DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Denise Bouras is Professor of Instruction and Director of the Spanish Language Program (SLP) in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, language learning, and community engagement. Bouras joined Northwestern in 2007 and has more than 25 years of experience teaching Spanish. She is committed to creating adaptable, interactive, and supportive classrooms in which students are at the forefront of their learning and encouraged to participate, take risks, and express themselves in Spanish. Her teaching methodology is grounded in Content and Language Integrated Learning, which uses meaningful content and authentic contexts to develop students’ linguistic, critical thinking, and intercultural competencies.

Bouras’ teaching and professional interests include curricular design, the connection between thinking and writing, technology and affect, and formative assessment. As Director of the SLP, she works closely with colleagues to support teaching excellence through innovative curriculum and pedagogy. In 2024, she led workshops and collaborative activities through which SLP faculty developed the program’s first mission and vision statement, articulating a shared commitment to inclusive and equitable learning spaces, student-centered language learning, and meaningful engagement with multicultural communities. She also serves on the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Teaching-Track Mentorship Committee, reviewing faculty promotion materials and providing guidance on the promotion process. More broadly, she advocates for the professional recognition, advancement opportunities, and well-being of teaching-track faculty in the various spaces in which she works, including through her service as an elected Faculty Senate Representative from 2020 to 2023.

In 2023, Bouras received the Alumnae of Northwestern University Award for Curricular Innovation for her work on the project Gatos Unidos: Arte y Cambio (Cats Unite: Art and Change), which brought together language learning, socially engaged art, and service learning. Through the project, advanced Spanish 204 students built learning communities with two-way immersion students at local elementary schools, exploring artivism and creating their own artivism projects. Bouras has also been an active member of the Council on Language Instruction(CLI) since 2008 and serves on its Language Symposium Committee, helping to bring experts and educators to campus to create opportunities for dialogue across Northwestern’s language-learning community. In 2025, she participated in the inaugural year of Catalyst NU: Conversations that Transform, a university-wide initiative coordinated by the Office of Community Enrichment that focused on developing the necessary skills to engage meaningfully across difference.