Archives: Modern Languages and Literatures

United States Air Force Captain Anne Delmare ’08 didn’t arrive as a student on Franciscan’s campus until her sophomore year. That’s because she spent her freshman year taking classes 4,000 miles away.“I knew I wanted to travel and learn a new language,” says Anne, so after high school, she headed to the University of Navarra in northern Spain. There, she studied Spanish language and culture, and earned credits toward the undergraduate Spanish major she would later complete at Franciscan University. Anne also majored in business, following in the footsteps of her enterprising father and other relatives, owners of a successful family winery in Huntly, Virginia.

How do you blend business and travel with furthering respect for the dignity of the human person? Franciscan graduate Emily Ortiz has found a way to do just that. Emily is the director of Development for Generation Life, a rapidly growing, international non-profit organization whose mission is to build a culture of life through peer-to-peer education about life issues and chastity.“My job is fast-paced and keeps me on my toes, and I’m always learning,” she says, “however, I would never have been able to come into this position without the formation, both personal and professional, offered by Dr. Tilman Rusch and the International Business Program at Franciscan University.”

Her mother’s side of her family hails from Canada, so Jessica Lennon ’13 grew up hearing a lot of French.“French has been part of my life for my whole life,” says Jessica, who started her college career as a psychology major, but had an epiphany halfway through and switched her major to French.The epiphany happened after Lennon spent a semester studying abroad in Austria, where she had the chance to visit France for the first time and to use the language she grew up with in the country of its origin.