Profile

Adriana, a native of Argentina, earned her first degree in History and Education, with a certification to teach in high schools and colleges in her native country. Her research for her degree of Profesora de Historia was about the political campaign of Julio A. Roca in 1880. By the time she earned her first degree, Adriana had already taught for several years in schools in Buenos Aires, as well as participated in literacy projects for illiterate adults.

Adriana moved to the US with her husband and four children. Her interest in continuing her education led her to study at UMBC’s English Language Center in 1999 and apply to the MA program in Intercultural Communication (INCC). She recently finished her MA in INCC at UMBC with research on online writings of heritage speakers of Spanish.

At UMBC, she has taught Spanish, developed online courses, and assisted with online course development for the English Language Center’s E-Teacher Program. She has also designed and taught Spanish courses for the National Labor College. In addition, working with the Center for Applied Linguistics, she has been a research assistant involved in a database collection of heritage language programs in the United States.

In the LLC Program, Adriana would like to continue her research on heritage Spanish learners and issues of language maintenance, bilingualism, and identity among Hispanic students in online courses in higher education, investigating their voices through their writing.

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News

Adriana led a great presentation at the national ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages) conference held here in Baltimore in November 2005. She presented as part of the Alliance for the Advancement for Heritage Languages with Joy Peyton, Vice-President of the Center for Applied Linguistics, Shuhan Wang, State Supervisor for World Languages, Delaware Department of Education, and myself. She explained the national heritage language program database she has been working on through CAL.

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