Staff
About our Staff
Miriam Palacio is CHICLE’s Program Director.
She is the person you are most likely to communicate with in the office. Miriam is married to Enrique Palacio and ran a Mexican handicrafts import business for 18 years. She loves Mexican arts and crafts. She has an MA in English, has taught ESL in New York, Chicago, Mobile, and Mexico City. She volunteers at the animal shelter and for hospice.
Jane Stein is CHICLE’s Business Director and computer guru.
She has a doctorate in Public Health from UNC where she has taught research methods and seminars in international health. Jane has worked as a research consultant in Africa, Asia, Mexico, and Central America. She is on the board of the Institute for Southern Studies and volunteers at Piedmont Health Services.
Sharon Mújica has recently retired after many years as Outreach Director of Latin American Studies at UNC-CH.
She grew up in Chapel Hill and lived in Mexico for 20 years where she taught English and translated for the Office of the President. Sharon also has a passion for Mexican art and Latin American literature and cinema. She created and organized the Latin American film festival held each November at local universities and still manages UNC's Mayan language program.
Perla Saitz is CHICLE’s Program Coordinator.
Perla is from Mexico City where she taught both English and Spanish. She has taught at CHICLE since we opened in 1999 and, with Craig Snyder, developed our new curriculum. She hires and coordinates our teachers, which is, as they say, a little like herding cats. Perla also translates, manages translations, and develops our intensive and profession-specific materials. She is also a perfectionist
Alicia Vila Tornero is our Children's Program Coordinator.
While we certainly hated to see Ashley Yoder leave for graduate school in New Mexico, we are very pleased to have Alicia now leading the program. Alicia Vila teaches both Spanish and French at CHICLE. A native of Barcelona, Spain, she has taught Spanish,French, and German in the Chapel Hill area since 1994. Her students have ranged from children as young as 2 to high school students and even teachers studying abroad. She has taught in France and Spain and holds a K-12 teaching license. Alicia takes her cues from the Montessori philosophy and enjoys teaching children through songs, stories, and poetry. She is raising two bilingual sons in addition to performing and teaching Flamenco with the group Flamenco Carolina.
Sue Mathias teaches ESL and occasionally Japanese.
She has been passionate about studying foreign language and language learning since her first study abroad experience (in Japan) as an undergraduate. She has since earned graduate degrees (M.A. TESL and M.Ed.) from Penn State University in Teaching ESL and Foreign Language Education. She loves her children dearly and cannot wait until they are old enough for full-day school, so she can return to being a student in the foreign language classroom more frequently! It turns out that in a previous life Sue was an auditor, so she has been drafted to help us with our accounting.
Pilar Lotero Peters comes from Bogotá, Colombia where she worked for Berlitz teaching Spanish and English for 14 years.
She is CHICLE’s most experienced teacher and a strict taskmaster whose students always request that she continue to be their teacher. Pilar has worked at CHICLE since 2000. She is our resident artist and her art is on display in our offices.
Temis Arzate teaches Spanish at CHICLE.
She is from Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, where she taught intensive Spanish courses at Cemanahuac Educational Community for over 10 years. She recently moved to North Carolina, and enjoys teaching similar types of Spanish classes at CHICLE.
Javier Cid has been with CHICLE for a long time.
He is a very experienced teacher who is also originally from Mexico City. He teaches in Raleigh, is in a graduate program at NC State, and has two very active bilingual children. Javier's wife, Lisa, teaches at NC Central.
Ricardo Huaman is from Los Angeles, California and teaches both Spanish and English at CHICLE.
He is currently in his final year of the PhD program in Romance Languages and Literatures at UNC Chapel Hill where he is specializing in medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature. Ricardo received his master’s degree in Spanish at Duke University. When asked which team he roots for when Duke and UNC play, he answers “UCLA,” his alma mater, where he majored in Spanish, Italian and French..
Bernard Luscans teaches some of our French classes.
He is a native of Toulouse. Bernard finished his doctoral studies in UNC’s Romance Languages department, focusing on 21st century French novels. He now teaches at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh. He has coordinated our French program since its inception and developed courses in history, film, and current events. He has a group of very loyal students.
Sophie Monnet is another of our expert and experienced French teachers.
She and her husband Pierre both teach French for us.
Barbara Roeder is a native of Bavaria, Germany.
She received her B.A. in Language Education from Julius-Maximilian-Universitaet Wuerzburg. Barb came to North Carolina in 1987 with a scholarship to Davidson College, and also has a M.A. from Appalachian State University. She has lived and taught in this area for more than 20 years. She really enjoys showing her students that German grammar is not as bad as its reputation!
Vaneep Sandhu teaches English and Hindi.
She is from Punjab, India. She teaches at CHICLE and at Durham Tech and is a graduate student in Intercultural Relations. She is also a multicultural trainer. She is a busy person. Vaneep has lived in North Carolina since 1989 and taught at CHICLE since 2002.
Susan Soranno has developed a French language and culture curriculum centered around film for CHICLE.
She was an exchange student to France with the American Friends Service Committee, and later obtained a degree in French from the Université de Picardie, where she taught American Studies for several years. She also holds degrees in French from Smith and UC Berkeley. Since being at CHICLE, she .
Christine Wai is our one and only Karen teacher, whom we are very lucky to have found.
Christine came to the area when she was nine years old with her parents, coming from a Thai refugee camp. Christine graduated from UNC-CH with a degree in biology and works in a UNC medical lab when she's not teaching for us. She also does a lot of work with the local Karen and Burmese community.
Christian Yen is from Peru originally and has lived in the U.S. for seven years.
Although he studied law at the Catholic University of Peru, teaching is his passion. He presently works as a medical interpreter of the Hispanic community in the Triangle. He has been working with us at CHICLE for two years.
We have about fifteen to twenty additional teachers at any given time. All of our teachers have teaching experience and are trained to use our materials. Most of our teachers are native speakers. Those who are not have lived in a country where the language they teach is spoken and are completely bilingual.