Alegría Ribadeneira
United States
Dr. Alegría Ribadeneira is Distinguished Professor and Director of World Languages at Colorado State University-Pueblo (U.S.A.). Dr. Ribadeneira regularly presents at regional, national and international conferences where she shares her expertise regarding best practices for language teaching. Her presentations highlight the benefits of project-based, content-based, and community-based instruction paired with open educational practices. She is involved in heritage language teaching advocacy and participates as a faculty mentor at the NHLRC (National Heritage Language Resource Center) in UCLA. Dr. Ribadeneira is the recipient of several teaching awards including the 2017 Olga E. Kagan award for advancing heritage language education in institutions of learning, the 2020 Colorado Excellence in Teaching Award from the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers, the 2020 Post-Secondary Excellence in Teaching Award from the Southwest Congress of Language Teaching, and most recently, the Global Educator Award from Open Education Global. Dr. Ribadeneira is currently leading an ambitious new project with her team, code-named “Los Valientes,” to develop an all OER, ZTC (Zero Textbook Cost) Spanish language degree program at CSU-Pueblo.