Bruna Sommer-Farias, an instructor of Portuguese finishing her doctoral degree in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, is awarded the College of Humanities 2020 Outstanding GAT Award.
Sommer-Farias first came to the University of Arizona as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from Brazil and has taught Portuguese for six years for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In nominating her for the award, Professor Ana M. Carvalho said “Bruna’s unprecedent excellence in teaching and selfless dedication to the Portuguese language program” deserves recognition.
“In my 20 years as the Director of the Portuguese language program, I have honestly never seen such a dedicated and outstanding GAT as Bruna,” Carvalho wrote. “Bruna’s academic specialization in SLAT, added to her hard-working, creative and enthusiastic personality made her a truly asset to our program. Bruna received the best student evaluations every semester. She treats her students with respect, and has a wonderful rapport with them, maintaining, at the same time, very high expectations from each of them.”
One of Bruna Sommer-Farias’s major contributions was single-handily redesigning the Portuguese Advanced Grammar and Composition course to include genre-based writing approaches, Carvalho wrote.
“When Bruna leaves the University of Arizona, she will leave a legacy of sustainable curricular and programmatic improvements,” she wrote. “I have no doubt that she represents the very best of our GATs, I am extremely thankful for having been able to count on her hard work, enthusiasm, and skills, and unreservedly nominate her for this award, which would formally acknowledge her significant contributions to our department, college, and university.”