Patricia DeBellis
Retired
Lecturer - French, Spanish, and Italian
Taught at Muhlenberg 1975 to 2003
Background
B.A., University of California at Los Angeles
M.A., Lehigh University
OTHER ADVANCED STUDY
Università per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy
Universidad de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Université de Paris (Sorbonne), France
Université de Toulouse, France
Institut Catholique, Paris, France
Cemanahuac Educational Community, Cuernavaca, Mexico
Patricia DeBellis joined the Muhlenberg faculty as a part-time instructor in 1975. In 1977 she was invited to become a full-time member of the faculty. This new appointment meant that for the first time she would have the opportunity to teach all three languages in which she had trained in the respective countries France, Italy and Spain. In 1983 she was honored by the college when she received the Lindback Award for excellence in teaching. Her interest in theatre (she has performed on the Muhlenberg stage as well as at three other colleges in the area) led her to begin her plan to take language beyond the classroom by having her students perform in the language they were studying. The enthusiasm of her students was exciting and her first production took place in the college's Egner Chapel to a standing room only crowd. The stage was then set for future productions and more and more practice of the language through memorization of the lines as well as the learning of gestures, intonation and near-perfect pronunciation. It has been DeBellis's goal to make the study of foreign languages as enjoyable for her students as it has been for her.
