Posted on July 8, 2002 at 1:30 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Sheri Spaine Long, Ph.D., has been named interim chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

Long’s appointment will be effective August 12. She will succeed Professor Dellita Martin-Ogunsola, Ph.D., who will return to teaching and research.

Long, an associate professor, has taught at UAB since 1992. Her research interests are Madrid as a literary construct in the contemporary Spanish novel, content-based language instruction and foreign language policy and the profession. In 2000 she was academic director for the Honors Semester in Spain sponsored by the National Collegiate Honors Council, Universidad de Alcalá and UAB.

She received the 1999 Outstanding Foreign Language Teacher Award: Post-Secondary from the Southern Conference on Language Teaching and the 2000 Outstanding Foreign Language Teaching Award: Post-Secondary from the Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers. She recently received the 2002 President’s Excellence in Teaching Award from UAB.

Long earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish from the University of Iowa in 1980 and 1983 respectively, and her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1990.