What do WLC Majors do after graduation?  

Many areas of business, industry, and government service consider a language background a career must. Recent graduates of the department have been employed in a variety of fields including translation, education, governmental and non-governmental organizations. Here are just a few examples of what recent WLC graduates are doing:  

Education

• Teaching Assistant for the French Ministry of Education and the Cultural Services in the Aix-Marseille Academy in France  
• Instructor, Georgetown University Center of Language Education and Development  
• Teaching abroad in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Peru, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Moldova, Switzerland, and Thailand  

Government

• Department of State  
• National Security Agency  

Nongovernmental Organizations

• Organization of American States  
• International Organization for Migration  
• International Development Bank  

Translation

• Translator at CETRA, Inc., translation agency and corporate member of the American Translators Association  

Graduate Study

• Middlebury College 
• University of Bath and Humboldt Universitat in Berlin  
• George Washington University  
• University of Miami: School of Law  
• University of Texas-Austin  
• Universidad de Carlos III in Madrid

Michael Gale, Spanish Studies '06, is the program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Before working at the Global Fund for Children, Michael worked as a program coordinator at Foundation Communities in Austin, Texas, where he managed an immigration loan program for low-income families. He has studied in Spain and Chile, working for the Ministry of Education and Science in Madrid and the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Santiago. Michael received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation to work as a consultant for a nonprofit organization in Ecuador, and he has conducted research on migration and indigenous language use in Peru. While in college, he interned at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, DC, and taught fourth graders in a summer and after-school program through AmeriCorps. Michael earned his bachelor’s degrees in international studies and Spanish studies from American University and his master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in French and Quechua.

 

We'd like to hear more from our WLC alums, please e-mail us at wlc@american.edu and let us know how you're doing!