Hometown: Warrensburg , NY ( Adirondack Mountains )
Majors: French, M.A. French ( Bowling Green State University ), PhD Francophone Studies ( University of Louisiana at Lafayette )
Activities: Women’s Resource Center , Chi Omega, stage manager for theater productions

Taryn, who is originally from the Adirondack Mountains, is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of French at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. At SLU, she majored in French and studied abroad with Dr. Joan Dargan in the France program her junior year. Her study abroad experience actually became a turning point in her career goals, “I chose to study French because I enjoyed it, but after my experience in Rouen, I realized that I wanted to become a French professor”.

She received her PhD in Francophone Studies from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in May of 2006 and wrote her dissertation on contemporary women writers in Quebec. Her career has been to teach and pass on French to others, especially while she was teaching in Lafayette, Louisiana. “It felt wonderful to give back to my Cajun and Creole students a part of their own heritage.”

Aside from speaking French, Taryn has set aside some time in order to learn German. She spent a month in Austria a few years ago in an intensive language course. It has become an "ongoing project".

“I think that learning French has been the most important thing I have ever done because it has opened doors to the Francophone world. Through this language, I have been able to meet people from many different cultures, and I have been able to see the world from a much broader perspective through these relationships and through literature. For me, the greatest value of a language lies in the relationships that are made through the language that can last a lifetime.”