I’m a Spanish teacher and an applied linguist with special expertise in second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. I primarily work with Spanish and English language data.
As of August 2026, I'm starting a new position as Assistant Professor of Spanish at Coastal Carolina University where I will teach Spanish langauge as well as Spanish for the professions courses in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies.
When I took my first Spanish class, as a sixth grader in upstate New York, I developed a visceral interest in the Spanish language. I am blessed to have a “calling”—I feel strongly about language as the most fundamental element of how humans forge meaningful connections and communicate with one another.
I look at linguistics and language teaching through a global lens. I majored in World Languages and Political Science at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. I earned my master’s in Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech where conducted fieldwork in the Dominican Republic exploring the politics of language discrimination. Later, I had the privilege of studying at Indiana University, where I earned my master’s degree in Hispanic Linguistics and my Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics. In 2021, I defended my dissertation, “The Sociolinguistic Perception of Stylistic Variation in A Second Language: Attitudes toward four variable structures of Spanish.”
I have taught Spanish at the university level ever since I began my studies at Indiana University. I fell in love with teaching Spanish becuase of the connection it fosters with my students in the classroom, and the way language learning can be a pathway for young adults to go out and explore the world beyond themselves. In recent years, I've been interested in incorporating research-based pedagogies in the classroom with the goal of better supporting the development of comunicative skills in my students while also boosting student engagment in the classroom.
While teaching is a passion of mine that I dedicate much time to, I'm also a linguist and a researcher. I have presented my research at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, NWAV, and the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. I've published my research in Research in Corpus Linguistics, Issues in Teacher Education and in two volumes within John Benjamin's peer reviewed book series Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.
My most recent work has focused on advancing our understanding of L2 sociolinguistic perception by incorporating other measures such as language experience and first language sociolinguistic awareness, rather than comparisons with native speakers. This work is featured in a chapter within the recently published volume, Research at the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics: Studies in honor of Kimberly L. Geeslin (John Benjamins). I'm currently drafting a follow-up paper on this topic in which I explore the potential of focus groups and qualitative inquiry in studying the sociolinguistic competence and language attitudes of additional language learners of Spanish.
I am also committed to connecting research and research methods in sociolinguistics with teacher training and education. A pilot study exploring this potential was published last year in the Spring 2025 issue of Issues in Teacher Education. Along with colleagues at Penn State Erie, we've collected additional data on this topic and will be analyzing the data this Fall.