Spanish

Peace and Social Justice Studies

Assistant Director of ESL Programs; Citizenship Instruction Coordinator

Literacy Council of Norristown; HIAS Pennsylvania

M.S. Ed. Candidate of Intercultural Communication at University of Pennsylvania

Currently, I am entering my last semester as a M.S. Ed. Candidate in Intercultural Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. In my program, we conduct research on how people use language to communicate in real situations, and how this has implications for language teaching, language learning, and work. I am gearing up to write a capstone paper on the interactional role of interpreters in social service agencies that serve refugee populations. In addition, I am an Assistant Director of ESL Programs at the Literacy Council of Norristown. In this role, I coordinate adult ESL classes and coach ESL teachers. Finally, I am the Citizenship Instruction Coordinator at HIAS Pennsylvania. In this role, I coordinate adult citizenship classes offered by community organizations that form P-CAN (Pennsylvania Citizenship Action Network).

Ursinus was transformative for me in so many ways. One of the most impactful experiences was studying abroad in Argentina. During that experience, I grew as a bilingual language user, researcher, and as an independent person. My study abroad program gave me the opportunity to conduct ethnographic research on a topic of my choice, which went on to influence my choice to do Honors research at Ursinus, and ultimately, pursue my M.S. Ed. Another impactful experience during my time at Ursinus was participating in the Bonner Leaders program. As a Spanish major in the Bonner program, I had many opportunities to connect to the hispanohablante communities around Ursinus through service learning and to coordinate ESL classes for some members of Ursinus’s cleaning staff. These opportunities were my first exposure to teaching English as a second language and additional language learning, a field in which I’ve worked ever since!