Sheila joined SCILT as a part-time administrator in October 2011 to assist the team in their provision of language information services and the promotion of language learning.
She originally trained as a bilingual secretary, majoring in French, and spent a term studying at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie in Montpellier, France before gaining her diploma and commencing work in an international sales office in the south of England translating customer orders and quotations. From there she moved to Scotland pursuing a career in secretarial and administrative support.
Sheila’s main role within the SCILT team is assisting the Information Officer with the provision of language-related news, events, teaching resources, competitions and professional development opportunities through a variety of media.This includes updating the SCILT website and maintaining a social media presence on the team's networks. She is also responsible for collating and disseminating a weekly news bulletin to SCILT’s subscriber base of language professionals and practitioners throughout Scotland and further afield.
Sheila is also a member of the project team responsible for bringing the Mother Tongue Other Tongue (MTOT) multilingual poetry competition to Scotland. The initiative started as a national Laureate Education Project led by the Poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, and co-ordinated by Routes into Languages at Manchester Metropolitan University. She also helped launch the LinguaChef competition for schools in Scotland, a project combining food and languages, which again was inspired by the Routes into Languages North East Languages Bake Off competition.
As part of the wider team, she assists with producing promotional literature, data collection and reporting and identifying and implementing new and improved administrative processes within the team.
Contact:
The Ramshorn
98 Ingram Street
Merchant City
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, G1 1EX
sheila.gallacher@strath.ac.uk