She completed her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University. Before joining the faculty at Aquinas College, she taught upper-division and graduate linguistic courses in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the sociolinguistic variation of the Spanish pronunciation in Southern Spain and the Caribbean. She also does investigations in the field of second language acquisition of Spanish pronunciation and in online teaching. She has published a book and several articles, and has mentored students’ research in these areas.