Paola Tettamanzi Buckley, is a Hunt Institute Fellow, Senior Lecturer, and Advisor at Southern Methodist University. A native speaker of French, Italian, and English, Buckley has taught foreign languages at Southern Methodist University since 2003. She is presently an associate area chair and faculty advisor for the department of French and Francophone Studies. She also designed and directs the SMU-in-France summer program, a five-week faculty-led immersion program in Paris.
She teaches Business French and oversees the internship program for French majors and minors who wish to apply their language skills in a professional setting. She is a Board Member of the Alliance Française of Dallas.
Before becoming a faculty member at SMU, Paola worked at United Nations headquarters in New York and was accredited as both a French and Italian interpreter by the State Department in Washington; she has served as an interpreter at the White House, the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies.
Paola’s academic interests include Languages for Specific Purposes, Study Abroad and Translation. She is currently translating the book Au Texas by Victor Considérant.
When asked what motivates Paola to do impactful work she said, “When you open your passport, you open your mind: students who are exposed to multiple languages and cultures gain insights about themselves and develop new perspectives that are essential to advance a more balanced and genuine understanding of the world in which they live and the people with whom they interact.”
Her most recent academic presentations include:
French for Fashion and the Diplôme de Français Professionnel: a model for Second Language immersion abroad. ISLSP-CIBER conference:5th International Symposium on Language for Specific Purposes, March 2019
Enseigner le français des affaires en ligne ? Mais oui, c’est possible! Webinaire, Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris, September 2020
“Global Literacy and Languages for Specific Purposes: Curricular design for building transferable skills” Southern Methodist University, Research Cluster co-convener
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