Rate My Professor Kathy Negrelli

Kathy Negrelli serves as Associate Professor of Japanese and Coordinator of the Japanese Program in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Kennesaw State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Georgia. Since joining KSU around 2013, she has led the development of the Japanese program, increasing enrollment from 27 to over 200 students per semester. Of Japanese-American heritage, with a Japanese mother and American father, she initiated formal Japanese studies in her junior year of college, taught English in Japan for 13 years post-graduation, and then returned to pursue her doctorate.

Negrelli's academic interests encompass foreign language pedagogy, technology in the language classroom, intercultural competence, acculturation, study abroad assessment, and second language acquisition. Her notable publications include co-authorship with Jeongyi Lee on “Students on the Move: Assessing Intercultural Competence of American Study Abroad Sojourners in Japan and Korea” (Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, 2025), “Two Countries, One Goal: A Mixed-Methods Study of the Development of Study Abroad Sojourners’ Cultural Identification in Japan and Korea” (Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 2022), and “Cultural Identification, Acculturation, and Academic Experience Abroad: A Case of a Joint Faculty-Led Short-Term Study Abroad Program” (Journal of International Students, 2018). She has also co-authored Irasshai: Welcome to Japanese, a multimedia introductory course. Negrelli has led study abroad programs to Japan, developed the pre-internship course FL4490 “East–West Ties: Japan–Georgia Connections” in 2023, and received the 2021 Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese Teacher of the Year Award as well as the 2023 Shore Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellowship. She actively participates in conferences, student success initiatives, and university committees.