Rebecca Donaldson

Rebecca was awarded a Fulbright to travel to Brazil for the 2014 academic year and work with university students learning English as a second language. While in Brazil, she also conducted research in the favelas of Rocinha. This research included interviewing former students of 2Brothers, an organization that teaches English and other courses to children and adults. She did this with the intention of understanding the overall impact of the education effort in the Rocinha community and determining if those students have leveraged their new understanding of the English language and other skills to develop their subsequent careers. She looked forward to putting into practice all the skills she acquired over her prior two years while working with Dr. Kendra Douglas. Rebecca explained that after studying after Dr. Douglas, she worked diligently to fine-tune her skills in Spanish and Portuguese, gaining first-hand experience teaching and researching a wide range of subjects. She enjoyed “the opportunity to go out in the field and use these new skills in a practical setting” through the Fulbright program. She planned on getting her PhD in Portuguese and Linguistics. Instead, she got her MS in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the Teacher’s College at Columbia, and her Spanish certification at the Bilingual Extension Institute. She is currently enrolled at Claremont University, working on her PhD in Positive Developmental Psychology while she works as a Speech-Language pathologist and writes confessional poetry.