Steve Iams is an Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, the Coordinator for Academic Program Reviews, and a Clinical Associate Professor of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at NYU Shanghai. As a dean, he supports students and faculty with concerns related to academic policies, including academic integrity cases and grade appeals. He also serves as a faculty advisor to the Office of Global Awards and coordinates the university’s Academic Program Review (APR) process, ensuring rigorous evaluation and continuous improvement of academic programs.
Steve’s EAP courses are first-year seminars that encourage students to actively explore the intersections between global health, migration, and applied linguistics, and to develop the academic skills required to be successful at NYU Shanghai. Additionally, he pioneered the Language and Power course, one of the university’s first credit-bearing service-learning courses in which students carry out a community-based volunteer project while studying the role of language in sociocultural contexts. A frequent collaborator with the office of Community Engaged Learning, Steve has been a lead faculty in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, which fosters mentorship and connection between NYU Shanghai students and local youth.
His teaching has been recognized for its innovative design and high levels of student engagement. He is the 2022-23 winner of the NYU Shanghai Teaching Excellence Award and a 2024 recipient of the Shanghai Ministry of Education Key Curriculum grant.
Before joining NYU Shanghai, Steve was an assistant professor in the MA-TESOL program at the School for International Training in Vermont, where he taught applied linguistics courses and supervised MA thesis projects and teaching practicums. He served for over three years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Bhaktapur, Nepal and Sichuan, China and holds a PhD in Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Language Education from Ohio State University.
Education
- PhD, Foreign, Second and Multilingual Language Education
Ohio State University - MA, TESOL
School for International Training
- Narrative Inquiry
- Language Socialization
- Campus Internationalization
- English for Academic Purposes: The Greater Good, On the Border
- Dean’s Service Scholars Program: Language and Power