August Aquila, Ph.D., 1973, was able to spend 6 weeks in Valencia, Spain this winter with his wife. They enjoyed the sun, paella, and great museums.

Lígia Bezerra, Ph.D., 2015 (Portuguese, minor in Cultural Studies), was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Arizona State University, where she also acts as the director of the Portuguese program.

John C. Couleur, B.A., 2000, is CEO of Couleur Investments LLC, a registered investment advisor in Wilmette, IL with 20+ years of experience. He seeks to build relationships with individuals, families, trusts and multi-generational approach to develop understanding of future goals, build and implement a customized plan to meet or exceed expectations. No matter where you are in the process, John has a great passion for helping others.

Vanessa Ehler, B.A., 2001 (Spanish), has been teaching Spanish to high schoolers for about twenty years in a Quaker school in downtown Brooklyn, NY using the Comprehensible Input methodology. She decided to write her own classroom reader, and it was published by Fluency Matters (a subsidiary of Wayside Publishing). It is called La receta secreta. The story is lightly based on the story of Malinche, the indigenous woman who was the translator of Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico.

Beth Farkas, B.A., 1997 (Spanish) has transitioned to full-time written translation after 20 years as a Spanish medical interpreter. She works for Language Line Translation Solutions, as part of their in-house Spanish into English translation team. In addition to translation, she gets to showcase her editing and formatting skills to produce flawless translations for their clients.

Cristobal Garza, Ph.D., 2019 (Hispanic Literature) was promoted to Associate Professor of Spanish at Goshen College this year. He also published “México y Alemania: crónica de una literatura no anunciada” in Latin American Literary Review 50, 100 Spring 2023 and was appointed to lead the Study-Service Term in Ecuador during the spring semester and summer term of the academic year 2023-2024. In the last two years, he served as Academic Symposium faculty organizer. In the summer of 2020, he advised a student in a Maple Scholars’ project titled “America’s Symbolic Borderlands: The Invisible Divide of Race and Language in the U.S.” El Cid Journal accepted the resulting paper for publication this spring. In collaboration with Goshen College’s Theater Department, he directed the bilingual play La Nuevas Tamaleras, performed at the college’s main stage. He also served as advisor of the Latino Student Union during this academic year, which coincided with the designation of Goshen College as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) by the Department of Education.

Jeni Martinez, B.A., 1981 (Spanish) studied abroad in the IU program at La Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain during her sophomore year 1978-79. When she left Spain after that life-changing experience, she planned to go back every year or so. After graduating from IU in 1981, she worked as a flight attendant for a charter airline, American Trans Air, and got to work all of the South American flights because of her facility with Spanish. Eventually, she married, became a yoga teacher, and had two boys. In 2005, she opened a yoga studio in Federal Way, WA called Three Trees Yoga. Life intervened, and it took her until 2017 to return to Spain! That year, she led a yoga and hiking retreat to Asturias, in northern Spain. After leading another retreat to Asturias in 2019, Jeni and her husband made the decision to move to Gijon, on the Bay of Biscay when her husband retired. She is grateful not only for the language and cultural immersion she gained in the year she spent with the IU program in Madrid at age 18, but also for the spirit of adventure instilled in me that year.

Daniel Runnels, Ph.D., 2022 (Hispanic Literatures), is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Central Missouri. In addition to teaching courses on Spanish literature and culture, he is an affiliate faculty member with both the Gender and Sexuality Studies program and the Honors College and is the organizer of a university-wide reading group, “Theory @ UCM.” He also continues to publish actively and share his research in national and international conferences.

Alysa Schroff, Ph.D., 2021 (Hispanic Literature) completed her dissertation on aesthetics, politics, and gender in the writings of early twentieth century Mexican women and accepted a position in the Monroe County Corporation School District (MCCSC) in Bloomington. She is developing middle school curriculum for the Spanish Dual Language Immersion (DLI) Program initiated by MCCSC in 2017, which she will impart for the first cohort of DLI students at Bloomington's Batchelor Middle School this August. Once she settles into her new position, she looks forward to returning to her dissertation in hopes of eventually turning it into a book.

Audrey Veneck, B.A., 2007 (Spanish and Criminal Justice), will marry fellow IU alum, Matthew Conroy, on Indiana University’s campus on May 20, 2023. Although both Audrey and Matthew attended I.U. at the same time, they did not meet until 2020 in Indianapolis. They are excited to have their ceremony on campus and then will take a two-week honeymoon trip to Europe. Although Spain is not on the itinerary for the honeymoon, Audrey plans to take Matthew to Madrid sometime in the future, to show him where she studied abroad in 2006.

Todd Wilson, B.A., 1982 (Spanish and Journalism) worked as a journalist for a time, then for four decades in higher education communications at several colleges and universities in Indiana, Ohio, Colorado, and New York.  He retired from Adelphi University in Fall 2022. His used some of his new free time to brush up on his Spanish, and other languages, and spent two weeks in Spain over Christmas and New Year's. As a side note, Todd was also a department honors student when he graduated -- which included a very nice dinner at Le Petit Cafe!