Jessica Clark —Portuguese and Communications Disorders Double Major
Jessica Clark was raised in a military family, so she grew up in several different states on the east coast including Connecticut, North Carolina, and Georgia. She also spent nine years living in Germany, giving her the opportunity to visit many European countries and experience various cultures. Her nomadic childhood has instilled in her a love for traveling and adventure. She enjoys activities that take her outside of the house like running and hiking. She also loves leaving the house metaphorically through immersing herself in the world of history and books. After serving a mission in Cape Verde, Jessica fell in love with the Portuguese language and currently tutors missionaries learning Portuguese at the Missionary Training Center. She is a senior at BYU and plans to start a master’s program in Speech Pathology next year. Jessica hopes that her continuing education will provide her with opportunities to help children with language disorders, especially those who were raised in a bilingual home. Her biggest dream is to become involved with humanitarian efforts that aim to improve the quality of life of children in third world countries through supplying resources and improving their quality of education.
Kim Hansen — English Major, Editing & International Development Double Minor
Kim Hansen is a senior at BYU majoring in English and minoring in both editing and international development. She grew up in Colorado and then moved to Washington state her freshman year of high school. In high school, she cultivated her love of literature and discovered her interest in global development as she worked on the youth board for the African Promise Foundation. She studied for one semester at BYU before leaving to serve a Spanish-speaking mission among the corn fields of the Midwest. Working with immigrants from all over the world as a missionary heightened Kim’s interest in international development, particularly in education, women’s rights, and women’s health. Upon returning home, she realized these passions blended well with her literary interests, as she’s always understood literature to be a great humanizer. At BYU, she’s enjoyed cheering loud and proud at football games, presenting on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Toni Morrison’s A Mercy at the 2022 English Symposium, and mentoring other writers while working as a writing consultant at the Research and Writing Center. When she isn’t busy enjoying a good piece of classic literature, Kim loves to experiment with different hobbies (most recently longboarding), play piano, explore new places at home and abroad, and drink dirty soda. In the future, she hopes to teach English in Latin America, publish a novel, and further explore her literary interests at graduate school.
Shannel Morin — French Education Major
Shannel Morin is a senior at BYU who was born and raised in Québec, Canada. She grew up skating the Rideau Canal and enjoying its finest dessert; the beavertail. She was thrilled to leave the cold winter behind for a season in order to serve a mission in slightly warmer Washington DC. After changing her major a couple times, Shannel now studies French Teaching as a major and Dual Language Immersion as a minor, and enjoys developing her teaching skills here at BYU as she currently teaches French 201 and tutors in the French writing lab. BYU has offered Shannel many opportunities, including interning and working for two years at a start-up, language-learning company in Salt Lake where she managed a team of French speakers on the translation of movie transcripts. Her newest goal is learning Spanish as a third language, as her husband comes from Mexico. The two enjoy sharing their languages with each other and plan to speak all three in their family.
Kaitlin Thiriot — Spanish Translation Major
Kaitlyn Thiriot grew up in a military family and had the pleasure of living in many places, mostly on the east coast, such as North Carolina, New York, and Maryland. She is the oldest of four siblings and loves to spend time with her family. She loves to read and write, and she has been playing violin since a very young age. She also loves to travel; her skills as a violinist have allowed her to represent the United States at various international folk festivals with the group Clog America in places such as Finland, Denmark, Russia, and Turkey. She also served a mission in Quito, Ecuador, and found a strong love for the people and culture she encountered there. Upon returning to BYU, she found a mixture of two of her passions, writing and language, in Spanish translation. She is honored to have the responsibility to break down the language barrier and allow different cultures to connect through translating and interpreting. She was recently married, and is looking forward to beginning a family with her husband.
Isaac Richards — Humanities Center Intern
Isaac James Richards is the 2022-2023 BYU Humanities Center intern. He is currently a graduate student in BYU’s English M.A. program, emphasizing in rhetoric and composition. He is a Kennedy Center Student Fellow, a Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Student Award recipient, and participated on the Huqoq Excavation Project this summer. He has also worked as a research assistant for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and a tutor and student administrator at the BYU Research and Writing Center. His work appeared in The Dangling Modifier, Americana, Progressions, and The Journal for the History of Rhetoric. His research interests involve rhetoric, religion, memory, and their intersections, especially in international contexts like India and the Middle East.