My name is Gabriel (Gabi) Guillén, and I am a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) at Monterey, California. I also actively partner and consult with leading publishers, edtech companies, and educational institutions such as McGraw Hill, Jiveworld, and the College Board.
At MIIS, I have designed and taught courses across five different modalities: in person, blended, online synchronous, online asynchronous, and experiential learning in Colombia and Salinas, California. My teaching spans three areas of specialization: TESOL and Teaching Foreign Language (TFL), Intercultural Competence (ICC), and Language Studies (LS). I also taught and co-taught courses in the Environmental Policy and Management (EPGM) and Translation & Interpretation (T&I) programs.
Some of my recent courses include Pedagogical Grammar in Foreign Language Teaching, Language Analysis (TESOL/TFL); Exploring Sustainable Agriculture Transitions in Rural Colombia (EPGM); Communication in Multicultural Settings, Spanish in the Community, Spanish in the Global Community (ICC); Topics in Latin American Politics, Spanish Digital Projects, Spanish Talks for Social Change, Spanish Social Entrepreneurship, Spanish Fake News & Persuasion, Spanish Current Events, and Communication & Society (LS); and Spanish Preparation for Translation & Interpretation (T&I).
Recent projects include:
- Secured a 5-year grant from the Transportation Agency of Monterey County to create the TAMC Fellowship at the Middlebury Institute (2024).
- Led the creation of an OER Spanish Textbook for the Middlebury Language Schools, Sabor y Amor (2024).
- Participated as a fellow in the Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL) Summer Institute at the University of Hawaiʻi and incorporated PBLL (2023) into Team Tandem, our intercultural exchange program in Salinas (2015-present).
- Developed the Intercultural Communicative Competence curriculum for all McGraw Hill Spanish titles (2022).
- Created the infographic 37 Years of Computer-Assisted Language Learning Research: Is CALL for ALL? as a capstone project for a data analytics bootcamp
(2021). - Launched a school site and provided pedagogical advice for Jiveworld, the startup behind the Spanish app Lupa (2020).
- Led the creation of a language specialization for professional purposes at the Middlebury Institute for six languages (2020).
- Co-authored the third edition of the book Brave New Digital Classroom with Robert Blake, an overview on key concepts and challenges of teaching and learning languages with technology, with a new focus on social CALL (2020).
I completed my PhD at the University of California, Davis, where I developed some of the first online and hybrid Spanish courses in the UC system and wrote a dissertation on virtual exchanges.
In a previous life I was an AECID lecturer, a study abroad coordinator, a web developer, an instructional designer, and a journalist. I have published more than 300 articles in the Spanish media and founded the first community of blogs dedicated to the interchange of languages, which I built using Drupal and hosted on my own server (2007).
