The Department of English would like to bid a very fond farewell to Ausra Karka who will be retiring this year. Ausra joined Humber in 1980 and focused much of her teaching career on developmental language issues.

Her early work as coordinator of the Language Development Centre (now the Writing Centre) made her an influential advocate of post-secondary ESL courses to address the language needs of Humber’s ever-growing second-language population, resulting in an Innovator of the Year Award and her co-authoring a textbook for English language learners, Writing Skills for the Workplace: ESOL. A specialist in writing assessment, she also helped to develop and coordinate the English placement testing process, creating a system that has been modeled in many other colleges. A Distinguished Faculty Award recipient, Ausra served as a mentor to many of her colleagues and will be long remembered for her many contributions to the department.