Faculty

Judith Villanueva Chavez

Ph.D., Spanish, University of California, Irvine, 2009
M.A., Spanish, University of California, Irvine, 2005
B.A., Philosophy and Spanish, University of Texas at El Paso, 2003

I have teaching fulltime at Highline since 2017.

I have twenty two years of experience teaching at various colleges around the country, including Bellevue, Seattle Central, South Seattle, the University of Washington and the University of California, Irvine. I have taught all levels of Spanish: everything from introductory language courses to Mexican and Southern Cone literature, with composition, conversation, culture, critical theory, and literary analysis in between.

I am a literary scholar by training. I am proud of having attended community colleges in both California and Texas because that’s where my academic journey began. My research focuses on the areas of post-dictatorship poetry in the Southern Cone and post-revolutionary Mexican fiction and poetry.

I have spent much of my life as a student of other languages such as English, French and Portuguese. I am Mexican, so Spanish is my native language.

Garrett Bose

I am Garrett Bose, a Deaf American Sign Language professor. I have 10 years of experience teaching in higher education and have been teaching at Highline since Fall 2020. I earned my BA in Digital Arts and my MA in Sign Language Education from Gallaudet University, an institution centered on sign language.

I am passionate about innovating course materials to help my students learn more efficiently. In my free time, I love creating digital art performances in sign language and taking my dog for walks twice a day.

Reiko Foster

Reiko Foster, originally from Tokyo, has been teaching at Highline College since 2017. What she loves most about teaching is personal interactions with students with diverse backgrounds, who inspire her to bring into class fresh perspectives as well as real-life Japanese from anime, manga, music, and pop culture.

She graduated from Jochi (Sophia) University in Tokyo, and earned a Master’s degree in Communication at the University of Washington.

Over the years, she has taught Japanese and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) in the U.S. and in Japan including her alma mater, while dipping into the international corporate world as an advisor, interpreter, lecturer, and consultant.

She is passionate about learning foreign languages herself (currently focusing on Vietnamese and Korean), even with the advent of AI. She dreams of visiting more places around the world, while getting glimpses into lifestyles in different societies through dramas, shows, music, cuisines, and travel vlogs.