DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Fernando Castro Ortiz completed a B.A. in Translation and Interpretation in English and Italian and an M.A. in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language in Spain. He also holds an M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Iowa. His areas of interest include sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and Spanish for specific purposes. In his more than 15 years of experience teaching in the U.S. and Spain, he has taught a variety of courses of Spanish language, Hispanic culture, Hispanic linguistics, and Spanish for specific purposes. In addition, he has served as an advisor for Spanish majors and minors and participated in different departmental committees and extra-curricular activities. He is interested in making education accessible and relevant for students and has contributed to several initiatives related to service-learning and Open Educational Resources (OER).

Fernando is the coauthor of Salón de clase: Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals (University of Iowa Libraries, 2021). This free and open textbook explores the role of Spanish language and Spanish speakers in the U.S. education system using interactive multimedia materials in H5P and interviews with stakeholders in the field of education.