2025 Board Election Results
2025 AATG Election Results
The AATG is pleased to announce the 2025 election results for the national board of directors who will start in January, 2026. The AATG Board of Directors represents teachers of German throughout the United States. The Board is an elected, policy-making body, with members at pre-collegiate and post-secondary teaching levels from various regions of the country.
Vice President from 2026-2027 and as President in 2028-2029
Stephanie Zachar, Mesa Ridge High School, Colorado
Stephanie Zachar just started her 15th year teaching German. She currently teaches at Mesa Ridge High School in Colorado Springs and previously taught at Northridge High School in Middlebury, Indiana and Fountain Fort Carson High School in Fountain, Colorado. As a military dependent, Stephanie began learning German at Leavenworth High School in Kansas and continued at Heidelberg American High School in Heidelberg, Germany. She studied German at Alma College and International Relations at Seton Hall University. In between her studies, she spent a year working as an Au Pair for a German-speaking Swiss family and interned for a summer in Vienna, Austria. Over the years, Stephanie has improved her German through graduate courses through Indiana University, the Sommerschule am Pazifik at Portland State University, and attending both AP and IB trainings. As a teacher, she has grown each German program that she has taught in. She has had the joy of teaching AP German, IB German, and dual credit courses with Indiana University. This year, she is excited to have AP German back at Mesa Ridge for the first time since the pandemic. She has traveled to Germany with students on organized tours, the AATG Summer Study program, and the GAPP Exchange. Her favorite part of AATG Membership is the workshops sponsored by her local chapters and the sessions at the State and National Conferences that she’s attended.
Central Region Representative 2026-2028
Kristie Foell, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Coming from a German-American family, Dr. Kristie Foell began learning German in college (Yale), studied abroad in Munich, and quickly went on to a Ph.D. in German (UC-Berkeley). She has benefited from two Fulbright awards: a dissertation grant to Vienna, where she wrote on Nobel prize-winner Elias Canetti; and a teaching award to the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1995, where she was able to observe the process of German unification first-hand. After temporary contracts at Gustavus Adolphus (MN) and Vassar (NY), she earned tenure at Bowling Green State University (OH). At Bowling Green, she served as resident director of the Salzburg study abroad program four times, led the International Studies major for a decade, and served as founding director of the Global Village living-learning community. Her research evolved first to considerations of German unification in literature and film (several articles and two co-edited books). Recently, her research and teaching have focused on migration in film, especially but not only German film. She regularly mentors graduate teaching assistants as well as high school colleagues in the College Credit program. Fun fact: her sister, Kim Schneider (WI), is also a German teacher!
Southwest Representative 2026-2028
Christopher Francis, Mountain Home Public Schools, Arkansas
Christopher Francis discovered his love for the German language and culture while a high school student in southern California, and after a false start as an engineering student at Stanford, returned to his true passion, graduating 1989 with a degree in International Relations. While still an undergraduate, Chris studied abroad at the Stanford study center in Berlin and unknowingly witnessed some of the final months of the Berlin Wall, East Germany and the Cold War itself. Chris returned to Germany in 1990-91 on a DAAD grant through which he was able to study for a year at the Universität zu Köln. Then in 1993 Chris returned to Berlin where he worked for 3 years as the internship coordinator for the Stanford center, placing students with companies and institutions across Germany and occasionally in other German-speaking countries. Upon returning to the States in 1996, Chris worked for 9 years as a programmer in Silicon Valley until he and his family pulled stakes and moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas. Chris eventually started teaching German at the local high school, where he has been for the last 10 years. Every 2 years he and his wife Victoria take 25 high school students to Germany through the GAPP exchange program, which has deep local roots. Chris is currently president of the Arkansas chapter of the AATG and president-elect for the Arkansas Foreign Language Teachers Association. In his spare time he thinks about fishing but instead tries to stay relevant to his 6 children, ages 9-26.
Chapter Officer Representative 2026-2028
Melanie Mello, Dwight Global Online & Arizona German Language School, Arizona
Melanie Mello has been passionately committed to German language education since 2008, teaching students from first grade through college. She currently teaches AP German Language and Culture for Dwight Global Online, serves as founder, director, and instructor at the Arizona German Language School—a vibrant community-based program serving learners ages 3 to 85—and also teaches German language and literature courses as adjunct faculty at Arizona State University. She is the co-author of the InterKulturell® intermediate textbook series (Wayside Publishing) and has developed curricula and educational resources for the Goethe-Institut, the United Nations Foundation, and other institutions. As a tireless advocate for German and world language education in the United States, Melanie has held a variety of leadership roles. She is a German Educational Multiplier (GEM) with the Goethe-Institut, a GAPP coordinator and former SPARK coordinator, Past-President of both AATG-Arizona and the Arizona Language Association (AZLA), and currently serves as secretary of ACTFL’s German Special Interest Group (SIG). Her dedication has earned her national recognition—she was named one of five finalists for ACTFL’s National Language Teacher of the Year in 2020 and was honored as the Distinguished Alumna of the College of Humanities & Fine Arts at CSU, Chico in 2023.