Vialla Hartfield-Méndez
Director of Engaged Learning
Vialla Hartfield-Méndez has served as Director of Engaged Learning at Emory since 2009, first in the Center for Community Partnerships, and currently in the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence. As Professor of Pedagogy in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, where she continues to teach, Vialla has developed robust partnerships with the Latino/Hispanic community and created courses and course components that integrate community engagement into the curriculum. She is Senior Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics, previously directed the Emory Scholars Program, led Emory's strategic Community Engaged Learning Initiative, and has established a national reputation in community engaged pedagogy, especially through her leadership of Emory’s hosting of the 2014 conference of Imagining America and her close collaboration with the Cultural Agents Initiativeand Pre-Textsat Harvard University.
Vialla holds a PhD and MA in Hispanic literature and culture from the University of Virginia and a BA from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is the author of Woman and the Infinite: Epiphanic Moments in Pedro Salinas's Art(Bucknell UP), and numerous articles on Hispanic literature and culture, campus-community engagement, curriculum design, and faculty governance.