Topic: Bilingual - Spanish
Bernardo Alatorre
Adriann Wycoff
Adriann Wycoff, Ph.D., is a professor of Chicana/o Studies and holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor of Women’s Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Apart from teaching she is also Director of the MSU Denver Family Literacy Program and Co-Principal Investigator of the College Assistance Migrant Program. She has more than thirty years’ experience in community-based, non-traditional education. Her responsibilities have included teaching, program administration, curriculum development, grant writing, community outreach and public relations. Wycoff holds a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, also in Spanish.
Lorenzo Trujillo
Lorenzo A. Trujillo, Ed.D., J.D., is an affiliate professor in the Department of Music at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is also the director and founder of the mariachi ensemble and the mariachi program called Los Correcaminos de MSU Denver.
Trujillo began playing mariachi and traditional southwest Hispanic music as a teenager with the Mariachi Alegre and the Southwest Musicians. He is now the director of the Southwest Musicians and was appointed to Direttore della Musica Sacra Ispanico of the Conservatory of Music for the Cathedral/Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver in 2016. Trujillo began teaching at MSU Denver in 2015 and became the first professor to teach a mariachi program at the University. He is also a practicing attorney at his own firm, Trujillo Legal, specializing in estate planning and business nonprofit and education law. Trujillo has received several awards over the years, with the most recent ones being inducted into the Colorado Chicano Music Hall of Fame in 2009; and was presented with the Tesoro Cultural Center’s Tesoro de Oro Award in 2011.
Trujillo has presented thousands of concerts and lecture demonstrations and has published extensively about traditional music and dance of the southwestern United States over the past 40 years. He has also published work on education policy, such as “Education of Latino Youth: Early Childhood Education, K-12, Access to Higher Education.” “Dream Act: Discussion and Testimony before the U.S. Senate Democratic Hispanic Task Force.” In addition, he has recorded and performed for television and radio and on numerous CDs, with his most popular CD being “The Golden Age of the Southwest: From 1840 to Hollywood.”
Trujillo received his juris doctorate from the University of Colorado Law School in 1993 and his doctorate in education from the University of San Francisco in 1979.
Marc Rodriguez
Marc Rodriguez, M.A., is the Parents as Teachers Coordinator and Parenting Coordinator in the Family Literacy program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include K-12 education, parenting skills, Sheltered (ESL) Instruction, and educational administration.
Rodriguez has been with MSU Denver for 10 years. In addition to working at MSU Denver, Rodriguez works as a Teacher Effectiveness Coach at Denver Public Schools.
Rodriguez received both his master’s degree in educational administration and his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from University of Colorado – Denver in 1995 and 1990, respectively.
Diane Ream
RN since 1999; nursing management, NICU, adult ICU, emergency, home health care, and nursing education. Retired from 23 years in USAF in 2005.
Vincent Piturro
Vincent Piturro, Ph.D., is a professor of film and media studies in the Department of English at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
He hosts an annual science fiction film series in conjunction with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Film Society. Piturro writes a film review column for The Front Porch, a neighborhood Denver paper with a circulation of about 30,000. In addition to teaching, he is also the general studies chair on the Faculty Senate Standing Committee at MSU Denver.
Piturro published several works including a book chapter on “The Ballad of Little Jo” in the edited collection of “Love in Western Film and Television,” an article in the International Academic Forum journal titled “Documentary Film Rhetoric: Saving Face and the Public Sphere” and a book chapter on gays in Westerns in the upcoming edited volume “The New Western.” His areas of research include Westerns, science fiction, documentaries, Italian cinema and Italian-American cinema.
Piturro received his doctorate in film studies from University of Colorado Denver in 2008.
David Piacenti
David Piacenti teaches Prejudice & Discrimination, Contemporary Sociology, Art & Craft of Sociology Writing, and Sociological Theory: Past and Present.
He has taught at Metropolitan State University of Denver since 2010.
Piacenti has published “Yucatec-Mayan Immigration to the Mission and Edison Neighborhoods: A Comparison of Social Conditions and Immigrant Satisfaction” in the Journal of Méxican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, “The Tangle of Anthropological Tourism: How the Consumption of Fantasy and Academia Share Common Spaces” in Applied Anthropologist and “For Love of Family and Family Values: How Immigrant Motivations Can Inform Immigration Policy” in the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy.
Marina Pereira
Professor Marina Pereira has taught graduate courses in the Graduate Social Work program as MSU Denver. She has taught at Metropolitan State University of Denver since 1999.
Professor Pereira is well versed in topics of mental health and families. She has special interest in issues of acculturation, diversity and first-generation Latino students. She was an advisor for the Student Association of Social Workers (SASW), a student organization that helps students develop and increase their sense of civic responsibility and community engagement by service learning activities.
Before teaching at MSU Denver, Pereira worked in the areas of medical social work and mental health, where she specialized in treating and advocating for children and families with a history of domestic violence, sexual and physical abuse.
Malena Perdomo
Malena Perdomo, MS, RD, CDE, is an affiliate professor of nutrition at MSU Denver. She’s a dietitian, nutritionist and certified diabetes educator and she also educates the Latino community on nutrition. She produces educational materials on general nutrition, diabetes and other consumer topics such as nutritional videos aimed at Latinos.
She is co-author of “Los Secretos de Maya,” a cookbook featuring health-conscious Latin flavors. Malena was the national Latino nutrition spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association (now called the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) from 2005 to 2011. She was also president of the Latino/Hispanic Dietetics and Nutrition (LAHIDAN) and was the star nutritionist for the LiveWell Colorado campaigns for Latinos. Previously, Perdomo worked as a clinical dietitian at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, a nutritionist for the WIC public health program and a nutrition consultant for children with special needs.
She graduated from Florida State University-Panama Canal Branch and University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and earned a master’s degree in nutrition education from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.