Meryem Ezgi Yalçın is the director of and a lector in the Modern Turkish Program in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. An applied linguist with over a decade of experience in teaching, she focuses on the social and individual variables in the acquisition of Turkish as a world language. She was awarded the Poorvu Innovation Award by Yale College for her excellence in teaching and the Applied Linguistics Award by the University of Glasgow.
She is currently teaching Turkish courses at all levels, and providing her students with hands-on experience of Turkish culture, including Turkish cinema, cuisine, and art. In her role as program director, Ezgi is responsible for curriculum and assessment design and development. Prior to joining Yale, she taught at the School of Foreign Languages at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey. Ezgi is a Fulbright and SUSIs alumna.