UGA's Rodrigues earns national education award

University of Georgia faculty member Cecília Rodrigues has been awarded the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) 2025 Excellence in Language Education Award. 

The CLASP Excellence in Language Education Award recognizes excellence in Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) spoken in Latin America and the Caribbean, including language instruction, pedagogical success, curriculum development, and efforts to promote, preserve, and revitalize LCTLs in the U.S. and abroad. The focus of the award alternates between Portuguese language and Indigenous and Creole languages. 

Rodrigues, associate professor of Portuguese in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of Romance Languages, serves as curriculum coordinator of the UGA Portuguese Flagship Program. In twenty years of dedication to Portuguese language education—at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Georgia—she has been a tireless innovator in teaching methods and mentor of students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

The prize this year recognized exceptional leadership in Portuguese language instruction, pedagogy, curriculum development, and the promotion of the study of this language in the US. The competition was open to professors and instructors of Portuguese at all ranks and levels at over thirty universities. The award notification commended Rodrigues for her success in integrating Brazilian culture into the classroom through curricular interventions and virtual collaborations, noting the importance of Rodrigues’s work in expanding the Portuguese language program at the University of Georgia, as well as her leadership as the president of the American Portuguese Studies Association.