougars' athletic program is a member of the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) and competes at the NCAA Division I level. The SIUE mascot is Eddie the Cougar #57, and the school colors are red and white. Cougar teams have won seventeen NCAA national championships in five sports.
Kevin Kalish is an American soccer coach and former player who, as of 2018, was serving as head coach of the Saint Louis Billikens men's soccer team. He played professionally in the National Professional Soccer League.
Mario Sanchez is an American soccer coach and former player who was most recently the interim head coach of Racing Louisville FC and the youth academy director for both Louisville City FC and Racing Louisville FC. He is the former head coach of Louisville City U-23, the SIUE Cougars men's soccer team, and the UNLV Rebels men's soccer team.
The SIU Edwardsville Cougars men's soccer team represents Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) in the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) of NCAA Division I soccer. The Cougars play their home matches on Bob Guelker Field at Ralph Korte Stadium located in the southwest corner of the SIUE campus in Edwardsville, Illinois.
The SIU Edwardsville Cougars wrestling team represents Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) as an associate member of the Mid-American Conference of NCAA Division I wrestling. The Cougars host their home matches at the Sam M. Vadalabene Center on the university's campus in Edwardsville, Illinois, United States. The Cougars current head coach is Jeremy Spates who took over the program in 2013.
Jon Harris is an American college basketball coach who is the former men's head coach at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), an NCAA Division I program competing in the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC). A high school star at Edwardsville High School, Harris played collegiately at Marquette University. He was named the SIUE Cougars' new coach in April 2015 after spending thirteen years as an assistant in five different Division I programs. On March 11, 2019, SIUE announced that Harris' contract had not been renewed.
Rudolph G. Wilson was an American professor, writer, storyteller, and public speaker, known by his students as Papa Rudy. He was the first African-American member, and later the first elected black president, of the Edwardsville School Board. At Claremont Grad School in 1965, he was the first African American to teach in an all-white school. He was, until retirement in 2009, the assistant provost for Cultural and Social Diversity at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, as well as holding the academic rank of associate professor of secondary education in the department of curriculum and instruction.
Francis Egbokhare is a prolific scholar, academic linguist, writer, and professor from Nigeria, and a fellow and the immediate past president of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. He has held positions at the University of Ibadan for many years as a professor of linguistics and as the Director of the Distance Learning Centre. He lives in Ibadan.
Austin Ledbetter is an American retired soccer player who last played for Phoenix Rising FC in the USL Championship.
Efiwe.org is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization based in Edwardsville, Illinois whose goal is to send one million books to libraries in post-secondary schools across Africa.
The Saint Louis–SIU Edwardsville men's soccer rivalry is an American college soccer rivalry between the Saint Louis University Billikens and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Cougars. The winner of each year's game receives the Bronze Boot.
Cale Wassermann is the head coach of the SIU Edwardsville Cougars men's soccer team.
The 2020–21 SIU Edwardsville Cougars men's basketball team represented Southern Illinois University Edwardsville during the 2020–21 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Cougars, led by second-year head coach Brian Barone, played their home games in the First Community Arena at Vadalabene Center in Edwardsville, Illinois as members of the Ohio Valley Conference.