On a cool autumn Friday afternoon, a mélange of UVM students and faculty members gathered in Waterman 427 to see four familiar faces from years past.
The School of World Languages and Cultures (SWLC) Alumni Panel on October 2nd, 2026 was made up of four UVM graduates: Claire Moretti (’16), Haley Brazier (’18), Addie Beach (’19), and Emma DeLuca (’20). Each former student majored in a subject within the SWLC--some before the school was even formed or named. During this panel. these alumni painted a picture of how majoring in a subject within the SWLC prepared them for their lives post-graduation.
The first speaker was Brazier, a double major in French and Anthropology. After graduation, she participated in the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF), in Albertville, France. The knowledge of the French language she accumulated in her years at UVM were solidified during this experience. "I think by the end of [the TAPIF program], I was pretty much fluent,” said Brazier.
Brazier then worked with immigrants, many of whom she was better able to connect with due to her fluency in French, as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) at the city of Portland, Maine's Office of Economic Opportunity. Brazier then found her calling in family law and currently works at Maine’s legal aid organization, where she provides free representation to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
She attributes a large part of her career trajectory to her time at UVM majoring in French. “My French has been invaluable in this whole process because it... allowed me to immediately connect with people,” said Brazier. "I think [my bilingualism] does kind of give me a level up because I have this skill that no one else has and that others have relied on.”
The next speaker was Emma DeLuca, who graduated UVM in 2020 with a degree in German and Linguistics. Her career path began at UVM with her honors thesis, translating a novel into German. After graduation DeLuca attended the Middlebury Institute of International Studies to obtain her master’s degree in German Translation and Interpretation. Now, DeLuca primarily works as a translator for DeepL.
Describing her work, DeLuca said, “It's like machine translation, but I am the human behind it." When she was later asked to elaborate on the need for humans in translation, she added, “There's never just one translation...an AI is going to say, here, I have this bank of words that I can use to translate these words. But a human can say, I know so much more than just what these words mean--I know all of the contexts.”
Her time at UVM continued her love for language. “I just love being a part of the language community...it was something that's been so important to me to continue pursuing that passion,” said DeLuca.
The third alum to speak was Addie Beach, Linguistics and English major with a concentration in Sociolinguistics who graduated in 2019. Addie is a technical content writer in New York City, which means they break down complex technical topics into approachable content that the layperson can understand. They currently work for a cloud-monitoring software company, and their job is to explain what the company is and does in the form of educational material.
During their time at UVM, they assisted with research using corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to analyze aspects of language use on social media. Beach described themself as a “pragmatics nerd” and said that experience was very important when pursuing internships and their current career after graduation.
The final speaker was Claire Moretti, who graduated in 2016 with degrees in Spanish and English. After graduation, she taught English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) at St. Michael’s College and then pursued a Master of Law in Corporate Compliance and Ethics at Fordham University. She has spent the majority of her career working in research compliance, and more recently in biosafety compliance.
While this field seems very different than what she studied at UVM, Moretti said her boss hired her specifically because she was a liberal arts major. “We're creative, we're problem solvers. Especially in compliance, my job is to find ways to say yes,” said Moretti. Her Spanish major also helps her in her current field. "The whole point about having Spanish as a major is that it was all about storytelling and how do you get across the message that you're trying to send. How do you make something resonate and be memorable and stick with these researchers so that they are making good choices?"
Through their discussion of their post-bachelor's years, each alum showed students and faculty the immense impact that majoring within the SWLC has had on their lives.