Student Spotlight: Jeanne Huguelet


by Ann Abbott
photo of Jeanne Huguelet in Prague

Once again, I'm following up on a former Spanish & Illinois student's success. Unlike engineering, accounting or business, when you study Spanish, there is no one clear career path. That's why I like to show my students some of the very different roads our students have taken after graduation.

Here are some highlights about Jeanne Huguelet as a student:
  • She took "Spanish & Entrepreneurship" and did her community service learning at the Refugee Center.
  • She studied an entire academic year in Barcelona, Spain.
  • Upon returning to UI after Barcelona, Jeanne volunteered at Champaign County Health Care Consumers during both semesters of her senior year.
  • She received the Flores Award, an annual faculty-nominated award for the best Spanish major.
  • About Spanish community service learning and the two community organizations where she worked, Jeanne says: "Working in the Spanish-speaking community in Champaign/Urbana was such a great way to practice the language! [V]olunteering at Champaign County Health Care Consumers... was another great experience and was so different than the Refugee Center. It showed me a whole other field and even more challenges that non-English speakers had to deal with when living in the States. The people there were also so friendly."

After graduation, Jeanne went to work for Ace Hardware Corporation, but she knew that she had a passion for education. So she wrote to me earlier this school year to tell me that she was interested in applying to a Masters Program in Education at Loyola University in Chicago. I wrote her a letter, and recently she sent me another e-mail:

"I just wanted to let you know that I was accepted into the grad school program at Loyola that I applied for. I will be starting in the summer and taking two classes. If I can take two classes a semester, I can finish in 2 years. I'm really excited about the program and I'm excited to be in a classroom again. ... If you ever have any students that have questions about the program or about Barcelona or Ace Hardware or anything, feel free to send them my way!"

I'm very happy for Jeanne, and I look forward to having her as an educator-colleague in the very near future. I hope that during this Masters program she can draw upon her Spanish community service-learning experiences in some way.

Good luck, Jeanne!

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