As professor and previous Lead Faculty member in the ASLStudies/Sign Language Interpretation Program at Saint Petersburg College, I have over 38 years of teaching.  My beginning was here at Saint Petersburg Junior College in 1976 where I took first sign language class.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do with my life.  I transferred to the University of South Florida and graduated with my Master of Science degree in Communication Sciences in 1982.  My past includes teaching deaf students in the Pinellas County Public Schools from 1982 to 1992, serving as a state screened sign language interpreter actively working in the community, including Saint Petersburg Junior College, teaching as an adjunct instructor in the interpreter training program at Hillsborough Community College and in the Communications Sciences program at the University of South Florida where I taught graduate courses in Language Learning in Deaf Children and Reading Acquisition in Deaf Children.  In 1992, I joined Saint Petersburg College (SPC) as an adjunct teaching English and reading to deaf students and American Sign Language in the Sign Language Interpreter Training Program.  I became a full time faculty member at SPC in 1998.  In 1998 I went back to USF to obtain my Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Second Language Acquisition and Instructional Technology, graduating in 2004.  At SPC, my course loads have included developmental English and reading for deaf students, English to speakers of other languages, American Sign Language (ASL), ASL Linguistics, Educational Technology, Career and Life Planning, and College Success Skills.  Additional teaching from 2015-2017, occured online at the University of Northern Colorado, where I developed the curriculum and taught First and Second Lanugage Acquisition in Teaching ASL.  I continue to be inspired by my students at SPC and for that I am most grateful!  My scholarly interests include second language learning, writing, and Sign Language Linguistics.   My personal interests include playing tennis, sailing, kayaking, gardening, and tending to Bailey, our golden retreiver.
 

A favorite personal quote and one that best describes my approach to learning and life is:

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both" ~James Michener