The College of Humanities is pleased to welcome new faculty for the upcoming academic year. 

“These are outstanding scholars who represent the breadth and diversity of Humanities scholarship and teaching. Their areas of expertise are well aligned with the University of Arizona’s strategic imperatives and strategic research initiatives,” said Dorrance Dean Alain-Philippe Durand. “Their expertise in languages and cultures around the world will further our mission of graduating students equipped with the skills they need to succeed on the global job market.” ​​​

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Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Assistant Professor 
Department of Religious Studies and Classics

Dr. Farrior joins the Department of Religious Studies & Classics as Assistant Professor of Classics (Roman Archaeology). Her research focuses on the archaeology and social history of marginalized communities in the Roman urban landscape. Dr. Farrior earned her doctorate from Columbia University. Her dissertation, recognized with the Rome Prize in Ancient Studies (2024), explored foreign communities within the Greek epigraphic record of imperial Rome. Her current research builds on this work to investigate the relationship between imperial power and the Greek language within the city of Rome. 

She is the Excavation Supervisor for the Pompeii I.14 Project, which examines everyday life at the edges of Roman urban society. She has co-authored reports on the project’s first three seasons, published in the Rivista di Studi Pompeiani and the E-Journal degli Scavi di Pompei. Her fieldwork extends beyond Pompeii, including at sites such as Sant’Omobono, Morgantina and Hadrian’s Villa in Italy, as well as Pañamarca in Peru. Most recently, she held a lectureship in the Department of Classics at Princeton University, where she taught courses on Roman archaeology and history. Before Princeton, she was the Stavros Niarchos Fellow in Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). She studied Classics at Brown University (BA, 2014) and Classical Studies at Tulane University (MA, 2016).

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Genevieve Ferrier-Rainey, Assistant Professor
Department of French and Italian

Dr. Geneviève (Gene, [ʒənə]) Ferrier-Rainey, a native of southwestern France, is a linguist and a language instructor. She earned her Ph.D. in French Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2026, after completing a portfolio in Language Program Direction (UT Austin, 2023), a Master in French Linguistics (UT Austin, 2022), and a Master Français Langue Étrangère (Université de Pau Pays de l’Adour, 2017). She is joining the Department of French at the University of Arizona in the Fall of 2026 as Assistant Professor and Director of the Basic Language Program. Her research interests focus on Second Language Pragmatics and intercultural communication, with a focus on irony understanding and formulaic language. Dr. Ferrier-Rainey’s teaching philosophy is centered on raising students’ awareness of languacultural norms in their first and second languages, and she endeavors to support student learning through language play and practical communication strategies.

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Borbala Gaspar, Assistant Professor of Practice
Department of French and Italian

Dr. Gaspar earned her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She is the co-author of Italian In Wonderland, an OER language-learning platform sponsored by an NEH grant and currently used for Italian language instruction at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Gaspar’s research focuses on literacy-oriented language teaching and learning and students’ perceptions of language learning. She is grateful for the opportunity to continue her professional growth while collaborating with and learning from the diverse community within the College of Humanities.

 

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Bo Liu, Assistant Professor 
Department of East Asian Studies

Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and Director of the Basic Language Program in Chinese in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. Before joining the University of Arizona, he taught Chinese language, culture, and research courses at Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum from the University of Oklahoma, with a concentration in World Languages Education.

His teaching and research focus on Chinese language pedagogy, language learning motivation, teacher education, curriculum design, and language assessment. He has published research in Foreign Language Annals, RELC Journal, and Chinese as a Second Language. He is actively involved in professional service and leadership in world languages education and teacher education. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, walking his dog Lucy, watching movies, and playing pickleball.

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Manuela Luengas Solano, Assistant Professor
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Dr. Luengas Solano joins the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as Assistant Professor of Spanish. She is a cultural studies scholar of modern and contemporary Latin America, working at the intersection of environmental humanities, contemporary art and media, and cultural anthropology. Her research and teaching interests include climate and environmental justice, sound studies, Indigenous literatures, and the history of print and visual cultures in the Americas from the nineteenth century to the present. Her current book project, River Archives: Sedimentation, Fluidity, and Futurity in Latin American Cultures, brings together a wide-ranging corpus of film, travel writing, cartography, literature, and installation art, examining the role of rivers in Latin America’s modern history. Her book argues that, instead of passive ‘natural’ elements, rivers can be conceived as both historical archives and social actors for artists and communities in the region—they are complex entities holding traces of the past, while being active mediators of human and more-than-human relations. Through an interdisciplinary approach, River Archives offers a novel understanding of the region’s hydro-social territories, foregrounding rivers’ centrality in questions regarding political violence, race, migration, and post-colonial extractive cycles. Further, her research demonstrates how rivers’ materialities has affected the aesthetic registers and languages of Latin American cultural production.

Prior to joining the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at University of Arizona, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in environmental humanities at Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center (2025-2026). She holds a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University (2025), an MA in Literary Studies from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2018), and a BA in Anthropology from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2015). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Contracorriente, Crisol, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and World Literature Today, among others. Her first book, entitled Revista Mito: Libertad, situación y política del intelectual (1955-1962), on twentieth-century print culture in Colombia was published by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico Press in 2025.

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Nicholas Ott, Assistant Professor 
Department of German Studies

Dr. Ott, (University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2024), is an incoming Assistant Professor of German Studies who will serve as the Director of the Basic Language Program at the University of Arizona. Prior to this role, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah and was affiliated with the Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC). Dr. Ott’s research is situated within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and focuses on speech accommodation, the multilingual identity, and social justice-oriented pedagogy. His work has appeared in Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, and other venues.

As a teacher, Dr. Ott actively integrates innovative approaches to teaching German, including AI- and virtual reality-enhanced instruction, multiliteracies pedagogy, and arts-based methods.

At various points in his career, he has taught German, Spanish, and English as a second or foreign language at the secondary and/or postsecondary levels in the United States, Germany, and Costa Rica. Drawing on his experience as a Fulbright grantee and as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, Dr. Ott is particularly interested in supporting L2 learners’ transition from the classroom into real-world immersion environments.

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Cassidy Reis, Assistant Professor of Practice
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Dr. Reis earned her M.A. and Ph.D. (2021) in Spanish Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2021, she joined the teaching faculty of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Arizona, where she has served as Lecturer, Coordinator and Interim Director of the Spanish Language Program. Her research interests include early modern Spanish literature and visual art, the visual rhetoric of Spanish picaresque fiction, ekphrasis in early modern literature, language program direction and leadership, and teaching Spanish as an additional language. She received her M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction from UNLV as a Teach for America Corps Member in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Her teaching experience includes beginning, intermediate, and advanced Spanish language and literature courses. Her dissertation is titled, Themes of Visuality, Visual Language, and Ekphrasis in the Early Modern Spanish Picaresque Novel (2021), and other publications include "Painted Dreams and Cervantes’s Critique of Representation in the Persiles", eHumanista Cervantes 5 (2017).

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Martin Sheehan, Department Head and Associate Professor
Department of German Studies

Dr. Sheehan is incoming Department Head and Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona. His research examines how literature and other media shape perceptions of bodies, identities, and social difference in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German culture. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals of German literary and cultural studies, including Seminar, Colloquia Germanica, and in such collections as The Routledge Companion to Literary Media. With Carrie Collenberg-Gonzalez, he co-edited Moving Frames: Photographs in German Cinema, a volume that investigates the aesthetic, narrative, and theoretical significance of photography in German film.

His current projects investigate how disability intersects with gender in German drama. A related strand of his research explores how visual and administrative technologies organize bodies and social relations during Germany’s Weimar era. He also creates scholarly video games that use interactive systems to explore a range of historical experiences. Paper Empire uses the mechanics and aesthetics of incremental games to explore everyday life during Weimar hyperinflation, while Kafka Teaches Typing, a modification of the border control game Papers, Please, translates the reality of Franz Kafka’s bureaucratic position at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague into procedural gameplay. Across these projects, Dr. Sheehan considers how media forms structure perception and assign cultural meaning to embodied difference.

A former co-director of the German Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Network, Dr. Sheehan has organized seminars and workshops on social network analysis, computational creativity, and other digital approaches to scholarship and teaching. He has also helped develop interdisciplinary academic programs that connect the humanities with computing and engineering.

His teaching and research have received support from the Max Kade Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. He has also presented his work at Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the University of Oxford. Before joining the University of Arizona, he held positions at the University of Virginia and TU Dortmund University. At Tennessee Tech University, he chaired the Department of Foreign Languages for nearly a decade. A native of South Carolina, he now calls the Southwest home, where he continues to collect, restore, and write with mechanical typewriters.

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Chelsea Ward, Assistant Professor
Department of East Asian Studies

Dr. Ward is an Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of Arizona whose research spans modern and contemporary Japanese literature, film, and media. She examines how literature and media shape sensory experience—and how ideas about perception become entangled with translation, technology, empire, and globalization. Her work moves from interwar silent cinema, modernist fiction, and colonial poetry to karaoke background videos, graphic design, avant-garde fashion, and food culture.

She is currently writing a book, Making Sense in Japanese Modernism: The Politics and Affects of Perception, that asks how competing scientific and cultural understandings of the senses shaped the aesthetics and politics of interwar Japan. Reading across literature, cinema, and translation, it shows how sensory experience became a crucial site for negotiating modernity, cultural difference, and empire. Her interest in the sensory also extends to more contemporary intersections of perception and global media. In a recent article published in the Journal of Visual Culture, she traces how karaoke background videos transformed changes in media technology, copyright, urban leisure, and nostalgia into an embodied form of ambient entertainment. Her next book project, Packaging the Spirit, examines how postwar Japanese film, fashion, food, and design were marketed abroad through a minimalist sensory aesthetic that continues to shape Japan’s global image.

Dr. Ward teaches courses on modern and contemporary Japanese literature and media, East Asian popular culture, translation, and media theory. Before joining Arizona, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colgate University and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wellesley College. She received her Ph.D. in Japanese literature, with a designated emphasis in Film & Media, from the University of California, Berkeley.

Stephanie Springer, Director of Internships and Career Readiness and a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, has received the Gerald J. Swanson Prize for Teaching Excellence. 

The Swanson prize recognizes excellence in undergraduate teaching at the University of Arizona. Created through a gift from the Thomas R. Brown Foundation in honor of Gerald J. Swanson, whose introductory economics course was legendary throughout his 40+ years at the U of A. Springer is one of four 2026 recipients, each awarded $5,000. 

“Stephanie teaches, mentors, builds, and inspires with exceptional vision and dedication. Her impact on undergraduate learning is evident in student and alumni stories, measurable program success, and the broader influence of the humanities internship model she created,” wrote Alain-Philippe Durand, Dorrance Dean of the College of Humanities, in a nomination letter. “Stephanie’s teaching exemplifies the highest standards of instructional excellence, reflecting innovation rooted in care, scholarship applied in practice, and leadership that elevates both students and peers.” 

Springer has played a pivotal role in the nation’s first and pioneering bachelor’s degree in Applied Humanities, designing and scaling an internship model that integrates humanistic inquiry with professional skill-building, embedding career readiness into the curriculum before students begin their internships. Over the past decade, she has taught and mentored more than 1,900 UA undergraduates who have collectively completed over 430,000 internship hours. 

“Stephanie blends intellectual rigor, institutional insight, and a profound student-centered ethic in everything she does. Her teaching inspires student enthusiasm, and her leadership strengthens faculty and programs,” wrote Judd Ruggill, Graduate College Associate Dean of Academic Services and Professor of Public and Applied Humanities. “Her instruction inspires students to approach internships with purpose and carry insights from her courses into their future endeavors, while also motivating colleagues to elevate their own teaching practices.”

As Chair of the University Internship Council since 2019, Springer has expanded its membership from 60 to over 160 participants, transforming it into a vibrant cross-campus community of practice, allowing faculty and staff to share teaching strategies, exchange resources and empower others to teach more effectively. In March, she received the U of A’s 2026 Community Impact Faculty Award in recognition for that work.  

Matt Mars, Professor and Head of the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, wrote that he first joined the U of A in 2000 as a pre-business academic advisor and got to know and admire Swanson for his ability to inspire and reach students. And much like Swanson’s “must-take” classes, Springer’s courses have earned a reputation for being relevant to where students are in their lives and fill quickly. One student recently described Springer as “the GOAT” (Greatest Of All Time). 

“Stephanie Springer shares the same passion for her work that Dr. Swanson was known for – centering student learning and growth above all else, treating teaching and mentoring as part science, part art, and fully a pursuit of excellence and impact. She exemplifies undergraduate teaching at its finest, designing courses that students actively seek out and remember long after graduation,” Mars wrote. “In the PAH Department, Stephanie’s teaching fosters curiosity, creativity, and cross-disciplinary connections that empower students to approach academic and professional challenges with confidence and purpose.” 

Beatrice Dupuy, Professor of French and Public and Applied Humanities, has received the University of Arizona’s Faculty Service Award. 

Sponsored by the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and funded through the Provost’s Investment Fund, the award recognizes faculty who have made exceptional contributions to the University’s service mission, within their department or college, across campus, or in their scholarly community. The University Faculty Service Award was created in 2022 and Dupuy is one of two 2026 recipients, each awarded $7,500 for research and/or professional development purposes to facilitate further work within their discipline. 

“Dr. Dupuy is a leader who has made exceptional contributions to the departments of French and Italian and Public and Applied Humanities, the Title VI Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy, the College of Humanities, the Graduate Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, and the University of Arizona’s missions and visions through excellence in the realm of service,” wrote Alain-Philippe Durand, Dorrance Dean of the College of Humanities, in a nomination letter. “Prof. Dupuy has managed to go beyond the expected in every single structure, internal and external, of the profession: departments, college, university, community, national and international venues.”

Since she joined the U of A in 2002, Dupuy has served for 12 years as Director of the French Basic Language Program, served for 16 years as Director or Co-Director of the Title VI Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy, and Co-Chair for the Cluster Hire Committee for Second Language Learning and Technology. She served for five years as Chair of the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program and has chaired 24 SLAT dissertations and served as a member on another 35 dissertation committees. 

“Few faculty members have contributed so consistently and at so many levels to the life of the university and the broader profession as Dr. Beatrice Dupuy has done. Her service reflects not only an extraordinary range of activities but also a rare combination of generosity, collegiality, and vision,” wrote Chantelle Warner, COH Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs, who served along with Dupuy as Co-Director of CERCLL for 10 years. “Those of us who have had the privilege of working alongside her know that she approaches every committee, initiative, and conversation with an ethic of care and collaboration that elevates the work of all around her. I have also had the opportunity to be mentored by Dr. Dupuy, whose example has deeply influenced my own understanding of what it means to serve—thoughtfully, collaboratively, and with an eye toward the greater good of our academic community.”

Carine Bourget, Professor and Head of the Department of French and Italian, wrote that Dupuy has gone well beyond the expected level of service her whole career, serving on close to double the number of committees, compared to other COH faculty. 

“It should be emphasized that Professor Dupuy has made extraordinary contributions at all the levels mentioned: departmental, college, university, community outside of the university, and service for a relevant scholarly community,” Bourget wrote.

The two SLAT chairs who followed Dupuy, current chair Ana M. Carvalho and 2020-2025 chair Suzanne Panferov Reese, wrote a joint letter describing Dupuy as “a prolific scholar in the fields of foreign and second language with an emphasis in French pedagogy, language program administration, and applied linguistics with many academic papers and textbooks credited to her name.” Dupuy’s service to her field extends from that, as a professional academic journal reviewer, external reviewer for academic program reviews and tenure & promotion committees, and as a mentor to students.

“Her tireless dedication to students, transformative leadership, and steady service to the University of Arizona and the profession make her not only deserving of this award, but emblematic of the very spirit it was created to honor,” wrote Carvalho and Panferov Reese. 

Dupuy’s nomination even drew a letter from a former student, who she supervised in the 1990s at Louisiana State University. Now an Associate Professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Heather Willis Allen wrote about the impact Dupuy has had far beyond the U of A campus. 

“As a language educator in Wisconsin, I cannot understate the powerful influence that CERCLL has had across the U.S. through its webinars, conferences, open-access instructional materials, and opportunities for gathering together,” she wrote. “Beatrice’s service as CERCLL Director has shaped the incredible range of projects on second language teaching and learning that have been completed over four grant cycles, but the outcomes of those projects truly are not just local, regional, and national but also global as the innovative pedagogies and instructional materials disseminated through the Center find their way into language classrooms around the world.”

Working with the Pima County Food Alliance and a variety of community organizations, Applied Humanities majors spent the semester focused on ways to design and implement a more resilient local food system. 

The students in Jasmine Linabary’s PAH 420 class, “Innovation and the Human Condition: Learning How to Improve Life in the Community and Beyond,” worked in groups to partner with a dozen local organizations like the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, the Tucson Family Food Project, and the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots program to better understand the needs and opportunities in the local food system.

“It’s a basic needs issue around which everyone can relate and connect and a pressing, very complex challenge facing our communities,” said Linabary, Associate Professor in the Department of Public and Applied Humanities. “Some of my own research, teaching and service has centered around food for a number of years. Everyone has experience with food and even if you haven’t had the experience of being food insecure, you know what it’s like to be hungry.” 

Students in the class engaged with their community partners several times throughout the semester, volunteering at least five hours each as they learned about the organizations and how they respond to community needs. For the final projects, students were required to tell a compelling public story that centered the community’s needs, while grounded in rigorous research and ethical values. 

“This project is focused on building resilience. There’s a lot of need we’re hearing from folks in the community, and it’s a prime opportunity to bring students to community partners who have a wide variety of needs right now,” Linabary said. “It’s important for students to create work that’s valuable for the partners in terms of usability or implementation, but it’s also about the relationships that students formed with partners.” 

For Molly Bisbee, Katelynn Resendez, Jasmine Worcester and Will Barth, working with the IRC’s New Roots program brought them alongside a program that supports refugees with plots of land, seeds, tools and education to grow for themselves as well as to sell. 

“At first, we thought the New Roots itself would need a better digital footprint, but the program is at capacity, so we turned our attention to ways to assist the farmers and gardeners themselves,” said Bisbee, majoring in Applied Humanities – Business Administration emphasis. “We created multilingual brochures (in English, Spanish and Swahili) to both explain the scope of the program and tell some personal stories of some of the farmers and gardeners. These are like business cards so they can market themselves, but they don’t have to answer a lot of questions since they don’t speak English as a first language.” 

Emily Griffin, Alexis Valencia and Jacob Cermak partnered with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona to create an art installation celebrating Earth Day at the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market. Community members responded to prompts the students wrote, centering on themes of community, food, nourishment and ways to protect the Earth. 

“An art installation is captivating when you walk by, so we can spread awareness of food insecurity in a creative way that gets people to think about things differently,” said Griffin, who majors in Applied Humanities – Fashion Studies emphasis and minors in business administration. “You can only learn so much in the classroom, but once we were working with the community, we got to make connections and learned a lot through conversations about Earth Day.” 

With the variety of community partners, Linabary was able to pair students with partners whose work they could be more passionate about. 

“One of the really interesting things working in the food system is there are so many different aspects of food. We have students across our major who are interested in a whole range of different things with their lives after graduation. Some of the students who were more interested in the business side of things might have been partnered with a farmers market, for example,” she said. “This issue space allows for all those different interests.” 

The Applied Humanities major has 14 different emphasis areas, ranging from Business Administration to Public Health to Rural Leadership & Renewal, with the student project teams emphasizing the transdisciplinary nature of the program. 

“We have student groups that are mixed in terms of their emphasis areas and that really enriches the discussion and allows for students to bring in their other course work or skillsets and experiences. Part of what we’re teaching is to collaborate well, not just with community partners, but with each other,” Linabary said. 

The class focuses on approaches and skillsets grounded in the humanities and how those can make a difference compared to projects that originate in other fields. 

“Flexibility and adaptability are skills that come especially from Public and Applied Humanities work. It requires to you deal with ambiguity and learn ways to communicate with different kinds of audiences,” she said. “The ability to empathize is a big one. Students are really cultivating the ability to listen deeply, to go into a community and listen for context and recognize there’s a history here. We’re not just interested in transactional relationships, but instead thinking more transformatively about the work.” 

Students from the class have already expressed interest in continuing relationships beyond the course. Some have indicated interest in continuing volunteering and have already been applying for internships and jobs with their own partner or others from the class. 

Dr. Feng-hsi Liu, Professor Emerita in the Department of East Asian Studies and longtime director of the Chinese Language Program, passed away in March. 

She joined the University of Arizona faculty in 1991 as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Chinese Language Program. Over the past three decades, she has played a pivotal role in shaping and expanding the Chinese language curriculum, fostering a rigorous learning environment for generations of students, said Wenhao Diao, Head of the East Asian Studies Department. 

Throughout her long and distinguished career, Liu demonstrated an unwavering commitment to scholarship, teaching and service, leaving an indelible mark on the institution and the field of Chinese linguistics.

The author or editor of four books and numerous articles and book chapters, Liu was a renowned scholar in Chinese language, linguistics and grammar, with a particular focus on the syntax-semantics interface. Her research reshaped the study of Chinese word order by demonstrating how aspect, event structure, specificity and quantification determine syntactic distribution and interpretation. 

Dr. Hang Du, John D. Berninghausen Professor of Chinese and Greenberg-Starr Chair of the Chinese Department at Middlebury College, worked and studied with Liu for six years while pursuing her Ph.D. in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program. 

“I took her Chinese Linguistics class, worked as a graduate teaching associate for her in multiple classes, and used her theoretical framework for my dissertation on the acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction,” Du said. “She was a brilliant linguist, an effective teacher, an inspiring mentor and dissertation advisor, and a kind human being. She will always live in my heart."

Liu led the Chinese language program from 1991 until her retirement in 2024. Additionally, she served as Director of Graduate Studies from 2019 until 2024.

“Leading a language program is not just about classroom teaching, but mentoring instructors and graduate students who work within the program, as well as organizing cultural events to bring that authentic experience and cross-cultural understanding outside of the class,” Diao said. 

Beyond her scholarly work, Liu consistently led various cultural initiatives that greatly supported student retention and program development. The most recent example is a $210,000 Huayu BEST grant Liu received in 2024 from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, funding major Chinese holiday celebrations in the department and providing critical financial support for our students to study abroad in Taiwan.

Liu received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCLA in 1990, her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Iowa in 1979, and her B.A., Foreign Languages and Literature from National Taiwan University in Taipei in 1977. 

The College of Humanities asked various leaders from across the University of Arizona campus about the importance of multilingualism. Hear various perspectives about the value of learning and using multiple languages and how those experiences can shape our careers and our lives: 

“Language gives shape to our thoughts and helps turn ideas into reality. I believe the capacity to appreciate, understand and use more than one language inherently expands our horizons. I grew up in a multilingual home where we spoke English, Hindi and Telugu, and I also have some passing familiarity with Sanskrit, Tamil and French. The many languages in the air enriched my childhood and education, and with the confidence this inspired I have been able to visit every continent and enjoy being in many different social and cultural settings. In an increasingly globalized world, engaging with other nations and cultures will shape a better future for us all, and multilingualism is a crucial part of this ability.” 
Suresh Garimella
U of A President 

“When I first arrived from Spain, I had studied English, but nothing prepares you for full immersion. I remember struggling through Astronomy 101 lectures where there were no scientific formulas to fall back on, only language. Worse yet, I remember struggling to keep up in conversation with my new American friends at the dorms and elsewhere on campus. That experience taught me how vital multilingualism is. Being in Tucson now, I’m amazed by how naturally Spanish and English coexist. It’s one of the hallmarks that makes this community so globally connected. It enriches how we work together and deepens our ability to understand and respond to complex challenges.”  
Tomás Díaz de la Rubia
Senior Vice President for Research and Partnerships

“I spoke Portuguese before I spoke English. Portuguese was the bridge that connected me to my large family, scattered across various parts of the world. When I was younger, I used to mix English and Portuguese in the same sentence—sometimes I even invented words! My family laughed, but never criticized me. I realized that people communicate in different ways and that, with patience and curiosity, we always end up understanding each other.” 
Helena Rodrigues 
Chief Human Resources Officer

“Embracing multilingualism has deeply shaped how I connect with others, opening me to diverse cultures and giving me genuine respect for anyone who ventures outside their native tongue. Working as a professional Spanish and Portuguese interpreter throughout medical school taught me just how much language shapes trust, connection and healing. Words are powerful. When used well, they help us navigate life with empathy and clarity. Recognizing the power of multilingualism helps us move through the world with greater care.” 
Dr. Stephen Dahmer 
Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine
Associate Professor, Family and Community Medicine

“I grew up in France and first came to the U.S.—to Tucson, in fact—when I was 23. In school I was fortunate to learn English and Spanish from passionate and skilled teachers. As soon as I began doing scientific research as an undergraduate, those language skills opened the door to international research at the highest level. Today, my team works hard to create opportunities for faculty and students to collaborate with partners in France. While English remains the global ‘currency’ of academic communication, familiarity with French opens additional windows onto local culture — turning good working visits into truly unique life experiences.”
Régis Ferriere
Deputy Director, France-Arizona Institute for Global Grand Challenges
Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 

“I was born and raised in a small town in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. My first language is Javanese, and I learned Indonesian in school so I could communicate with people from other regions and islands. I began learning English in middle school, and because I love traveling, I enjoy picking up new languages wherever I go, even if it’s just simple phrases. As global citizens, it’s important for us to value and understand different backgrounds. Doing so helps us grow into more open-minded, well-rounded individuals.” 
Nina A. Bates 
Director, Operations and Strategic Initiatives
Office of the Provost

“Multilingualism, particularly Kannada, not only allowed me to conduct historical research with primary documents, but it also opened doors into restricted archives and temple spaces that would have otherwise remained inaccessible. It also helped me to develop bonds with local communities in meaningful ways. Now, as a university administrator, it continues to pay dividends by helping me to connect deeply with local leaders of multinational tech corporations in the Indian tech hub of Bengaluru.”
Caleb Simmons
Vice Provost, Arizona Online

“As ASUA Student Body President and a bilingual leader who grew up navigating both English and Spanish at home and in school, I have learned how languages build bridges. Speaking more than one language has helped me connect with a diverse group of students and ensure their voices are heard and seen. Multilingualism strengthens our community and reminds us all that every student’s story deserves representation.”
Adriana Grijalva
ASUA Student Body President

Congratulations to the College of Humanities’ Outstanding Senior for Spring 2026, Marisol Marquez Perez!

A first-generation student, Marquez Perez is graduating with a B.A. in Applied Humanities, Public Health emphasis, and a minor in Classics, with plans to continue to graduate school in public policy. 

Matt Mars, Professor and Head of the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, nominated Marquez Perez for the award, writing that he first met her when he was lead faculty for the Dorrance Scholarship Innovation Program, and she and her group developed an AI-driven model for providing first-generation college students with timely support within resource scarce university environments.

“Marisol consistently pushed herself and her teammates to take on the intellectual challenge and rigor of leading innovation and change,” he wrote. “She consistently demonstrated a range of humanities-based skills, such as compassion and empathy, critical thinking, and strategic storytelling, throughout the development and presentation phases of the project. Marisol clearly and convincingly showed that the humanities are be not only relevant, but highly effective devices relative to entrepreneurship and innovation.”

Outside the classroom, Marquez Perez served over the last year as Chief of Staff & Policy Director for the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. Last summer, she interned in the Phoenix office of Sen. Ruben Gallego, providing bilingual assistance and tracking constituent casework files and assisting with issues involving federal agencies. In spring 2025, she was an intern at the Arizona State Senate, staffing the Military Affairs and Border Security Committees. 

“In my career I want to build public policy that actually works for people, specifically by expanding healthcare access and protecting immigrant families,” she said. “As an Applied Humanities major with a public health emphasis, I’ve learned that you can’t fix a system if you don’t understand the humans inside it. My studies have pushed me to look past what a policy says on paper and ask ‘Who does this leave behind? And why? This human-centered lens is exactly what I plan to bring to graduate studies in public policy.” 

In her convocation address, Marquez Perez told fellow graduates about studying abroad during her sophomore year, walking into Sainte-Chapelle in France for the first time, not realizing at the time how much that experience would shift the way she sees the world.

“What stood out was not just the beauty, but the weight of what was being communicated without a single word. Every window panel told a story. Every deep blue and vibrant red had meaning, even if I did not fully understand the history,” she said. “That moment taught me that understanding isn't always about having every answer. Sometimes it’s about being present enough to notice, to sit with something beautiful or uncomfortable, and to recognize meaning even when you don’t fully understand it yet.

“It is one thing to learn about history, culture, or inequality in a classroom. It is another to stand in a place where those realities exist and recognize that your perspective is only one version of a much bigger story. And that is when it really clicked for me. This is what the humanities are about.” 

Alicia Salazar Contreras, who is graduating with dual degrees in speech, language, and hearing sciences and Spanish, is one of two recipients of the University of Arizona’s Robert Logan Nugent Award.

The Nugent Award goes to students who display a record of accomplishments that exemplifies the high ideals of Robert Logan Nugent, a former U of A executive vice president, which include active, enthusiastic participation in campus life, and dedicated service to the university and community.

A first-generation Hispanic student born and raised in Tucson, Salazar Contreras has witnessed firsthand the gaps in resources available to Spanish-speaking communities, particularly for individuals in need of speech and language services. These experiences inspired her commitment to advocating for her community and working to expand research and clinical representation for Spanish-speaking populations in the United States.

During her time as an undergraduate, Salazar Contreras participated in research as both a McNair and FUERZA Scholar. Through this work, she helped develop Sopa de Pescado, a Spanish-language diagnostic passage designed to support the differential diagnosis of motor speech disorders. Created with Spanish speakers in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in mind, the passage aims to encourage more culturally and linguistically responsive clinical practices.

Beyond research, Salazar Contreras has demonstrated a strong commitment to service. She served as an interpreting lead team member for ARSOBO, a humanitarian aid organization based in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, that provides free monthly audiological services to individuals in need. She also completed a year-long internship with the Tucson Unified School District, where she assisted a bilingual speech-language pathologist in providing services for bilingual children throughout the Tucson area.

After graduation, Salazar Contreras plans to pursue a master's degree in speech-language pathology and become a clinically certified bilingual speech-language pathologist. Her goal is to support and advocate for underserved Spanish-English bilingual communities in Tucson by providing culturally responsive speech and language services.

Additionally, two students with minors in the College of Humanities will receive university-wide awards: 

• Lane Vazquez Luna, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and a minor in classics, is the other recipient of the Nugent Award. A Hispanic first-generation college student from El Mirage, Arizona, Vazquez Luna found a home in Tucson, where he developed a deep commitment to service, inclusion, and mentorship at the U of A.
   
• Gabriel Trinidad, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physiology and medical sciences and minors in Spanish and biochemistry, is being awarded the Robie Gold Medal, which honor Wendell T. Robie, Class of 1917, and Inez Benzie Robie, Class of 1916, and recognize two students who exemplify personal integrity, initiative and a breadth of interests. Born and raised in Tucson, Trinidad is a first-generation college student from the city's west side whose experiences have shaped his commitment to health equity and service.

Daniel Rojas Arroyo, who is completing his M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics, is the College of Humanities 2026 Outstanding Graduate Assistant in Teaching Award recipient.

Since fall 2025, Rojas Arroyo has taught Spanish 101 in person, hybrid and online, the intensive Spanish 205 course, which combines two beginning semesters into one semester, and Spanish 253, Intermediate Spanish for the heritage learner. 

“Daniel has stood out as one of the most highly motivated, enthusiastic, engaged and collegial members of the teaching team—his passion for teaching, ability to successfully teach different course levels and modalities, energetic collaboration with colleagues, and investment in learning and implementing new techniques to improve student learning continue to shine in every semester that I have worked with Daniel,” wrote Cassidy Reis, Interim Director of the Spanish Language Program, in a nomination letter.

“Daniel’s dedication to student success, eager participation in retention and recruitment efforts, strong and consistent work ethic, and commitment to professional development and growth make him a deserving recipient of the COH Outstanding Graduate Assistant in Teaching Award,” Reis wrote.

Associate Professor Tania Leal wrote that in working with Rojas Arroyo in multiple capacities — a mentor, instructor in graduate coursework and the faculty observer of his Spanish heritage language class — she has seen his “exceptional dedication to teaching, reflective practice, and student-centered pedagogy.” 

“Daniel is a thoughtful and well-prepared instructor who designs lessons with clear objectives, strong internal coherence, and a careful progression of activities,” she wrote. “Equally impressive is Daniel’s ability to cultivate a supportive and respectful classroom climate. Students appear comfortable taking risks, asking questions, and experimenting with new language forms—an essential condition for successful language learning. Daniel responds to student errors with sensitivity and encouragement, guiding learners toward more accurate forms while maintaining their confidence and motivation.” 

One student in the accelerated Spanish 205 class wrote that Rojas Arroyo is an approachable and kind instructor who created an environment in which students felt comfortable asking questions and didn’t fear making mistakes. 

“I walked away with a passion for learning the Spanish language and now I practice Spanish every day in a variety of ways. I attribute most of my present habits, dispositions, and enthusiastic attitude towards Spanish to my experience in Daniel’s class,” the student wrote. “The activities and lessons were a perfect balance of education and activity. They were fun, and often involved collaborating with other students in the class, which helped to create a really lively learning environment and contributed to a classroom experience that always felt exciting.” 

Another student nominator, whose family comes from Sonora, Mexico, wrote that Rojas Arroyo, a native of Colombia, frequently encouraged discussion about regional differences in vocabulary and tone, which fostered engagement in the classroom. 

“Daniel teaches with genuine care and intentionality. In our relatively small class, he created an environment where students felt seen and encouraged, even when some struggled with motivation or confidence,” the student wrote. “As a first-generation college student who also felt disconnected from my native language, I entered the course with both excitement and uncertainty. Daniel immediately recognized and supported that experience in a way that made learning feel both personal and empowering. During my time as one of Daniel’s students, I not only strengthened my Spanish skills but also gained a deeper understanding of myself as a learner.”