Queensborough Professor Dr. Carolina Chaves-O'Flynn Awarded the Don Quixote de La Mancha Scholarship

Published: January 17, 2025

The challenges students face while learning a new language are not lost on Assisistant Professor of Spanish, Dr. Carolina Chaves-O'Flynn. 

Learning languages is a very vulnerable condition because communication difficulties fill students with doubts and frustrations, often causing them to give up on learning other languages.” 

It’s for that reason and more that she decided to apply for – and was ultimately awarded– the Don Quixote de La Mancha Scholarship. 

The scholarship, offered through a collaboration between the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), provides a select group of Spanish language academics the opportunity to spend one week in Toledo, Spain to enhance their teaching of the Spanish language and culture. 

To earn the scholarship, aside from filling out an intention form, and receiving both a nomination and recommendation on her behalf from the department chair, her most recent research work was reviewed. In this case, a look into the linguistic insecurities that students encounter on a daily basis. 

In addition, there was an ethos the institutions were looking for in prospective candidates – an ethos that Dr. Chaves embodied. 

...the guiding principle or criteria for the scholarship selection is a pedagogical willingness to teach through leadership rather than punishment. Teaching involves getting to know the students, understanding their learning needs, and both my teaching and my research reflect a desire to build a respectful and horizontal relationship with them.” 

Now with this scholarship, she hopes to prove that her department has faculty that is highly skilled in teaching, highly scholarly and recognized abroad. 

Looking forward, she hopes to share what she learned with colleagues and implement all the practices she acquired in her own classroom.  

One thing she was sure to assert, however, is that change doesn’t come purely from curriculum changes but also from teaching methodology and the encouragement of student motivation in language teaching – a common theme throughout our discussion. 

“The goal for language teachers should not only be for students to learn the content of our classes to the best of their ability, but also for them to develop a lasting desire to continue learning the language we teach, as well as many others. Even if only one of my students chooses to keep learning on their own after taking my class, I feel that I have fulfilled my role as a teacher.” 

This is an outlook that aligns with Queensborough’s values, especially as a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). 

Queensborough makes it a point to incorporate this designation  into the services and programs it provides to the campus community. An effort Dr. Chaves says faculty can support by becoming language learners, too. 

I would like to invite other teacher colleagues to learn languages other than English, to allow themselves the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of their migrant students. Learning another language is a real gesture of empathy that goes beyond theory, it demonstrates a real social commitment to the progressive values that we claim to defend every day.” 

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