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SUNY Potsdam Associate Professor of English Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein Named COIL Ambassador

SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning Honors SUNY Potsdam English Faculty Member Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein as COIL Ambassador

Potsdam, NY (06/10/2025) — SUNY Potsdam Associate Professor of English Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein has received a prestigious recognition from the SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning program. The faculty member was named a 2025-26 SUNY COIL Ambassador, in honor of her pedagogical innovations and contributions to the center's community of practice.

Dr. van Blommestein was one of 38 educators selected from across the SUNY system and from international partner institutions this year, chosen for their embrace of experiential learning and inclusive teaching and learning practices. COIL Ambassadors are recognized for making meaningful connections between people, cultures and ideas, offering engaging and globally relevant educational experiences.

About the recipient:

Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein, who also chairs the Department of English, was honored for her innovative work in COIL courses, including designing and integrating intercultural learning activities using identity charts for students to explore individual and collective identities. This initiative stemmed from her SUNY Potsdam WAYS 103 seminar through the General Education program, titled, "What's in a Name?: Identity and Labels." She utilized Kimberle Crenshaw's Intersectionality Theory and Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory as potential building blocks to help professors encourage students to communicate and discuss their individual and collective identities in both the face-to-face, and eventually, virtual learning settings. Dr. van Blommestein utilized her research and incorporated it on the international level, basing her COIL projects off the seminar. One such COIL project was with her Spanish colleague, Dr. Andrea Bellot, of the Universidad Rovira I Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. The two scholars co-authored a paper based on van Blommestein's WAYS 103 research, which was published in the Journal of Virtual Exchange in 2023. Bellot documented and summarized the course's activities, while van Blommestein, drawing on her previous research from the seminar, focused on developing the thesis and analytical sections to see if the research results were the same on the international level. She synthesized the course's findings from the research, and highlighted the significant impact on students' understanding of race and identity through individual and collective identities.

Dr. van Blommestein received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida, and specializes in medieval/early modern literature, feminist theory, and women's and gender studies topics, via British and American literary studies. Her research formulates a cultural and political context for the relationship/parallel between medieval/early modern and contemporary issues on ideologies of the gendered body, the semiotic body and the body/skin as book. She examines the cultural significations of, and the semiotic prescriptions deployed in, "writing" on, and reading of, the body/skin as an act of agency. These research interests also connect to topics pertaining to medieval medicine and the social approach to health and healing; the female body and prostitution; menstruation and reproduction; women and religious women, and disease from ancient to modern. Her present research involves partly writing/editing two encyclopedias: "Women's Reproductive Lives: An Encyclopedia of Health, History, and Popular Culture" and "Gynecology and Reproduction in Medieval/Renaissance Culture."

The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) center connects students and professors in different countries for collaborative projects and discussions as part of their coursework. COIL collaborations between students and professors provide meaningful, significant opportunities for global experiences built into programs of study. COIL enhances intercultural student team-focused interaction through proven approaches to meaningful online and virtual engagement, while providing universities with a cost-effective way to ensure that their students are globally engaged. The SUNY COIL Center pioneered the COIL model in the early 2000s, and has been at the forefront of empowering professors, students, programs and institutions to embrace diversity through inclusive teaching and learning focused on equity while connecting through difference.

SUNY Potsdam's Department of English challenges its students with courses that develop their abilities to interpret a variety of written, oral, and multimedia forms in which humans communicate with one another, as well as to express themselves effectively in those forms. For more information, visit www.potsdam.edu/academics/AAS/Engl.

About SUNY Potsdam:

Founded in 1816, The State University of New York at Potsdam is one of America's first 50 colleges -- and the oldest institution within SUNY. Now in its third century, SUNY Potsdam is distinguished by a legacy of pioneering programs and educational excellence. The College currently enrolls approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Home to the world-renowned Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam is known for its challenging liberal arts and sciences core, distinction in teacher training and culture of creativity. To learn more, visit www.potsdam.edu.

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SUNY Potsdam Associate Professor of English Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein has been named a 2025-26 SUNY COIL Ambassador.

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