Monika Chavez was born and raised in Austria and studied German and history at the University of Vienna. While a Fulbright student in Santa Fe, N.M., she continued her education first at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque) and then at the University of Texas at Austin, where she specialized in Applied German Linguistics. In 1992, she joined the German Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her position has allowed her to develop and teach an extensive scope of courses in German language, linguistics, and applied linguistics, with a sizable number of graduate students in the department and related fields choosing applied linguistics/second language acquisition as their… area of specialization. She also co-directs the Ph.D. (major and minor) program in Second Language Acquisition.