Claudia Garcia-Rueda is a dedicated language educator with more than 15 years of experience in higher education. Originally from Colombia, she earned dual master’s degrees from the University of Granada, Spain, in Spanish Language and Culture Education and English Literature and Linguistics.

Before joining the faculty at Rice University, Claudia taught all levels of Spanish at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she was recognized with several teaching awards and consistently achieved the department’s highest student retention rate.

As an educator, she strives to inspire and guide her students to develop their linguistic knowledge along with their cultural awareness so they can be active members of a multicultural, multilingual world. She is interested in Spanish for the professions, second language acquisition, language pedagogy, bilingualism and applied linguistics.