S. Thomasine Bugala's Publications

Sister Thomasine was born Genevieve Bugala in Saginaw on December 31, 1926, the twelfth of thirteen children. She was educated at St. Rita’s School in Saginaw and St. Joseph High School. In 1951 she dedicated her life to Our Lady and entered the postulancy at Marywood in Grand Rapids, Michigan, taking the name S. Thomasine. In 1956 she made final profession. S. Thomasine taught first and second grade at St. Alphonsus and Immaculate Heart of Mary schools in Grand Rapids, and St. Norbert in Munger between 1952 and 1964. During this time she was an undergraduate student at Aquinas College. She received her master’s degree from Tufts University in 1966. In 1968 she began teaching German and English as a Second Language (ESL) at Aquinas College. Maryknoll Father Graham McDonnell introduced her to the Good Shepherd Movement, an educational program in Kyoto, Japan. For 20 summers S. Bugala taught both children and adults in its ESL program and trained tutors. She wrote a series of textbooks to be used in the classrooms, including the Hello to English children’s series and Lively English for the Japanese Student for older learners. After her college teaching retirement, S. Thomasine became the program coordinator for the Catholic Telecommunications Network of America (CTNA), and continued teaching English all over the world, from Papa New Guinea to Russia, Eastern European countries, and beyond. She passed away on May 11, 2010 at the age of 83.