Maria Teresa Valdez received her B.A.and M.A. from Universidade de Lisboa in Portuguese language and Culture: Portuguese as a foreign language/second language, and Ph.D (in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies & Theory) from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She is Director of the Language Center and Portuguese Program Head and Advisor at the University of Rochester. Besides teaching her courses, Dr. Valdez teaches seminars in Teaching and Learning Languages and trains exchange Graduate Teaching Assistants. Her current research interests include technology in the classroom, online teaching course development, tools, and teaching strategies, textbook development for heritage and foreign language, heritage language acquisition, forms of address in Portuguese.