DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Shannon Millikin is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She received her M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Areas of special interests include additional language acquisition, comprehension-based communicative language teaching, phonetics and phonology and Spanish for the professions.  

Shannon currently coordinates and teaches the three courses of Intermediate Spanish 121 and Spanish Phonetics and Phonology.  At Northwestern and other institutions Shannon has taught at many levels from elementary Spanish to content courses to Linguistics to the graduate methods course. In her language courses Shannon prioritizes a foundation of compelling, diverse, and comprehensible input, ample time dedicated to interpersonal communication, the completion of real-world tasks, and the development of intercultural competence.  

She has secured grants for many pedagogical projects and research from a variety of sources, including six Weinberg Hewlett Grants. Most recently these include a WCAS Curricular Funding Grant a project titled “A Seat at the table for Afro-Latinx Voices,” and a Hewlett Grant for Curricular Innovation titled “Colombian Partnerships for Spanish Language and Cultural Competence.” Read more here. Shannon cares deeply about diversity, equity and inclusion and has dedicated years to listening and learning to be able to make informed, positive change in the curriculum, in the workplace, and off campus. In turn, she has shared her work at regional, national, and international conferences and invited talks.  

Shannon is active in the profession and in the community. In the department she has served in the roles of mentor for graduate students and colleagues, coordinator of several extracurricular activities, chair of the placement committee, and equity representative for faculty searches. Additionally, she is the faculty advisor for Northwestern student group Knitwestern, a long-standing fellow of the International Studies Residential College, and a member and funds subcommittee member of the Council on Language Instruction.   

Beyond Northwestern Shannon is a board member of Central States and serves as the assistant program chair for the 2024 conference. She is a member of the Diversity and Inclusion working group of the international Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. She is also a member of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, SIG Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching, where she enjoys connecting with colleagues and staying up to date in the field.