Sheri Spaine Long (PhD, UCLA) is currently Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she
teaches language, literature, and culture courses at all levels. She has also directed study
abroad programs to Latin America and Spain for teachers, undergraduates and honors
students. As a scholar, she bridges the study of languages and literatures. Her fields of
interest are broad and range from contemporary Spanish prose to Spanish language and
culture, foreign language pedagogy and policy, and international education.
Her research includes Madrid as a literary invention in contemporary Spanish prose and the development of materials for content-based language instruction. Her publications include six co-authored college textbooks as well as over 40 scholarly articles, notes and reviews on literature, culture, and foreign language education and policy. She is the co-author of Nexos: Introductory Spanish (Houghton Mifflin 2005), Pueblos Intermediate Spanish in Cultural Contexts (Houghton Mifflin 2007), and Nexos Media Edition (Houghton Mifflin 2007).
Since 2006, she has been the Editor of Foreign Language Annals, the official journal of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese has recently announced that she has been named the incoming Editor of Hispania – A Journal Devoted to the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese to begin in 2010.
She has served on the fifteen-member Board of Directors of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Board of Directors of the Southern Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. In 2007, The College Board and the Educational Policy Improvement Center named her to the six-member panel as a World Languages Best Practices Commission Member for Spanish Literature.
She is an awarding winning professor and has received six awards from her university and professional organizations, including the UAB Outstanding Woman Faculty Member (2005) as well as special recognition in international education from the Universidad de Jaén (2007). Most recently, she received the 2008 UAB Minority Health and Research Center Charles Barkley Excellence in Mentoring Award.