Alberta Gatti, Ph.D. (Director): Alberta Gatti’s research interests include the areas of literature, literacy, and applied linguistics. In the past, she has worked on on Spanish Satire of Early Modern Spain, and more recently she investigates the writing proficiency development of heritage language learners. Currently, her two fields of expertise are converging as she explores the development of critical literacy in the context of college education. Dr. Gatti is also an experienced higher education administrator, being the director of the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context (ILETC), a research and resource center for language education at the City University of New York (CUNY). She also directs the Center for Integrated Language Communities (CILC), a National Language Resource Center focusing on the teaching and learning of languages in the context of minority serving institutions and community colleges. Before CILC, she was the director of a multi-year, university-wide Title III initiative at Saint Xavier University in Chicago (SXU). The initiative included projects in three areas: student interventions, technology integration into instruction, and community-based and collaborative learning initiatives. At SXU, she also directed the Foreign Languages Program. Dr. Gatti has a degree in Classical Studies from Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Language and Literatures from Boston University (Boston, MA).

Syelle Graves, Ph.D. (Assistant Director): Syelle Graves earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center, and graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in French from SUNY New Paltz. Her doctoral research focused on sociolinguistics, corpus analysis, language change, minority language varieties, and language attitudes. In her early years of doctoral study, she concentrated on language acquisition and semantics, and she is currently interested in language attitudes toward loanwords. She has taught linguistics, ESL, public speaking, and expository writing across CUNY, and she has also worked for the Modern Language Association (MLA) and Educational Testing Service (ETS). She In 2019, she was honored with a SUNY New Paltz 40 Under Forty Alumni award, and in 2021, she was interviewed about her dissertation by the New York Times. On the side, she is a contributing author to the Grammar Girl podcast.

Coco Sofia Fitterman (College Assistant) is the author of the chapbook Say It With Flowers (Inpatient Press 2017). She is currently a Ph.D student in the Comparative Literature department at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and an adjunct professor at Baruch College, as well as a Poetry Editor at Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) and an Events Fellow at Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, PROVENCE Magazine, Tripwire, and elsewhere.

Juwon Jun (Research Assistant and Web Editor) is an associate editor at Wendy’s Subway. She has shown work with Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, RISD Museum, Brooklyn Women’s Film Festival, Les Femmes Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Boston Center for the Arts, National Association of Women Artists, CINEMQ, and more. She holds an M.A. in women’s and gender studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. Her writing has appeared in offshoot.

Advisory Board

Maayan Barkan, Ph.D
Japanese Program Director
Department of Classical & Oriental Studies
Hunter College

Valeria Belmonti
Director, Modern Languages Media Center
COIL Instructional Designer
College of Staten Island, CUNY

Benedetta Cutolo
Ph.D Candidate in Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Adjunct Lecturer in French, Italian, and Media Studies
CCNY, CSI & LaGuardia CC

Berenice Darwich, Ph.D
Assistant Professor, Modern Languages
Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY.

Lamees Fadl
Lecturer, Arabic & English Language and Literature
City University of New York
John Jay College & LaGuardia CC

Victoria Furtado
MA in Language, Culture, and Society (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
Ph.D candidate in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Romance Languages, Hunter College, CUNY

Beatriz Lado, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Lehman College & The Graduate Center

Alexander Lamazares, Ph.D
Professor and Chair, Department of World Languages and Cultures
Bronx Community College

Tomonori Nagano, Ph.D
Professor of Japanese and Linguistics
LaGuardia Community College

Past Team

William Oliver (College Assistant) William Oliver is a PhD student in linguistics at SUNY Stony Brook. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from SUNY Binghamton, an Ed.M. in language and literacy from Harvard University, and an M.A. in computational linguistics from CUNY Graduate Center. He also is an adjunct professor in the City College School of Education in its Programs for Bilingual Education and TESOL where he teaches ESL pedagogy and linguistics. Before joining ILETC, William taught high school English and ESL in Arizona public schools.

Alexander Funk (Assistant Director): Alexander Funk is a Ph.D student in linguistics at the Graduate Center. Though his doctoral research focuses on the theoretical realms of syntax and semantics, he maintains an active interest in language education.  In work with CUNY’s Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society (RISLUS), Mr. Funk has studied the educational backgrounds and needs of Long-Term English Language Learners in the New York City public schools, and in 2012 developed a Guide to the Languages of New York State for educators as part of the CUNY-NYSIEB. Alexander has taught at Hunter and Queens Colleges, as well as at schools in New York and Spain.

Valeria Belmonti (Instructional Technology Coordinator): Valeria Belmonti is the Director of the Modern Languages Media Center at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. She received an M.A. in Educational Technology from New Jersey City University concentrating her studies in Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Her thesis surveyed the use of web technology to enhance the teaching of intercultural competence within undergraduate language education particularly through the use of telecollaborations. Ms. Belmonti is additionally interested in computerized oral testing and the use of mobile and web 2.0 technologies for language teaching and learning. Some of her most recent work in collaboration with faculty includes Pinterest modules to enhance writing skills and vocabulary acquisition in Intermediate Italian, and a Google MyMaps semester-long project developed for Beginner French courses, where mapping technology is implemented to create an immersion experience though which students can plan, record, and share a virtual visit to France. Ms. Belmonti is also the co-creator of the Film Trailer Project, a semester-long project developed for Intermediate French courses, which allows students to use French and Francophone films as textbooks to acquire vocabulary and structures of the French language and to interpret and analyze the French and francophone cultural realities portrayed in the films.

Danielle Wetmore (College Assistant): Danielle Wetmore holds a B.A. in History from University of Redlands and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Liberal Studies at the Graduate Center, with an emphasis in American Studies. Ms. Wetmore’s work is in 20^th century US, cultural history with a gendered analysis.  Her most recent work examines the relationship between the process of legitimization for makeup and advertising during the Great Depression.  In the office, Ms. Wetmore helps with organization, scheduling, and event planning. She grew up speaking German and English with her family.