Authors

Elena Lanza

Elena Lanza is an Associate Professor of Instruction and the Assistant Director of the Spanish Language Program in the Department of Spanish and Portugese at Northwestern University. She has taught Spanish language courses at all levels of proficiency at Weinberg College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as at the School of Professional Studies, where she currently teaches Spanish 101 (first year). 

Elena's research and professional interests include open educational resources, curriculum and assessment development, program review, and content-based instruction within the flipped classroom approach. She has been teaching Spanish since 1997 in different institutions in Spain and the US, has helped organized immersion programs for American high school students. She has also been a lead author for an on-line educational language program (EduNovela). 

Elena has collaborated with the College Board in different capacities, with a focus on the Advanced Placement Spanish Language and Culture program. She is an AAPPL rater and has served as an external reviewer for Spanish language programs at the college-level. She is an active member of different committees both on campus and nationally. 

Throughout her teaching career, she has received several teaching awards and recognitions. At Northwestern, she has been named to the Faculty Honor Roll by the Associated Student Government in 2005-2006, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2019-2020 and 2021-22. She also received the Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Studies at the School of Professional Studies in 2010, and she was the recipient of the Council on Language Instruction Award for Excellence in Foreign Language Teaching in 2022.

Reyes Morán

Reyes Morán is an Associate Professor of Instruction, Course Coordinator of Spanish 201: Contemporary Latin America, and Coordinator of the Spanish Writing Center in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. In her native Spain, Reyes studied at the Universidad de Salamanca, one of Europe ’s four oldest universities, where she specialized in Spanish Philology. After completing her undergraduate studies, Reyes continued in Salamanca with post graduate work in the field of Teaching Spanish as a Second Language and went on to teach in Cursos Internacionales, the Universidad de Salamanca’s Spanish language department for non-native Spanish students. In 2006 she completed a Master´s degree in Hispanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Reyes believes that the best way to learn a language is by speaking. In her classes she strives to support this by creating an interactive and communicative environment for her students. In addition to encouraging her students to take an active role in the classroom, she works to create a comfortable setting in which students can have fun while learning.

Outside the classroom, Reyes plans to pursue research in the area of Spanish language and grammar. Her goals are to research complex linguistic and grammatical phenomenon and distill them into simpler forms, which can be easily taught to non-native students of Spanish. Beyond the area of Spanish language, Reyes enjoys reading late 19th century literature. She finds works of this period particularly interesting as they illustrate the transition of men and women into the age of modernity.

Open Education Librarian

Lauren McKeen McDonald

Lauren McKeen McDonald is the Open Education Librarian at Northwestern University. In her previous roles she served as a web manager and user education librarian. She holds a Master's degree in of Library Science from Indiana University-Bloomington. She also holds certifications in Creative Commons Open Licensing and and OER Librarianship. 

As Open Education Librarian, Lauren develops and coordinates initiatives and services that advance the awareness, adoption, and creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). She manages Northwestern's OER Faculty Grant Program and develops and leads workshops and presentations on OER, affordable resources, evidence synthesis, literature reviews, citation management, and library research. Since 2015, Lauren serves as liaison for the Communication Studies department, and conducts collection development, library instruction, research consultations, and outreach and engagement. 

You can also read Lauren's blog entries on OERs here: Northwestern Libraries Blog