New Faculty: Patricia Baquedano-López

The School's newest faculty member is Assistant Professor Patricia Baquedano-López, who teaches in the area of Education, Language, Literacy, and Culture.

Professor Baquedano-López's background is in applied linguistics, the field she did her Ph.D. in at UCLA. In her thesis, she studied doctrina (Spanish-language catechism) classes in a Catholic parish in Los Angeles. She explored the way that religious education classes in Spanish differed from those in English in the same church. Her close study of the language used by teachers and students revealed the rich historical and social flavors of the instruction that was taking place in Spanish. She focused on the teaching of narratives of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the story of an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 16th century Mexico, and how teachers use that narrative to convey information on historical, ethnic, and political issues.

Professor Baquedano-López also just completed a post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA, where she taught in a project called UCLinks. "UCLinks brings undergraduates from all the UC campuses into elementary schools and other settings as mentors for school-age children," she explained. "It's a way of building a bridge between the University and the community."

She's looking forward to working at Cal: "Berkeley students have a unique curiosity," she said. "I'm excited about the intellectual vitality here." In her first class, Language Study for Educators, she's hoping to impress on her teacher education students the ways that language can help them to understand the many worlds that their students move in. "Educators are everyday linguists," she commented. "My goal is to create a connection between the micro level and the macro level, to help students see how the larger context informs the details of language."

Patricia Baquedano-López