Professor De La Piedra earned his B.A. and M.A. in Spanish from the University of Missouri.

In the vast Spanish-speaking world, Professor De La Piedra has spent the most time in Ecuador, México and Perú.

Since Professor De La Piedra was a child, Spanish has been part of his life. At the age of nine he moved to Ecuador where his uncle "Tío Rodrigo" taught him the grammatical foundation of the language and basic vocabulary. As a college student he studied one year at La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. Beginning in 2018, he spent four years at SPC working as an Adjunct Spanish Professor, followed by a brief Acting Professorship before joining the college's faculty as a Full-time Spanish Professor in August 2022. The bedrock of his student-centered teaching style is the belief that Spanish is a beautiful language that is fun to share with others.

Professor De La Piedra's academic interests focus on Mexican history, culture and colloquial expression. In 2023 he published his first peer-reviewed article in SCOLT's (Southern Conference on Language Teaching) annual scholarly journal Dimensions.

Copy and paste the following URL to see Dimensions 2023, where Professor De La Piedra's article is chapter 3.

scolt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Dimensions2023.pdf

APA Reference:

De La Piedra, G. (2023). Word Analysis: Contemplating the word La Madre to develop an approach for the instruction of
        cultural perspectives. Dimensions, 58, 56-75.

Outside of academia, Professor De La Piedra enjoys spending time with his wife, two daughters and two dogs. His Maltese "Vito" is a CGC trained therapy dog that he and his daughters have taken to local nursing homes and schools. He also loves reading, fishing, yard work, Rays baseball and Kansas City Chiefs football.