For Dr. Veena Carlson, a month-long student exchange trip to Italy as a teenager sparked an interest that eventually launched her career. Today, Carlson is in her 30th year teaching Italian at Dominican University. However, when she first traveled to Italy in 1983, she didn’t speak a word of Italian. Carlson grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where her parents settled after immigrating to the United States from India in 1965. Although she doesn’t have Italian roots, languages have fascinated her from a young age. “I was always interested in languages,” Carlson says. “Because my parents were immigrants from India, I …

After nearly two decades in the classroom, Laura Calo still speaks about teaching with the same enthusiasm she had as a child pretending to run her own classroom in Italy. Her journey from playing make believe in a small Pugliese town to leading classes in Italian and Spanish in a Chicago suburb has been shaped by the forces of immigration and culture, and a lifelong passion for education. Calo was born in Chicago, but when she was only a year and a half old, her family moved back to their hometown of Mola di Bari. She spent the next nine …

  Shawna Hennessey has been an Italian instructor at Fenwick High School for 19 years. Affectionately referred to as “Prof” by her students, she teaches with genuine enthusiasm and commitment. But if you had asked her two decades ago where she’d be today, she never would have imagined the role she’s come to love so deeply. Hennessey was born in Minneapolis but grew up in Western Springs, a southwest suburb of Chicago. Though her father is mostly of Irish descent, her mother traces her roots to Amaseno, a small town in the Lazio region of Italy. Hennessey’s maternal grandparents immigrated …