Teresa Pérez-Gamboa: Spanish Professor of the Year

Teresa Pérez-Gamboa, Senior Academic Professional, was recently honored as "Spanish Professor of the Year" by the Georgia Chapter of American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP). Dr. Pérez-Gamboa, who holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in foreign language instruction from SUNY Stony Brook in New York, studied English linguistics at the University College in London, England, and did her undergraduate studies in Spanish Literature at the National University of Trujillo, in her native Perú.

Dr. Pérez-Gamboa has a vast experience in the teaching of both English and Spanish as a foreign language in the United States, England and Peru, where she directed the EFL Department of the Peruvian North American Cultural Institute. Her areas of expertise are Second Language Acquisition, English and Spanish Phonetics and Foreign Language Pedagogy. At present, she is the Spanish Language Coordinator in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia where she supervises Elementary and Intermediate Spanish instruction as well as the training of 68 Teaching Assistants and Part-time Instructors. She also conducts the community-based Spanish program that is offered as a practicum for twenty-five students each semester.

In Fall 2001, along with Dr. Betina Kaplan, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Dr. Pérez-Gamboa developed a service-learning, extra-credit component for SPAN 3010, SPAN 4010, and SPAN 7750. The focus of this service-learning component was to improve the Spanish skills of the students enrolled in those courses, as well as to help the Hispanic or Latino students at Chase Street Elementary School with their linguistic needs. Since then, this service learning project has been enhanced, and several other activities have been added. In Fall 2002, Spanish 4090: Spanish Practicum was offered for the first time in the Department of Romance Languages, and has since been taught by Dr. Pérez-Gamboa every semester, except last Spring.

At the beginning of each semester Dr. Pérez-Gamboa usually meets the Bilingual Parent Liaison at Chase Street Elementary School and outlines the critical needs of the Hispanic population for the school year. They then organize the following: a one-on-one tutoring program; arrange for interpreters at parent/teacher conferences; offer English classes for parents of Hispanic students; and organize and select bilingual readings of children’s literature.

The one-on-one tutoring program enables Hispanic students to receive as many as three sessions per week from UGA students. At present, our department’s students of Spanish usually devote at least 15 sessions per semester to help K-5 Hispanic students with their homework. Our students also serve as interpreters during the parent-teacher conferences at Chase Street Elementary School.

Dr. Pérez-Gamboa is responsible for creating the bilingual reading program at Chase St. Elementary School. Her students of Spanish are encouraged to put their reading skills into practice by reading stories in Spanish and English to small children. The school library schedules thirty-minute reading groups once a week. This bilingual reading program is at the heart of Dr. Pérez-Gamboa’s research on the importance of reading in the teaching and learning of a foreign language.
In Fall 2002, Dr. Elizabeth Wright, Associate Professor of Spanish, joined this service learning group by accepting Dr. Pérez-Gamboa’s invitation to lead the ESOL Program for Hispanic parents. Since then, several graduate students in Spanish have either taught or co-taught the ESOL course at Chase St. Elementary School.

In Fall 2003, Dr. Pérez-Gamboa organized and taught a Survival Spanish course at the Public Library in Athens. This course is designed for people in the local community who are interested in learning Spanish as a foreign language. Since then, the course has been offered every semester, except in the summer. Our graduate students in the MAT Program have been teaching this course since last Spring (please see the related article in this issue of the Online Newsletter).

In the summer of 2004, Dr. Pérez-Gamboa organized the first student exchange program between our department and the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in Trujillo, Peru. That summer three students from our department taught EFL at “El Cultural” (please see the article about them in the last issue of the Online Newsletter); and this past summer seven students from UGA taught there. As part of the exchange, eight graduate students from Peru have come to study in our Spanish program at UGA.

In order to encourage accomplished graduate students to apply to our department’s Spanish graduate program, Dr Pérez-Gamboa has given informative lectures at the National University of Trujillo, at the Catholic University in Lima, and at the International University in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Her numerous and invaluable activities on behalf of the University and the Athens Clarke County community have made Dr. Pérez-Gamboa an exceptional asset for both UGA and ACC.

Dr. Pérez-Gamboa is shown in this photo with six students who graduated from UGA and who are currently teaching EFL at the Peruvian North American Cultural Institute in Trujillo, Peru. They were recruited last March when both directors form this Institute were visiting Athens. They are: Anne Wesserling, Beth Hussenmberg, Jessica Cudnik, Gene Kim, Robert Thomas, and Brian Childs. Kirsten Furman is not on the picture, but she is also in Trujillo.