Message From the Dean
Jennefer Verdini Mazza
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Jennefer Mazza
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I am looking forward to this year, my last year as dean, because we have wonderful new faculty members to welcome to the unit and because we are moving to internationalize our curriculum by requiring foreign language proficiency for all of the students in the School of American and International Studies. We have two new faculty members who come from Harvard University: Dr. Tae Kwak, whose specialty is East Asian History and Dr. Natalia Santamaria Laorden, who will be teaching Spanish Language and Culture for us. We have two visiting scholars here to teach language and culture classes: Professor Tatiana Ivouchkina comes to us from Volgograd State Pedagogical University in Russia and Sandra Wang comes to us from Shanghai Normal University in China. In addition, we have a Fulbright scholar visiting from Tangiers, Morocco, Ms. Najat El Makhloufi, who will be teaching Arabic for us. Finally, we have two fine scholars/teachers from Brown University who are returning for a second year: Dr. Monica Pelaez (Literature) and Dr. Erick Castellanos. These additions to the talented faculty residing in our unit will allow us to continue to offer a wide variety of courses and it will allow us to continue our tradition of mentoring students in and out of the classroom.Our efforts to encourage foreign language study stems from our deep commitment to a liberal arts education and our desire to prepare students adequately for the global economy. We also encourage students to participate in our study abroad programs as well as take advantage of our experiential learning opportunities and internships so that when they graduate and go on to graduate school or the job market, they will have experiences that demystify the “real” world and distinguish them from other candidates competing for graduate work or jobs in the global marketplace.
I look forward to welcoming our new class of freshmen, the largest class in the history of the college and I encourage you all to come by and say hello and maybe share any suggestions you have on how we can improve what we do in the School of American and International Studies.
