Diana P. Romero

Senior Lecturer in Language (Spanish)

Diana Romero, Ph.D., has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University since Fall 2004 and currently holds the rank of Senior Lecturer. She previously taught at Yale University and Northwestern University and began her teaching career as a teaching assistant at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she earned both her M.A. in Latin American Literature and her Ph.D. in Colombian Literature in 2009. She holds a B.A. in Modern Languages from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

From 2012 to 2015, she served as Co-Director of the Spanish Language Program at Columbia, contributing to curricular coordination, instructor support, and pedagogical material development. She received Columbia's Center for Teaching and Learning Course Re-Design Grant in 2016 and a course release in Fall 2020 to redesign the elementary-level course SPAN UN1120: Comprehensive Elementary Spanish.

In addition to teaching Spanish as a second language, Diana was in charge of the intermediate Spanish course for heritage speakers in the department from 2008 until the implementation of the formal Heritage Spanish Program in 2023, which introduced an elementary-level course and a revised curricular sequence. Since Spring 2024, she has also been teaching the elementary-level course, and beginning in Fall 2025, she will be the sole instructor responsible for both levels within the department.

She coordinated the Columbia–Barnard Heritage Track Working Group from 2021 to 2022, and as a continuing member she contributed to the formalization of the Heritage Spanish Program. She has since remained actively involved in curricular planning, the definition of pedagogical goals, and the selection and evaluation of instructional materials. She has also been invited to the Methodology course to give workshops for graduate teaching fellows in heritage language pedagogy.

Her research and pedagogical interests center on heritage language education, especially the ways in which linguistic and cultural identities shape Spanish acquisition among heritage speakers. She is particularly interested in the intersection of critical language awareness and contemplative pedagogy. Her teaching aims to foster deep engagement, reflection, and a sense of agency in students as they reconnect with their linguistic and cultural heritage.

In September 2024, she co-delivered the department's inaugural lecture with Francisca Aguiló-Mora, Ph.D., highlighting the critical and transformative potential of heritage language instruction.

Academic Statement

Teaching and learning are multidirectional and multifaceted processes where the meaningful and creative involvement of all the participants is essential. Making students actively engage in their own learning and in helping each other learn are the foundation of my pedagogical approach. Class participants must develop a greater cultural and linguistic understanding and awareness of the Spanish speaking peoples and to think critically about their own culture. In turn, I never stop learning from my students, who keep me highly engaged and motivated.

I try to design activities, tasks and projects that tap into students´ particular motivations and needs. Drawing from the research on heritage language learners and cognitive studies, the tasks and materials I use help students connect and interact with the Spanish culture and community available to them at the university, in the City and online. In the Fall 2011 I started a collaborative project involving bibliographic and ethnographic research for a Heritage Speakers class at Columbia and at Arizona State University. With the support of the Language Resource Center at Columbia and Arizona State University I incorporated the "Hispanidades" framework - a theoretical research approach that puts students across different universities in the United States in contact in order to explore issues of identity affecting Hispanic and Latino students across communities in the US.

From 2012-2015, I served as Co-Director of the Spanish Language Program. This provided me with the opportunity to see many other factors that come into play in the academic decision process, an experience that enriched my own perspective as an instructor.  I left this position in the Fall 2015 to focus more on my research interests.

Whether they are fulfilling the language requirement or have other personal interests in learning Spanish, I hope to motivate my students to continue their formal studies and to help them understand language learning as a lifelong endeavor. Thus, I make them aware of the importance of learning strategies and tools that they can adapt to their own needs and learning styles as they build up the confidence and critical skills necessary to learn in class and beyond.

As educators, we are frequently confronted with the realities of students´ lives that can make teaching a deeply transforming experience. By being constantly reminded that academic performance must keep in mind the individual as a whole, I have become increasingly interested in the role of emotions, sociocultural factors and strategies in the learning process.