John DePriest, Ph.D. is an Instructor in the English for Academic and Professional Purposes Program through the Center for Global Education at Tulane University, where he has taught since 2016. His areas of focus include applied linguistics for ESL, phonetics of spoken English, language in the brain, spoken language performance, and language/music interactions. He is also the past president of Louisiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (LaTESOL). Dr. DePriest is also a musician and songwriter and an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. 

Alexis Reed is a life-long resident of the Greater New Orleans area and graduated from the University of New Orleans, where she studied Anthropology, Political Science, and Sociology.  Alexis studied abroad with the UNO-Japan: Study at Doshisha University Program as a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholar the summer after her freshman year and participated in the National Model United Nations Conference during the spring semester of her freshman year. During her senior year she became a McNair Scholar, a program that prepares underrepresented undergraduate students for grad school and provides support during undergrad, with the intention that scholars will pursue a doctorate degree in ten years. 

Being a first-generation, Black college graduate and the first in her family to travel internationally, she is passionate about outreach and promotion to help increase the percentage of first-generation and Black college students who participate in cultural exchange opportunities. She has done this by sharing her experiences with funding and preparing to study abroad and her time in Japan to attendees at the 2021 We Represent Conference and UNO’s 2020 #StudyAbroadSoBlack panel.

With her experiences mentoring UNO freshman students and serving as a teacher assistant as a UNIV 1001 Peer Mentor, she welcomes Tulane students to see her as a resource, regardless of whether they end up studying abroad.

Megan Ritterbusch earned her M.Ed. from the University of Missouri with an emphasis in Teaching English as a Second Language. She has more than seven years of experience teaching English as a second and foreign language in the U.S. and in Taiwan. In addition to teaching ESL language skills courses, she has developed curriculum for university-level intensive English program courses and community-based adult ESL programs. Her research and teaching interests include content-based instruction, second language acquisition theory and pedagogy, curriculum development, intercultural communication, and international and comparative education.

Mike Whisenant attended Washington College in Maryland where he studied Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ethnomusicology. During his junior year, he studied abroad in Denmark at Sagnlandet (Land of Legends) Lejre, an archaeological open-air museum west of Roskilde. While there, he interpreted prehistoric peoples to the public by living your average Mesolithic life in clothing he made himself. Post-graduation, Mike studied abroad again at University College Dublin in Ireland to complete a master's degree in Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture. His master's thesis was original research and experiments on the production of 18th century musket balls, and he deeply misses Ballygowan Sparkling Water.

Mike is passionate about enabling and encouraging first-generation students, first-time travelers, and students with disabilities to study abroad. He believes that studying abroad has been historically prohibitive for these students, and that their contributions to the world stage are needed now more than ever. Whether it is financial concerns, navigating systems, or even fear of the unknown, he wants to help you find creative solutions to your complex challenges.

Make an Appointment Pre-Advising Form