Dr. Nicole Mombell, who received her doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese from Yale University in May 2011, has been named Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Saint Michael's College, starting this month with the fall semester.
“I love teaching,” Dr. Mombell said. “And I’m personally attracted to the mission and goals of Saint Michael's College of holistic teaching—teaching students to become engaged citizens of the world,” she said.
Dr. Mombell’s doctoral dissertation, titled “Reading War: Soldiers’ Experience in Contemporary Literature and Film,” examines the ways in which war and its aftermath have persisted in contemporary Spanish cultural production.
“I am passionate about Spanish language and culture,” she said. “I really want my students to fall in love with the literature, to study abroad, and to come to love the culture too. In teaching, I can sort out problems in my own work, through questions students raise that cause me to think in new ways.”
Dr. Mombell earned a master’s in 2007 and an M.Phil. in 2008, both also from Yale University. She earned a master’s in Spanish Literature in 2005 from the University of Oregon, and a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with Departmental Honors from the University of Oregon in 2002, as well as a bachelor’s in educational studies. She attended the University Honors College of Oregon State from 1998 to 2001.
Dr. Mombell gave invited lectures on the literature and culture of the Spanish Civil War in 2011 at Yale and at Portland State, and at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in 2009. She was a teaching fellow in Spanish at Yale from 2007 to 2010, an instructor in the Yale summer session in 2009, and a teaching assistant in 2005 and a graduate teaching fellow from 2003 to 2005 at the University of Oregon.
Dr. Mombell and her husband Mark Couet reside in Winooski. Her husband, an architect and builder, is a certified passive-house consultant, with focus on energy-efficient residential design.
The Edmundite Catholic liberal arts college, www.smcvt.edu . Saint Michael's provides education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools to lead successful, purposeful lives that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's College is located three miles from Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns. Identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nations Best 373 Colleges, and included in the 2011 Fiske Guide to Colleges, Saint Michael's has 1,900 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students. Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other grants. The college is one of the nation's top-100, Best Liberal Arts Colleges as listed in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report rankings.