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.

With more than 15 years of experience teaching in the U.S. and Spain, Fernando has taught courses in Spanish language, Hispanic culture, Hispanic linguistics, and Spanish for specific purposes. He has also served as an advisor for Spanish majors and minors and has contributed to different departmental committees and extra-curricular activities.

Committed to making education accessible and relevant, Fernando has participated in several service-learning and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives. His OER contributions include Salón de clase: Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals (University of Iowa Libraries, 2021) and El Jardín del Lenguaje: A Collaborative Textbook for Intermediate Spanish (University of Iowa Libraries, 2025).

Since he joined Northwestern, Fernando has taught courses across the Elementary and Intermediate Spanish sequences and has participated in projects exploring the use of AI tools in the language classroom.