Professor Emeritus Dr KARL F. OTTO, Jr, earned degrees in German Language and Literature from Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, MI) and Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). He subsequently taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago and then at the University of Pennsylvania.
His areas of expertise include Seventeenth-Century German Literature (especially Philipp von Zesen, Sprachgesellschaften, Opitz, the Klesch Brothers), bibliography, and language acquisition, in which areas he has extensive publications. He has presented at local, state, national, and international conferences on his areas of specialization.
Dr Otto was trained in the concepts of proficiency in 1983, after which he was certified in both English and German. He has conducted and/or rated nearly ten thousand interviews in German and English since that time.
In 1987, he became a proficiency workshop trainer and regularly conducts workshops both for ACTFL (ACTFL and ILR protocols) and for the US Peace Corps.
In his spare time, Dr Otto is an avid traveler (over 100 countries), a genealogist, and he loves to cook!
