Spanish Department Faculty
- Rachel Aponte
- Rachel Aponte teaches Spanish at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus and Spanish and French at Clark College in Vancouver. She earned a B.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California and a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of California, Davis. She grew up in Paris, France and Caracas, Venezuela. She has traveled to Mexico, Costa Rica and Spain.
- Sarah Bentley
Sarah Bentley has been teaching Spanish full-time at PCC since 2006. Before that she taught at Portland State University, where she also received her MA. She received her BA in Spanish from Pitzer College. Prior to teaching Spanish she worked with the Latino community in the non-profit sector. Sarah is a native Portlander who has lived and traveled to several different Spanish-speaking countries, including Venezuela, Spain, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mexico.- Laura Bergman
Laura Bergman is a native of Ecuador and has been teaching Spanish at PCC since 1995. She holds a Master’s degree in Spanish and a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Certificate from Portland State University, where she has taught first, second, and third year Spanish and Hispanic Literature. Laura was part of an Extended Studies team that taught A.L.P.S. (Acquiring Language Productions Skills), a total immersion, intensive program specially designed for intermediate and advanced students and teachers of Spanish. She taught A.L.P.S. at PSU, the Portland Police Justice Center, and at the Police Academy in Monmouth, OR. She has taught at several other universities, including Lewis and Clark, and Pacific University. She is currently also teaching Spanish for Healthcare Workers at the University of Portland. - Charma Boeschen
Charma is a native Oregonian who learned her Spanish primarily in Costa Rica, where she lived for over 3 years and where she currently brings student groups for language study and cultural exploration. She has also lived in the Venezuelan Andes for 6 months and traveled extensively in Central America, Mexico, Ecuador and Cuba. In 1999-2000 she taught English as a Foreign Language at the Universidad de Cantabria in Santander, Spain. Along with her MA in Spanish she also received an MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from the Department of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University. Charma is very passionate about exploring the diverse cultures of the Spanish-speaking world through language study and believes strongly that effective language learning must be fun. She is a strong advocate of the communicative language teaching method (Spanish immersion) used at PCC and is grateful to be a part of the diverse community of instructors and students at PCC Cascade. Charma currently speaks Spanish at home with her Cuban fiancée and is known to make frequent appearances at salsa clubs around Portland.
- Billy Cash
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Billy Cash grew up in Michigan and attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1996 with dual degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Spanish. His third year of college was spent studying, traveling, and making friends in Spain at the University of Sevilla. In 1995 he traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, and conducted an "experimental ethnography of self" which he used as the basis of his Honor's thesis in Anthropology. Soon after graduating from Michigan, he moved to Portland, Oregon, and started a small organic gardening business which he still continues when he has time.
Billy traveled to India in 2001, and in 2003 he began a Master's program in Spanish Language and Literature at Portland State University. Since graduating in 2005, Billy continues to teach Spanish at the university and college level, and has taught at both the Cascade and Sylvania Campuses here at PCC. In addition to Spanish, he is also teaching online Anthropology and Urban Sociology. In his free time, he enjoys working in the garden, painting, reading, studying Portuguese, and playing guitar and keyboards in the group MODA.
- Andrea Castanette
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Andrea Castanette completed her MA in Spanish & French at Portland State University in the winter of 2007 and has instructed Spanish at PCC Cascade since the summer of 2008. Andrea lived in Seville, Spain for an academic year during her undergraduate studies and has also completed short term study abroad programs in Guanajuato and Morelia, Mexico. She loves teaching at PCC and hopes that her instruction encourages students’ desire to travel and understand cultures different than their own.
- Kaytee Cobb
Kaytee Cobb is a recent addition to the Spanish department at PCC Sylvania. In fact, she is a recent addition to Oregon. She moved here in June of 2009, after completing her MA in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Arizona. She received her BA in Religious Studies there as well. Kaytee is actively involved in the Spanish-speaking community and has traveled to a number of Spanish-speaking countries, including Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala, Spain, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Kaytee is a lover of all languages. For her MA, she took Portuguese classes, and has a middling understanding of that language. She plans to continue learning languages for the rest of her life. Italian or French next? Or maybe Chinese?- David DeMinico
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David DeMinico received his MA from Middlebury College in Spanish Language and Literature in Madrid, Spain and through Middlebury’s summer program in Guadalajara, Mexico. He earned his BA degree at the University of New Hampshire in Spanish Language and Music Performance. Before moving to Portland, David worked at the United Nations International School in New York City as a Multi-Media specialist and language instructor. He is founding faculty at the International High School of Portland and has designed and instructs a Spanish Communication Program for a business sector. He teaches first-year Spanish and communication at Portland Community College.
- Marisel Gonzalez
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Marisel Gonzalez was born in Havana, Cuba where she did her Masters in Chemical Engineering at Havana University. Upon graduation, she worked as an engineer for 20 years in Cuba. In 1998 she won a Visa to come to the United States through the Lottery system and came directly to Oregon from Cuba with her husband and only daughter. From the very beginning, her jobs in the US involved education. She got her Master of Education with a focus in Spanish and in ESL at Portland State University, and has taught little kids as well as middle school, high school and college students. Her family in the U.S. is very small (her husband and daughter) and the rest of her family still lives in Cuba. Her philosophy about education is that everyone can learn: some people need more time to process and master the knowledge while others need less time, but everyone can make it if we have the impetus, the will and a designed way of getting there. She invites her students to enjoy the pleasure of learning because we get freedom when we have knowledge.
- Jennifer Hensley
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Jennifer Hensley currently teaches Spanish at Portland Community College’s Sylvania campus and Portland State University. Originally from Canada she has lived in the Portland area for many years and completed her first two years of Spanish at PCC. Jennifer received her BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies at CSU, Chico and her MA at Portland State University. She has spent time traveling and studying in both Mexico and Spain.
- Antonia Larsen
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Antonia Larsen has been teaching Spanish at PCC since 2005. She received her BA in English from Reed College and her MA in Spanish from PSU. When she’s not teaching, she enjoys traveling, gardening, and dancing.
- Anthony Lewis
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Anthony Lewis teaches Spanish at PCC Rock Creek campus. Previous to teaching at PCC he was an Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Syracuse University from 2000-2009. Anthony earned a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of California Santa Cruz, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has conducted extensive research in Spanish phonetics and phonology and taught a wide variety of courses on the Spanish language, to include Spanish phonetics and phonology, syntax, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and the history of the Spanish language. He very much enjoys teaching and living in Portland. In his spare time he enjoys riding motorcycles and spending quality time with friends and his Siberian husky, "Saskia".
- Ben Lyman
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Ben Lyman has been teaching Spanish at PCC Sylvania and Rock Creek since 2008. Prior to that Ben taught at PSU, where he earned his Masters in Teaching Spanish, as well as various high schools in the Portland area. Ben's passion for languages comes from a variety of experiences abroad, including serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ecuadorian Amazon, climbing volcanoes in Peru, and leading tours in Costa Rica, among others. Ben truly enjoys working with students at PCC as they pursue their own language goals. When not at work Ben enjoys riding bikes, any/all snow related activities and long siestas next to warm wood stoves.
- Paco Martin
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Paco Martin has been teaching Spanish at PCC since 2001. He has a BA in Geography and History from the University of Salamanca, Spain, where he also obtained his Teaching Credentials. In 1998 he received his MA in Spanish Language and Literature from Portland State University. He currently teaches first and second year Spanish at the Cascade Campus.
- Adrienne Middleton
- Adrienne Middleton has been passionate about teaching Spanish in the Portland area for over 10 years. She has worked at PSU, University of Portland, the NW Academy and now very happily at PCC Cascade. Adrienne has her BA and MA in Spanish from PSU.
- Carmen Martin-Stiles
Carmen Martin-Stiles has been an instructor at PCC Cascade since 2004. She is from Spain, where she earned her Master´s Degree in Geography and History and her Teaching Credentials from the Complutense University of Madrid. She has dedicated her professional life to teaching in different private, public and non-profit institutions in her home country and in Oregon. She loves films, theater, travelling and being involved with the Hispanic Community.Carmen produces and hosts “Buscando America”, a weekly program on KBOO community radio.- Stephanie Oliver
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Stephanie Oliver is a retired journalist, who lived in Latin America for extended periods of time during the 1960s and 1970s. She did her undergraduate work in History at Stanford University and her MA in Spanish at Portland State University. She is working on an MA in History, planning to do her primary thesis research in Mexico on the diary writing of an as-yet unpublished seventeenth-century nun, Maria de Jesus Felipa.
Oliver has bicycled and walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain and bicycles all she can in and around Portland. She is married to Bruce Schatmeier and has two Spanish-speaking sons, both of whom live in Portland.
- Sunny Stautz
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Sunny Stautz has been an instructor of Spanish at Portland Community College’s Southeast campus since 2004 and has also taught second year Spanish at Portland State University through the Challenge Program for gifted high school students. She completed her BA with a double major in Spanish and Communications at Linfield College, in McMinnville, Oregon, and her MAT in Spanish at Portland State University. As an undergraduate, she attended one semester at the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras at the University of Valencia, Spain and one semester at the University of San Francisco’s satellite campus in Guadalajara, Mexico.
- Jan Underwood
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Jan Underwood has taught Spanish at PCC since 1992. She holds a Master's degree in Spanish and French from Portland State University, as well as a Master's in Comparative Literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She learned her Spanish primarily in Mexico. Jan wants students to know that the study of languages and cultures is a rich and rewarding endeavor, and that Spanish class is a lot of fun!
- Marcus Welsh
- Marcus Welsh teaches part-time at PCC. He is also an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Pacific University and is working on his Ph.D. through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is writing a dissertation about films co-produced between two or more Spanish-speaking countries. He received his Masters degree in Hispanic Literature from the University of Arizona and has been teaching Spanish at the university level since 1997. He has also taught at the elementary and secondary levels in Puerto Rico and Colombia, and has lived in Ecuador and Spain as well. He just started doing Bikram Yoga and is learning how to play the Djembe (West African drumming)!
- Stephanie Zink
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Stephanie Zink is an instructor of Spanish at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus and has also taught Spanish at Portland State University and Lewis & Clark College. She completed her BA in Spanish at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin and her MA in Spanish at Portland State University. As an undergraduate, she spent a semester abroad in Seville, Spain and studied at The Center for Cross-Cultural Study.