Jessica Yesenia Morones Chavez received a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics with a concentration in Foreign Language Pedagogy from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Tamaulipas, Mexico. Prior to joining Rice University, she taught a variety of Spanish courses at Boston College and Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research interests include second language acquisition; culture and language teaching; computer assisted language learning; and Spanish as a heritage language. Recently, she was awarded a Certificate in Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language by the Institute Cervantes at Harvard University. As a language instructor, her goal is to guide students to develop critical thinking skills, increase cross-cultural awareness, and become competent language users in the target culture.