Contact: Sonja DeVargas 505-439-3616 Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 505-277-5920

August 5, 2002 GERMAN TEACHER TAKES PART IN UNM SUMMER SCHOOL IN TAOS DeVargas talks with Dr. Dietmar Goldschnigg, a German Studies professor from the University of Graz, Austria. Alamogordo residents have, perhaps, grown accustomed to hearing German being spoken because of the nearby German Air Force Flying Training Center. Sonja DeVargas, a five-year German instructor at the Alamogordo branch of New Mexico State University, spent several weeks recently at Taos Ski Valley participating in the 27th Annual German Summer School. She heard more than a little German - the governing rule of the school is "Nur Deutsch!" Only German is spoken by the students and faculty of the school. The German Summer School, established and operated by the University of New Mexico's Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, provides students with the opportunity to practice the language in an immersion setting. And they learn much more - cultures, history and other subjects relevant in the German-speaking world from instructors who travel across the globe to New Mexico to share their love of the language and subject-area expertise. DeVargas, originally from Albuquerque, attended the summer school as an undergraduate and graduate student. "Students here experience the language - agonizing through the blood, sweat and tears of speaking nothing but German. It's an especially good transition for those who plan to go to Germany as foreign exchange students. Academically, the program is rigorous. Socially, it's a lot of fun," she says. DeVargas earned a bachelor's in fine arts in piano from UNM in 1993. As an undergraduate, she studied German. "I attended the summer school for the first time in 1991. It was a turning point for me in my education," she says. That year, she won the Lufthansa Prize for the best student at the summer school. She took a semester off from her studies and with the prized airline ticket traveled to Tübingen, in southwest Germany. After graduating, she decided to pursue a master's in German Studies. "Attending the summer school directed me into the MA program," says DeVargas. She credits Peter Pabisch, co-founder of the summer school and 30-year UNM faculty, with inspiring her to become a teacher and in helping her develop in her career. Attending this year encourages DeVargas toward further study. "I'm thinking perhaps about pursuing a PhD in German. I may pursue fulltime faculty status or perhaps use the degree to work in international business or in a foreign government," she says. Currently, however, she's busy teaching German 111 and 112 at NMSU-A. "I am the German department," she says. Since the campus doesn't have enough students studying German to keep DeVargas busy fulltime, she turned the tables by teaching English to the German airmen at the flying training center. "The Germans used to come in and go out in waves. I would teach English to the new arrivals. It's very different to teach English to German speakers than teach German to English speakers," she says. Now that the turnover at the flying training center occurs on a smaller scale, she's no longer teaching there. DeVargas says that she has a "love/hate relationship with the piano," but notes that learning music and a foreign language aren't so different. "I've applied what I've learned about music to learning German," she says. DeVargas is proud of her Hispanic heritage and says that as such, she brings a unique perspective to German Studies. "I am proud to have learned German in the desert," she says. # # #

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