Mary Ann Blitt began her Spanish studies at the age of 13 while living in Madrid, Spain. She received her B.A. in Spanish from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and after spending a year studying at the Universidad de Granada, she returned to the university to obtain a teaching certificate. She later attended Colorado State University, where she received her master's degree in Spanish with interdisciplinary studies in French. After teaching Spanish and coordinating the study abroad program at Metropolitan Community College-Maple Woods in Kansas City for fourteen years, she joined the faculty at College of Charleston in 2014. Mary Ann has studied in Spain, Mexico, France, and Canada and has trained teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Asunción, Paraguay. She is currently actively involved in professional development workshops. Margarita Casas was born in Mexico City, Mexico. She completed her bachelor's degree in sciences and techniques of communication in Guadalajara, Mexico. She holds two master's degrees from Colorado State University, one in Spanish literature with an emphasis on education, and the other in Teaching English as a Second Language. Currently, she is faculty and Chair of the Foreign Language Department at Linn-Benton Community College. She has collaborated on two textbooks prior to EXPLORACIONES and has published a novel, Italia en cuatro estaciones, winner of the first literature contest of the Universidad de Guadalajara. She is an avid traveler who hopes to inspire her students to travel and see the world by themselves. Mary T. Copple joined the Department of Modern Languages at Kansas State University in 2007; she currently coordinates the Spanish Language Program and teaches courses in linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy. She also works with graduate students in the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) MA degree programs. Working from a usage-based perspective, her research focuses primarily on language acquisition and Spanish linguistics in the areas of language variation and change, and sociolinguistics. She is currently involved in a project that explores how students acquire second language sounds and variation among speakers of different backgrounds.
