Rachel Rivers Parroquín, Ed.D.
People
Teaching Professor, Joint with Romance Languages and Literatures; Spanish Community-Engaged Learning, Director
Rachel Rivers Parroquín has a joint appointment with the Center for Social Concerns (CSC) and Romance Languages and Literatures (ROLL). She is a teaching professor with ROLL and the director of Spanish Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) at the center. In her position, she works with both ROLL faculty and CSC staff to coordinate the program in community based learning for Spanish students. In addition to intermediate level Spanish classes, she teaches “Once Upon a Time – Children’s Literature and Community Connections” an advanced elective Spanish CEL class.
Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Parroquín taught Spanish at Valparaiso University where she developed the Spanish for Service Professionals course, as well as worked with the Hispanic community in local parishes. Her experience includes teaching from first grade through university levels including in ESL and Spanish, as well as consulting in special education for Spanish speaking families.
She holds degrees from Valparaiso University in Spanish (B.A.) and Education (B.S., M.Ed.) and Loyola University Chicago (Ed.D.). Her dissertation, Integrated Curriculum and Urban Service Learning: Impacting Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes About Multiculturalism, focused on working with undergraduates in a service learning setting and studied how the selection of materials used in classroom instruction can impact students’ ability to more deeply interact with the community and reflect upon and understand that interaction.
Parroquín presents regularly at conferences on reflection, CEL pedagogy, and CEL program assessment. In addition to community-based learning and second language for specific purposes, her interests include the use of portfolios in assessment, and integrated curriculum. Parroquín has also traveled to Costa Rica and Nicaragua where she interpreted in urban and rural clinics for a health care service-learning course. In the fall of 2015, she was recognized as the Indiana Foreign Language Teacher of the Year.
