The mentorship and guidance that my college professors provided to me has made an enormous difference in my life. (I am a first generation elementary, high school, and college graduate.) As a university faculty member, I aim at offering similar support to all students. I thus make myself accessible to students during and after class, whether in office hours or over lunch during Spanish language tables.
I mentor undergraduates in multiple ways. For example, in working with Spanish majors at a regional university, I obtained funding for them to attend the Modern Language Association conference, which is the annual convention for professionals in the field of literature and languages. During the conference, I introduced them to faculty from other universities and attended sessions with them.
Other activities through which I have mentored students include showcasing their work. For example, at a university conference, students in my Young Authors and Illustrators Project presented the children's books they had created for the local community. I have also mentored students by guiding their research and, in one case, co-writing an article “Early Modern Expressions of Nationhood in French and Dutch Translations of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Brevísima relación,” which I co-wrote with a Dutch undergraduate student at Radboud University. At Yale, I serve as an FGLI mentor.