Alumni News
Alumni Spotlight: Megan Jula
Sometimes it’s obvious how much learning Spanish has permeated my everyday life: when I join a group of hispanohablantes and anglohablantes for a conversation hour every weekend, or I translate research on preventing mosquito-transmitted diseases at work, or I catch up with my Spanish-speaking friends over WhatsApp. Other times, it sneaks up on me: when I’m studying vocabulary for the Graduate Review Exam (obsequious, meaning “obedient or attentive to an excessive degree” is easier to remember because obsequio means gift in Spanish) or when I realize I’m unintentionally eavesdropping at a pupusería in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where about a third of the population is Hispanic.
I have always loved communicating and if I were into video games, I might compare learning Spanish to unlocking a new level of communication. For every word I know in English, I have at least one more to learn in Spanish! By my junior year at Indiana University I had declared a Spanish major and that following summer I reported on immigration for The Arizona Republic. My Spanish classes had prepared me to understand generally what was going on around me at a press conference in Spanish, but not nearly enough to conduct interviews. I needed to go to a Spanish-speaking country.
Studying abroad in Lima, Peru through an IU partnership with La Universidad Católica del Perú is one of those decisions that you look back on and thank your past self for making. I could go on and on about adjusting to college classes in a second language, about riding in combis (unregulated passenger vans operated like public busses), about struggling to have a personality when it hurt my head just to talk. About making friends from around the world and traveling to new places and trying new foods. About flying home at the end of it all, excited to see everyone I had missed, but bawling the entire way.
Following graduation, I reported for the metropolitan desk of The New York Times. I had triple majored at IU (journalism, Spanish and biology), primarily focusing on reporting. That summer I trekked more than 200 miles through the concrete jungle of the Big Apple, asking questions, taking notes and telling stories. Spanish, of course, accompanied me in New York City, from reporting to ordering ceviche at my favorite Peruvian restaurant.
Now, I’m using my other major, biology, as well, as a press package writer for The American Association for the Advancement of Science. When I see any of our research published in El Comercio, the biggest Peruvian paper, it makes my day. Just a few months ago, my best friend from Peru was able to come visit me and we spent time in DC and NYC. If that doesn’t tell you how life comes full circle, I don’t know what does. I’ll forever be grateful to my Spanish advisor Sioux Hill at IU who showed me how to squeeze another major into my four years at IU.
Alumni Notes
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our alumni through different initiatives and contributions that foster the excellence of our department. We are excited to share the updates we have received and look forward to continuing to hear about the endeavors of our alumni.
Please keep in touch! Email: lagaceta@indiana.edu.
IU contingient of alumni at the GEMELA (Grupo de Estudios
sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas) conference in
San Juan, Puerto Rico: seated, Grady Wray and Rowena
Galavitz (current IU student); standing, Prof. Catherine
Larson, Teresa Hancock-Parmer, Mindy Stivers Badia
and Emily Tobey.
Notes:
Rita Marsh-Birch (BA ’66) “My husband and I both retired from Texas A&M University. I was too young to collect any retirement benefits, so I had to find a job after we moved to Tallahassee, FL. After teaching at TAMU for almost 20 years, it was quite a shock to teach high school again. I officially retired after I reached 67 and could draw on my TAMU retirement fund and Social Security. I joined the American Translators Association since in a previous life, I had actually worked as an interpreter/translator. To my surprise, I started getting calls from all over the state of Florida. I was working as an interpreter for migrant workers who had been injured on the job. I interpreted for them in doctor's offices, physical therapists offices, lawyers offices, and in court.
While at IU, I was part of a group of 20 that took a junior year abroad in Lima, Peru. I could speak Spanish before I went there, but I became really fluent and continued to use South American Spanish when I came back to the US. None of my migrant worker clients were from South America. I discovered a lot of vocabulary differences between my Spanish and theirs. Most of them were from Central America or Mexico. I had to ask one of my clients what a ‘bomba’ was because I was sure he was not talking about a bomb! The word I knew from South America was ‘grifo’ for a pump. Fortunately, I knew from the context that he was not talking about a bomb! When I worked as an interpreter/translator for an engineering firm, I had to go to the engineer and ask him to explain to me what the machinery did. Then I felt more comfortable explaining in Spanish what the customer wanted to know.
As our Peru group gets together every 5 years, I am one of the few who still speaks and uses Spanish. I have Sirius radio in my car, and I always listen to CNN en español. I usually learn new vocabulary every day! They have speakers from all over the Spanish-speaking world, so I hear all accents and listen to the context for the meaning of new words.
I started studying Spanish in the 9th grade, continued all through high school, and majored in Spanish at IU. I met my husband at an IU Alumni Picnic in Houston, TX. He got his doctorate at IU in Counseling Psychology, and was the Director of the Student Counseling Service at Texas A&M. I left my job working in International Business in Houston and joined him at Texas A&M. I ended up teaching English to international students as I had done during my year abroad in Peru. I had students from all over the world. It was not until I retired that I began to work again as an interpreter/translator.”
Linda Jefferson Segall (BA ‘67) recently published a book based on the RVing (mis)adventures she and her husband, Jim Cullipher, have had. The books is entitled Don’t Back into the Palm Tree! Real Life Lessons for New and Wannabe RVers (Amazon.com). She was asked to make a presentation based on the book at OLLI (adult continuous learning) at the University of North Florida. Segall is also the co-author of a book on gluten sensitivity (The Gluten Connection, Rodale) as well as three books on leadership development. She was a member of the 1965 IU Junior Year Abroad in Peru, whose members continue to meet for reunions every five (or fewer) years.
Vicki Mayfield (BA ’70, MA ’71) “When I embarked on my studies at IU, I wanted to be a translator or work in the Foreign Service, so in my junior year I participated in the ’68 – ’69 program in Madrid to bolster my language skills. The Foreign Service never panned out, but I did become a translator and found that I hated it. (Luckily, I did not follow my advisor’s suggestion that I become a stewardess.) I went back to school and got an MBA, which helped me move on to a career path that led me to international banking, software development, and then into independent consulting. But that wasn’t the end of my career or my education: my husband’s career interests took us to Asia for about 10 years, where I found myself teaching in local MBA programs and studying Mandarin. We returned to the Chicago area in the fall of 2016. In May 2017, my husband and I traveled to Madrid for the Madrid Program reunion, where I enjoyed seeing old friends and having some new experiences.”
Karen Kovacik (BA ‘81) is Professor of English at IUPUI and a translator of contemporary Polish poetry. Her translation of Agnieszka Kuciak's Distant Lands: An Anthology of Poets Who Don't Exist (White Pine Press, 2013) was longlisted for ALTA's National Translation Award in 2014. Last year, her anthology of Polish women poets, Scattering the Dark, was published by White Pine.
Kristen Lee Sisk (BA ’87) “I double majored in Spanish and Psychology. Both degrees helped me to finally figure out what I wanted to do with my life and career. I have been teaching for 26 years now either as a bilingual teacher or as an English Language Learner teacher. I wanted to be a psychologist after graduating but sort of fell into teaching elementary school-aged students from other countries as I became fluent in Spanish at IU Bloomington. I love working with students and teachers. It has been a wonderful career and still is for me. Thank you, Indiana University, and my grandfather for my tuition there.”
Kevin Cole (BA ’91) “I have taught Spanish at Noblesville HS since 1994.
Helped write the curriculum to begin our first ever AP Language and Culture classes in 2014, then in 2015 I started the AP Spanish Literature and Culture class now in its second year.”
Jessica Montalvo-Galindo (BA ’03) is proud to serve as director of TRIO Student Support Services at University of Saint Francis. The TRIO program provides education about financial literacy, scholarship and grant aid (when applicable), academic counseling, workshops, cultural events, leadership development opportunities, mentoring, tutoring and more. “TRIO is designed to be an extra helping hand for each student that’s part of the program to progress in college and then graduate from college.” Jessica, who participated in a similar TRIO program when she was a student at IU, said the program often casts a net of support around students who need it. “My parents were Mexican migrant workers, so they couldn’t help me academically. Culturally speaking, we’re not used to being away from our families, and TRIO provided a family away from home that we could go to. These collective efforts represent a growing commitment to support students in their quest to earn a college degree.”
Elizabeth Warren (BA ’09) ”After graduating from Indiana in 2009, I spent two academic years in Granada, Spain, working as an Auxiliar de Conversación and taking Spanish courses. I am currently a PhD candidate in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UCLA, and writing my dissertation on the Aesthetic of the Grotesque in Post-Franco Spanish and Catalan literature, film, and visual art. Since arriving at UCLA, I have had the pleasure of teaching summer travel study courses in Granada and Barcelona. These were truly "full circle" moments, since my own interest in Spanish solidified after I took part in an IU travel study program to the Dominican Republic in the summer of 2007.”
Cristina Vanko (BA ’11) recently published a book called Adult-ish with Penguin Random House. Here's a link: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/544586/adult-ish-by-cristina-vanko/9780143129813/
Alejandra Fernandez (BA ’12) “I’d like to introduce you to an organization called Timmy Global Health. I worked for TGH as a Medical Programs Coordinator in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, for two years. It was an amazing experience and I got to meet a great deal of students, medical professionals, and volunteers looking to better the world and help low income communities in Latin America improve their health. While there is a Chapter of TGH at IU, it mostly attracts the hopeful medical students or pharmacy students and rarely has anyone on the trip that actually speaks Spanish. For Spanish speakers, intermediate to native, this is a great opportunity to get real life practice speaking to and interpreting colloquial Spanish in different parts of Latin America such as Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala, each with their own variations and dialects. This is a great opportunity for Spanish speaking students of any major, not just those interested in Health, Global Health, or Pharmacy. If you would like more information, feel free to contact Ali Campbell, the US Programs Coordinator, at campbell@timmyglobalhealth.org.”
Andrew Johns (BA ‘13) graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine in Fort Wayne in May 2017. He will pursue residency in internal medicine at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, with a goal of specializing in hematology/oncology. Andrew continues to use his language skills regularly to care for Spanish-speaking patients. He and his wife, Heather, have a son named Garrett.
Thomas Neal (MA ’07, PhD ’13) recently published Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain: Literature, Modernity and the New World, 1773-1812 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2017). He and his wife also welcomed their first baby, Liam, in December 2016.
Kelly Kreutz (BA ’15) "I was recently selected to present at the 2nd Annual Chicago Graduate Conference in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies at Northwestern University. I presented my Fulbright ETA Side Project, "O Conto Machadiano: Representação da figura feminina", April 14th, 2017.” Kelly is an English Teaching Assistant, Fulbright Commission—Federal University of Paraná."
