Amelia Min-Venditti spotlight
Major Amelia Min-Venditti worked for Dr. Holland in the EEB department doing ecology research in Sonora, Mexico.  Not only did she get to pursue her biological interests, but she got to practice her Spanish with Mexican co-workers and people in the community.  She also created several bi-lingual Environmental/Educational posters, for the school children, that are on display in Sonora!

Kendall Toarmina spotlight
From Kendall Toarmina, Class of 2010:
I'm about half-way done with my Fulbright award here in Argentina, and I wanted to share a quick update! I'm living in Northwest Argentina in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, which has a population of about 1 million. My main activities are teaching English in a variety of settings. I work at a teacher training college, I visit high schools in the city and interact with students there, and I also help with teacher training for elementary school teachers.

In addition to teaching English, I started a food blog. It's an expression of my love of food, writing, and Argentine culture (but mostly food). :D The web address is http://www.argentinewithatwist.com . It's a collection of original recipes I created myself inspired by my experiences here in Argentina. It's really fun to experiment with new recipes and be able to share a little bit about Argentine culture with friends and family back home. And I'm learning a lot in the process.

I hope everything is going well in the Hispanic Studies Dept at Rice! I should be back in Houston sometime in early 2012, and I'll be sure to stop by!

Lorena Villarreal spotlight
Major Lorena Villarreal sent the following note:  This summer was amazing.  I worked with Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), a non-profit college-prep program  based in New York City, which seeks to redress inequality of higher educational opportunity for low-income high school juniors across the United States, whose socio-economic, racial and/or ethnic background is currently under-represented at the nation's top colleges and universities.  This summer, the program hosted 60 students at Princeton University where we lived for 8 weeks.  The students learned about leadership, ethics, and politics, while having SAT & ACT prep courses as well.  We traveled to Maryland, Connecticut, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, New York and visited several top universities such as Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Wesleyan.
I participated in this program as a scholar during the summer after my junior year in high school (2005); i can honestly say that LEDA helped me get into Rice and I wanted to give back to this amazing program in any way I could.  It was great being able to  return to LEDA and work as an RA at the dormitory where we all stayed, which allowed me to see everything from a different perspective from the one I lived four years ago. I had a group of students assigned to me and this proximity gave me the opportunity to witness their transformation as individuals into a tight-knit community.  It was beautiful.  I learned so much from working with talented and driven students and met so many amazing people that touched my heart. I would not trade this summer experience for anything.

Maria Condacse spotlight
Straight from Maria:  This summer I worked at Breakthrough Houston, a non-profit summer school program for underserved middle school students in H.I.S.D. I planned all the special events for the kids and faculty such as community service day, career day, and friday night outing. It was really fun working at the St. John's campus and getting to know all the kids. It was also a great experience for me especially since I plan on becoming an elementary school teacher next year!

Roxana Fatemizadeh spotlight
Hispanic Studies major Roxana Fatemizadeh went on a HuMED trip this summer to Kpando, Ghana.  The team worked in Margaret Marquart Hospital (mainly with the public health unit).  Most of the doctors were on 2-year rotations from Cuba and didn't speak English, so even in Ghana, her Spanish was quite useful in communicating!