The 2nd Annual Bilingual Initiatives Symposium, themed around "Building Capacity for Bilingual, Bicultural and Biliterate Higher Education", took place in the W.A. Franke Honors College on March 28th, 2025, fostering 72 participants and 21 presenters from different academic and administrative units across campus, and 3 sister institutions.
In this BIS edition, we introduced the Charla Inagural hosting Dr. Macario Saldate & Prof. Adalberto "Beto Guerrero" chatting about "Los Inicios de la Educación Bilingüe en la Universidad de Arizona" and our first graduate student panel moderated by Professor Jessica Retis.
Their presentations and contact information can be found below.
Session 1
Cindy Trejo, MBA, PhD, Title V Director, Project Outreach FAMILIA cdtrejo@arizona.edu
Yahaira León, Graduate Assistant for Project Outreach FAMILIA, College of Education
https://familia.coe.arizona.edu/
This session highlights how the University of Arizona’s Project Outreach FAMILIA implements a Chicana Feminist Framework, solidifying a team cohesion of vision, mission, purpose, and praxis. This culturally responsive management uses a holistic approach to understanding team and collaborative partner needs in this post-pandemic world of multiple problems. Reforming how we treat our most valuable capital in managing large federal grants is foundational in ensuring proposals are implemented with fidelity. Understanding that our team members are not simply hired to carry out tasks but instead to be part of a mission is foundational to team engagement and retention. Using this same approach when interacting with our community partners is foundational, as our priority with the project is to build sustaining, genuine partnerships. This culturally responsive approach is created using my research-based framework that ultimately guides how we disrupt conventional approaches to working with staff, families, and partners. Attendees will learn techniques used in Project FAMILIA workshops that foster a safe and supportive environment, leading to participant interaction, learning, and engagement.
Shifting the Narrative: Evidence, Equity, and Action in Bilingual Development
Génesis Arizmendi, PhD, CCC-SLP genesis@arizona.edu
Assistant Professor and Director of the Multicultural Bilingual Certificate Program, Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, College of Science
https://slhs.arizona.edu/students/multicultural-bilingual-certificate-program
For too long, misconceptions about bilingualism have shaped educational and clinical practices, often to the detriment of multilingual individuals. Despite decades of research demonstrating the cognitive, linguistic, and academic benefits of bilingualism, outdated narratives—such as the myth of language confusion, the supposed disadvantages of bilingual education, and the misidentification of language differences as disorders—continue to influence policy and practice. These misconceptions not only limit opportunities for bilingual individuals but also reinforce systemic inequities in education and healthcare.
This talk challenges these narratives by presenting current evidence on bilingual language development and highlighting equitable, research-based practices that support bilingual speakers across settings. Dr. Arizmendi will explore how linguistic diversity is often misinterpreted through a deficit lens, leading to disparities in assessment, intervention, and educational access. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from speech-language pathology, cognitive science, education, and social policy, this session will reframe bilingualism as a dynamic, context-driven process that benefits individuals and communities.
Key topics will include:
Debunking common myths: Addressing misconceptions about bilingual language acquisition and its effects on cognition and academic success.
Equity in assessment & intervention: Identifying strategies to reduce bias in language evaluation and ensure that bilingual individuals receive appropriate, strengths-based support.
Translating research into action: Exploring policy and educational frameworks that foster bilingualism as an asset.
By shifting the narrative on bilingualism, we can move beyond outdated assumptions and toward meaningful change that supports linguistic diversity as a foundation for learning, communication, and identity.
Advancing Bilingual Journalism: A Pioneering Pedagogical Model at the University of Arizona
Panel Moderator: Jessica Retis, PhD Director, School of Journalism & Bilingual Journalism M.A. program, jessicaretis@arizona.edu
Panelist: Thatcher Warrick, Dawn Page, Alejandro Torres, Natasha Cortinovis, Florence Tomassi, and Susan Barnett - Bilingual Journalism Program Graduate Students, School of Journalism, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
https://journalism.arizona.edu/
https://journalism.arizona.edu/bilingual
In 2020, the University of Arizona launched its groundbreaking Bilingual Journalism M.A. program (BJP), a strategic response to the growing demand for bilingual and bicultural journalists capable of reporting on Hispanic issues and addressing the unique challenges of the borderlands. As one of the few fully bilingual programs in the United States, the BJP empowers graduates with a rare and highly coveted skill set in both Spanish and English, offering them a distinct competitive edge in the evolving journalism landscape. In 2021, the Center for University Education Scholarship (CUES) provided funding for a research initiative aimed at mapping and analyzing teaching and learning practices within bilingual journalism education, with a particular focus on the University of Arizona's BJP. This CUES-funded project seeks to illuminate an underexplored area of academic inquiry that sits at the intersection of sociolinguistics, language policy, journalism studies, media's political economy, and culturally responsive pedagogies in higher education. As the program’s third cohort prepares to graduate in Spring 2024, this roundtable will present findings from this pioneering pedagogical model, which emphasizes learner-centered teaching and community-driven academic praxis. The program director will offer an overview of the innovative pedagogical framework, showcasing the program’s significant accomplishments. Graduate students will also have the opportunity to present their final projects, reflecting on their transformative educational journeys and the invaluable skills they've cultivated throughout the program.
Keynote Speaker Presentation
Dra. Joy Esquierdo, Vice Provost of Bilingual Integration, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Session 2
ABC HigherED - Project Updates & Collaborations (NCI, WSIP, GenEd, ADELANTE)
Jhonatan Henao-Muñoz, MAs, Assistant Professor of Practice in the W.A. Franke Honors College & UNIV Core Faculty, Office of General Education. jhenaomunoz@arizona.edu
PI - Advocating for Bilingual and Culturally-Responsive Higher Education
PI - Building a Repository for Inclusive Spanish Language to Develop Resources for Best Practices and Pedagogical Implementation
https://ge.arizona.edu/jhonatan-henao-munoz
This presentation will provide some updates about the ABC HigherEd project. This project was awarded with a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Faculty Seed Grant 2024, and aims to build the university's capacity to offer its faculty professional development in linguistic servingness. The aim is to support Hispanic-Latine/x students by maintaining and enhancing their bilingualism (English/Spanish), acknowledging their bi/multiculturalism and fostering spaces for their biliteracy skills. ABC Higher Ed project has the potential to be implemented in other language combinations to sustainably and broadly foster linguistic servingness in borderland communities. We will mention next steps in the project as well as we acknowledge collaborations across campus.
Cognitive Load, Bilingual Students and the Need for a New Pedagogy
Treya Allen, Ed. D. Adjunct Faculty, Pima Community College
Language, culture, & identity: How to support students of the U.S./Mexico border
Abe Villareal, M.A., Dean Cochise College, villarreala@cochise.edu
Cochise College is a community college located less than two miles from the U.S./Mexico border. For sixty years, students that live on both sides of the border attend the college while navigating life as transborder students. They live between two countries, two languages, and two cultures. Their experiences and definitions about education can be different than what is established in a traditional American-based model of education. Cochise College support for the transborder student exists through initiatives that help communicate culture, language, learning styles, instructional method, and the curriculum. The presenter will share best practices that support academic success for these students including international partnerships, high impact learning practices, and educational experiences outside the classroom that support in-classroom learning. Attendees will leave with examples of how language and culture are learned and used in the context of student engagement and classroom learning.
Peter Ecke, PhD, Professor, eckep@arizona.edu
Department of German Studies, College of Humanities, https://german.arizona.edu/people/eckep
Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching, Graduate College
https://german.arizona.edu/news/dr-peter-ecke-receives-neh-grant-course-multilingualism
In this session I will present the findings from a pre- and post-course questionnaire administered to University of Arizona undergraduate students in the general education course “Becoming Multilingual: Learning and Maintaining Two or More Languages” (GER 150A1). The course was developed to introduce undergraduates to research about bilinguals and to help them see how myths about bilingualism and language learning both persist and what the realities are. Over 700 students completed the questionnaire, administered through the Qualtrics XM survey platform, at the beginning and at the end of the course in sections they were enrolled in between 2020 and 2025. About 22% of the course participants reported to have Spanish as a native language, but more students can be assumed to be Hispanic. In the questionnaire section that is relevant for this presentation, participants were asked to describe or define who a bilingual person is and to agree or disagree with 32 statements about bilingual adults, bilingual children, and various phenomena commonly associated with bilingualism, for example, the ability to translate between languages, being bicultural, having learned the languages simultaneously during childhood, mixing the languages, using codeswitching because of poor language skills, delays in bilingual child language development, changes of language dominance, and language loss. Some of the statements the participants had to judge were myths about bilinguals that have been debunked by research but that nonetheless persist. In this presentation, I will compare the participants’ responses from pre- and post-course questionnaires, point out which preconceptions about bilingualism persisted and which changes in participants’ assumptions about bilinguals occurred through the course. Finally, I will discuss with the audience the potential implications for this general education course and possibly other initiatives devoted to learning and informing about what it means to be bilingual and helping bilingual students to address the challenges and appreciate the benefits of being bilingual.
Strategies for Engagement & Retention
Dulce Maria Gonzalez-Estevez, PhD, Associate Professor of Practice, Spanish Online Program Director,
Alma Mota, Spanish Coordinator,
Elizabeth Castrejon, Spanish Coordinator,
Department of Spanish & Portuguese, College of Humanities
At a time when language program enrollments are declining nationwide, how can we not only sustain but grow our offerings? At the University of Arizona, we have defied this trend by adapting our Spanish program to meet students' evolving needs and aligning language learning with practical, career-focused applications.
For example, our Translation and Interpretation program has experienced significant success, serving as a cornerstone of our language offerings and a model for student engagement and professional relevance. Building on this strong foundation, we are expanding into new interdisciplinary areas, including medical Spanish courses designed to meet the needs of healthcare professionals, such as physician assistants. These initiatives aim to integrate cultural competency, task-based communication, and specialized language instruction to prepare students for real-world applications.
Between Fall 2023 and Fall 2024, our online Spanish course enrollments increased by 17.13%, with a 25.44% growth from Spring 2023 to Spring 2024. These gains are the result of a comprehensive approach that reimagines language learning as an essential, real-world skill rather than an isolated academic requirement. By designing courses that incorporate hands-on medical procedures, culturally responsive client communication, and community-focused learning outcomes, we have created an environment where students see immediate relevance and long-term benefits in their Spanish studies.
In this session, we will explore the strategies behind our program’s growth, including aligning course content with students’ career paths, integrating NACE career competencies into weekly learning outcomes, and incorporating community-based learning projects. A key component of our approach is fostering intercultural competence, which is embedded in both the lecture and lab components of our medical Spanish courses. Students not only develop oral proficiency but also gain a deeper understanding of the cultural factors affecting patient care, allowing them to engage in empathetic and effective communication with Spanish-speaking populations.
Participants will leave this session with practical tools for revitalizing their programs, including ideas for interdisciplinary collaborations and community-grounded curricula. We will also discuss how leveraging online platforms and flexible course formats can increase accessibility and appeal to a broader student demographic.
Guerrero Student Center Bridging Collaborations
Dominique Calza, MA, Director, Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Student Center, calzad@arizona.edu
Indira Arce, MA, Assistant Director, Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Student Center, iarce@arizona.edu
Lucero Ramirez, M.Ed, Coordinator, Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Student Center, luceroramirez@arizona.edu
Izza Juaregui, MA, Site-Based Counselor, Counseling & Psych Services, Campus Health Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Student Center, izzajauregui@arizona.edu