Welcome ¡Bienvenidos!

I am currently a graduate student in the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Department at the Pennsylvania State University. I am studying Spanish Linguistics with a focus on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Applied Linguistics. My research interests include Spanish SLA in different learning contexts as well as sociolinguistics and the ways in which identity is constructed and reflected through language.

I graduated from Oregon State University in 2001 with a BA in Business Administration and a minor in Spanish. My last term was spent abroad in Santander, Spain which lengthened into a year as I sought out opportunities to stay and work and to take additional classes. After returning to the US, I worked for two non-profit organizations in Nashville, Tennessee; first in the international division of a publishing house, then for an inner-city medical clinic that served immigrants, refugees and the uninsured where I also volunteered as a medical interpreter.

In 2005 I returned to school as a graduate student and earned my Master's degree in Spanish from the C.V. Starr-Middlebury College School in Spain (Madrid). From 2006 until 2008, I worked as an English instructor and assistant for the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science in a bilingual school in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

In addition to the four years I lived in Spain and traveled throughout Europe, I have also had the opportunity to travel and volunteer in Mexico, Central, South America, the Caribbean and Africa.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands
but in seeing with new eyes.”

Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist