The Office of Global Affairs is excited to celebrate Vanessa de Veritch Woodside for our March 2025 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Vanessa de Veritch Woodside, PhD, is Associate Professor of Spanish Language and Cultures, Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and Executive Director of the Office of Global Affairs at UW Tacoma. Dr. Vanessa de Veritch Woodside describes her experience advancing global learning opportunities for students as a faculty member and as an administrative leader, advocating for Collaborative Online International Learning and researching the lived experiences of immigrants, refugees and their families.
Dr. Vanessa de Veritch Woodside obtained a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese and a MA in Spanish/Hispanic Literature from the University of New Mexico and a BA in Spanish from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her knowledge and expertise includes transnational migration, the subversive power of voice and storytelling in Latine and borderlands literature, community-engaged projects with local immigrant and refugee communities and the non-profits that serve them, and innovative pedagogical techniques for global and community-engaged learning.
I’m the granddaughter of Slavic, Russian Jewish, and Norwegian immigrants, and was born and raised in Southern California, where the use of Spanish alongside English was commonplace. When I began to learn Spanish in high school, I never imagined I would ultimately pursue a career in the field! As an undergraduate at the University of California Santa Barbara, I explored a variety of fields, but after studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain, decided to pursue Spanish, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing Sciences. Upon graduation, I began a joint PhD program that combined neuroscience and cognitive linguistics at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University, focusing on the neurological basis for bilingual language processing and how to best support bilingual youth diagnosed with language and communicative disorders. As fascinating as the topics were, I wasn’t entirely sure that was the best path forward for me. When the opportunity to travel the world while following a passion of mine presented itself, I temporarily stepped away from academia to perform in Broadway-style shows as a dancer on Holland America Line cruise ships. One six-month contract became another… and then others, and I discovered how much I loved learning more about the cultures and histories of Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Colombia while also honing my Spanish skills by communicating with locals in those regions. When I felt pulled to return to grad school, I decided this time to follow my passion for the Spanish language, literature, and their use within the context of social justice. I completed my MA in Spanish/Hispanic Literature and my PhD in Spanish and Portuguese with a focus on Latinx/Chicanx Literature at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
When I initially applied for a faculty position at UW Tacoma, I was attracted by its commitment to interdisciplinarity and its role as an urban-serving university. Since my arrival in 2012, I’ve had amazing opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary scholarly research and teaching, and to engage in service at the university and community levels that aligns with, and contributes to, UWT’s pillars of access, diversity, innovation, community, and excellence. After a decade as a faculty member, I was eager to deepen this work with leadership opportunities that leverage my administrative experience, collaborative relationships across and beyond campus, and the inherent importance of DEI in scholarship and higher education to work alongside colleagues to develop positive systemic change, I graciously accepted the opportunity to serve as the inaugural School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion in December 2022. When I was initially asked to step into the role of Interim Executive Director of the Office of Global Affairs in May 2023 as well, my immediate reaction was one of trepidation. Upon further reflection, though, I embraced the exciting potential of the natural convergence of my passions and professional experiences related to global learning and high-impact practices; the study of languages, literatures, and cultures; community-engaged work with local immigrants, refugees, and their families; and equity-minded teaching, research, service, and leadership for social justice. I’m delighted that, as of December 2023, I have served as the Executive Director of our UWT Office of Global Affairs on a more permanent basis.
In my dissertation research, I analyzed the progression of literary representations that mirror the progressively intensified criminalization of Mexican and Central American women and child migrants over time, and the ensuing impact on gendered norms. In the years since then, I’ve completed various projects focusing both on the lived experiences of immigrants, refugees, and their families, as well as literary, theatrical, musical, and cinematographic representations of these. I received the 2022 International Latino Book Awards Silver Medal and the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Judy Ewell Award for my 2020 monograph, Ripped Apart: Unsettling Transnational Narratives. Grounded in theories of narrative empathy and the representation of trauma, Ripped Apart is an innovative and interdisciplinary analysis of Latina narratives of transnational migration that underscore the intersections of the physical, psychological, sociocultural, and legal/structural traumas endured by migrants and their families.
In collaboration with Dr. Rachel Hershberg and our undergrad RAs, we conducted publicly engaged work with partner organizations involving interviews with individuals recently released from detention in Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center (formally the Northwest Detention Center) and their family members, and documenting psychosocial effects of displacement, detention, and deportation on individuals affected by immigration. Analysis of emergent themes revealed the need to raise awareness of human rights violations, and our data enabled community partners to improve and expand their services and successfully obtain grants and donor funding. Our more recent work focuses on the experiences of UWT students who are DACA recipients and/or undocumented within the framework of intersectionality and phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST), which involves a more nuanced understanding of emergent identities based on students’ own interpretations of their vulnerabilities and supports as they cope with their experiences of interconnected systems of oppression due to their (or their family members’) immigration status.
More recently, I’ve expanded work on various community-based projects that intersect with my previous research on narratives of Latine migration and collaborations with local non-profits that serve local immigrant and refugee communities. In partnership with Communities for a Healthy Bay and La Resistencia, Dr. Robin Evans-Agnew (UWT School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership) and I have developed a community-based participatory action project that focuses on the intersections of environmental racism, immigrant justice, and climate change. I’m also at work collecting oral histories that document Latine community-organizing and community-building efforts to Tacoma and the South Sound from the years of the Chicano Movement (late 60s) to the present, partially funded by a 2023 UWT Founders Endowment Award.
Along with intellectual curiosity, relationship-building—with students, colleagues, and community partners alike—is at the core of all I do. As a leader, I strive to embody what Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon terms “equity-mindedness,” that is, “the perspective or mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners who call attention to patterns of inequity in student outcomes. These practitioners are willing to take personal and institutional responsibility for the success of their students, and critically reassess their own practices. It also requires that practitioners are race-conscious and aware of the social and historical context of exclusionary practices in American Higher Education” (HERS Equity-Minded Leadership Institute).
I recognize the importance of personal and cultural humility, the value of collaborative problem-solving, and making data-based and values-driven decisions.
Though I don’t teach much these days due to my administrative roles, I’ve had the opportunity to teach all levels of Spanish language courses as well as courses in Latin American and Latinx literature and cultural studies in both Spanish and English during my 12 years at UWT. While the content and format differ depending on the course, I typically want students to interrogate notions that they have assumed were standard. Ultimately, I want them to question what has framed their own experiences and understand what the experiences of others might be and why. Literature can be a highly effective way to open up a conversation about history that’s not generally taught in K-12 curriculum or even on college campuses. In my courses on immigration and transnational families, for example, I incorporate a variety of materials—from films, novels, and ethnographic works to podcasts, news stories, and interactive websites—to provide a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the topics at hand. The assignments in those courses go beyond the traditional academic assessment and focus on self-reflection and potential connections to their personal and professional aspirations.
My approach also centers relationships with students within and beyond the classroom and connecting them to opportunities to engage meaningfully abroad and with local Latine and Spanish-speaking communities. Most of my students have been from the South Sound region and many have themselves experienced the lack of access to resources like language interpretation in medical care, or inequities, whether it be in terms of public services, issues in school systems, or elsewhere. I strive to connect students with opportunities for community-engaged learning to effect positive change in our region and worldwide, with a focus on reciprocal and equitable relationships with community partners.
In a nutshell, my vision is to leverage my collaborative and equity-minded leadership to work with colleagues to expand our students’ access to global learning opportunities and to embrace a reparative international education framework that both honors the experiences, knowledges, and assets of our students and entails mindful, not extractive, engagement with local and global communities. I also look forward to working with our team and colleagues to build capacity to strategically support a growing international student population and create a more visible centralized infrastructure to support faculty and staff interested in pursuing international research/teaching, hosting visitors, or establishing formal institutional partnerships. Ultimately, my hope is that global learning (whether it be through COIL, local engagement with international communities, or abroad) will come to be seen not as an add-on, but an integral component of the university experience for all students.