Alberta Gatti (Director) is the director of the Center for Integrated Language Communities at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Alberta Gatti’s research interests include the areas of literature, literacy, and applied linguistics. In the past, she has worked on on Spanish satire of early modern Spain, and more recently she investigates the writing proficiency development of heritage language learners. Currently, her two fields of expertise are converging as she explores the development of critical literacy in the context of college education. Dr. Gatti is also an experienced higher education administrator, being the director of the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context (ILETC), a research and resource center for language education at the City University of New York (CUNY). She also directs the Center for Integrated Language Communities (CILC), a National Language Resource Center focusing on the teaching and learning of languages in the context of minority serving institutions and community colleges. Before CILC, she was the director of a multi-year, university-wide Title III initiative at Saint Xavier University in Chicago (SXU). The initiative included projects in three areas: student interventions, technology integration into instruction, and community-based and collaborative learning initiatives. At SXU, she also directed the Foreign Languages Program. Dr. Gatti has a degree in classical studies from Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and a Ph.D. in Hispanic language and literatures from Boston University (Boston, MA).
Email: agatti@gc.cuny.edu

Syelle Graves (Assistant Director) did her doctoral research in sociolinguistics, focusing on corpus analysis, language change, minority language varieties, and language attitudes. In her early years of doctoral study, she concentrated on language acquisition and semantics, and she is currently interested in language attitudes toward loanwords. She has extensive university teaching experience in linguistics, ESL, public speaking, and expository writing, plus experience working for the Modern Language Association (MLA) and Educational Testing Service (ETS). She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center, and graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in French. In 2019, she was honored with a SUNY New Paltz 40 Under Forty Alumni award. On the side, she is a contributing author to the Grammar Girl webguide and podcast.
Email: sgraves@gc.cuny.edu

Cristina Lozano Argüelles (Faculty Partner) is an assistant professor of Spanish and translation at the Modern Languages and Literatures department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). Cristina received her Ph.D. in second language acquisition and bilingualism from Rutgers University (NJ) and her MAT in Spanish from Indiana University (Indianapolis, IN). She has taught Spanish, translation, interpreting, linguistics, and bilingualism. Her research interests lie at the intersection of second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, interpreting, and bilingualism. Her work focuses on the differences between how monolinguals and second language learners (with and without interpreting experience) process language. She’s also interested in making research and language learning accessible to a wider audience, you can follow her on

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bilingualmind
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Crislocrispis
Blog: https://crislozano.substack.com
Email: clozanoarguelles@jjay.cuny.edu

Dr. Tomonori Nagano (Faculty Partner) is a professor of Japanese and linguistics at LaGuardia Community College. He received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center and his M.A. in TESOL from New York University. His research interests are second language acquisition and Japanese as a heritage language. Dr. Nagano published papers in several journals, including Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Modern Language Journal, and Foreign Language Annals [See Tomonori Nagano’s Publications & Grants for the publication list]. Dr. Nagano teaches all levels of Japanese and introductory courses in linguistics and bilingualism. Dr. Nagano is a certified ACTFL OPI Tester in Japanese.
Email: tnagano@lagcc.cuny.edu

Juwon Jun (Research Assistant and Web Editor) is an associate editor at Wendy’s Subway and programs manager at the Center for the Humanities. She has shown work with Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, RISD Museum, Brooklyn Women’s Film Festival, Les Femmes Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Boston Center for the Arts, National Association of Women Artists, CINEMQ, and more. She holds an M.A. in women’s and gender studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. Her writing has appeared in offshoot.
Email: jjun@gc.cuny.edu

Coco Sofia Fitterman (Research Assistant) is a writer and student living in Brooklyn. Her creative work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and Provence magazine, among other publications. Her poetry chapbook Say It With Flowers was published by Inpatient Press in 2017, and she is currently earning an M.A. in comparative literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Besides English, she speaks Spanish and German.
Email: cfitterman@gradcenter.cuny.edu

William Oliver (College Assistant) William Oliver is a PhD student in linguistics at SUNY Stony Brook. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from SUNY Binghamton, an Ed.M. in language and literacy from Harvard University, and an M.A. in computational linguistics from CUNY Graduate Center. He also is an adjunct professor in the City College School of Education in its Programs for Bilingual Education and TESOL where he teaches ESL pedagogy and linguistics. Before joining ILETC, William taught high school English and ESL in Arizona public schools.
Email: woliver@gradcenter.cuny.edu