Marjorie Zambrano-Paff completed her PhD in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Her doctoral thesis, titled "The Interpreter's Linguistic Power: A New Courtroom Reality in Immigration Hearings," investigated the linguistic and sociolinguistic challenges interpreters confront in the process of interpreting in immigration hearings.
Zambrano-Paff is a native of Managua, Nicaragua, who joined the faculty at Indiana University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor in fall 2008. She earned her BA in English at the University of Costa Rica in San Jos, where she lived for 10 years and where she also gained professional experience working as both coordinator of the Spanish program and as an instructor in two well-known language institutes in San Jos.
Zambrano-Paff first gained teaching experience in the United States in 1994 at Hamilton College, where she began as a teaching assistant. She later served as lecturer, first at the University of Michigan and then at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. Prior to joining IUP, Zambrano-Paff was a member of the faculty at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and at Gettysburg College.
Zambrano-Paff has taught a variety of Spanish language courses as well as Spanish conversation, composition, advanced grammar, Spanish linguistics, pragmatics, and translation and interpretation. Professor Zambrano-Paff's primary research interests center on forensic linguistics, bilingual interpreting, bilingualism, language prejudice, language attitudes, language in the work place, language and gender, and bilingual interpreting. Topics such as the effects of the first language (L1) on the acquisition of a second language (L2), language anxiety, and language attitudes are also areas of interest. She has published articles on bilingual interpreting and issues in sociolinguistics in books and international journals. Over the years, Zambrano-Paff has also made a number of presentations at professional conferences in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Zambrano-Paff is the co-director of the Universidad de las Amricas Puebla, UDLA-P program at IUP (for more information, visit the website for the Office of International Education). She is also the co-chair of the Hispanic Heritage Council, which aims to raise awareness of the Hispanic culture and Spanish language on the IUP campus.
Professor Zambrano-Paff serves as one of our department's Oral Proficiency testers, supporting the department's focus on functional language proficiency.
Zambrano-Paff can be reached at: mzambran@iup.edu.