LLCL Alumni News
The faculty and staff of the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature are proud of our alumni’s remarkable accomplishments. As you will see from these profiles, our graduates are using the knowledge and experience they gained while studying with us to advance careers in many different fields, from government service, to teaching, to private enterprise, to graduate and Ph.D. degrees.
Corey Hancock, M.A. Spanish, 2005, is an American diplomat in the Foreign Service of the United States with the United States Agency for International Development. Currently stationed in Lima, Peru, Mr. Hancock works in the Project Development and Program office, assisting in the reporting and budgeting functions of the mission. Previously, he worked as a Microenterprise Development Volunteer in Peace Corps Bolivia, implementing a community tourism fair in an indigenous village in the Andes Mountains, and a fully functioning bakery in an urban orphanage in the city of Cochabamba. In addition to his federal service, he has worked with several NGOs, in both the domestic and international contexts.
He has a Master’s degree in Spanish from the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. He is an honorary member of Sigma Delta Pi, the Hispanic Honor Society, and he taught six semesters of beginning and intermediate Spanish as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the university. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, with a minor in Spanish Business and Culture, as well as a Certificate in Latin American Studies. He spent semesters studying abroad on LLCL programs in Salamanca, Spain and Cuenca, Ecuador.
Erica Mandell-Cascio, B.A. French, 2008, is living in Athens, Georgia and managing restaurants she and her husband own. She is planning to apply to UGA to pursue a masters in linguistics, with a French concentration. She is currently volunteering one day per week at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic where she records books in English and French for disabled students. She is one of only two readers that they have for French.
Peggy Schaller, Ph.D. in Comparative Studies, 2008, is an Assistant Professor of French at Georgia College & State University, (www.gcsu.edu), south of Atlanta, Georgia. Before graduating from FAU, she taught a variety of French courses in our department as a GTA and adjunct professor.
Amy Jonas, M.A. Spanish, 2003, is the chair of the Department of World Languages and Spanish teacher at The Pine School in Hope Sound, Florida. Since graduating from FAU, she has held leadership positions at several private schools in South Florida, North Carolina, and spent a year teaching language and literature at Colegio Nueva Granada in Bogatá, Colombia. She is happy to be back in South Florida, where she has just begun pursuing a second MA in Educational Leadership at FAU and occasionally teaches as an adjunct professor of Spanish in our department.
