Assistant Professor of Spanish Matthew Burner learned to love the language in high school. Photo by Penh Alicandro ’22
Back when Eckerd College Assistant Professor of Spanish Matthew Burner, Ph.D., was in high school, he needed a foreign language course credit and chose to take Spanish. He had no idea that decision would be the beginning of a love story.
After taking elective courses in Spanish, he was hired as a translator at Walt Disney World. Then he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Central Florida.
“[I] came into linguistics, where I could play with the inner workings of the language,” he explains.
By the time he entered graduate school at UCF, Burner was teaching Spanish—an opportunity he found deeply rewarding.
“I would teach a student something, and it would click, and you see that light come on.”
He recently earned his Ph.D. in Spanish and linguistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and expressed his eagerness to be an Eckerd professor.
“I had done a few interviews [at other institutions] as a finalist, but when I came here, there was a night-and-day difference, like, the hiring committee was very accepting,” he says.
Assistant professor of Spanish Matthew Burner, Ph.D.
In addition to conducting research, Burner found that teaching younger generations and possibly inspiring them to use Spanish in their own careers would be an important part of his job. Fortunately, Eckerd gave him a chance to do both.
After years of building his own experience and passion for Spanish, he is ready to foster the same curiosity in his students at Eckerd.
“I’m excited about the back-and-forth learning process between the students and myself,” he says. “I think that is the most important and exciting part for me at this stage.”
