Professor

“Invitamos a todos los estudiantes latinos a aprovechar las oportunidades maravillosas en las ciencias ofrecidas aquí en Santa Monica College.”

There’s that magic moment when the ‘lightbulb’ goes on. For a young Latina student, the moment came recently in Maria Dell’s Human Anatomy class. “I had a student who just wasn’t understanding one of the internal organs we were talking about, so I gave her the Spanish name. ‘Oh my God! That’s what it is!’ she said” recalls Maria with a laugh. “And I hope a lot more moments of epiphany like that will happen as more Latino students come into the sciences at SMC.”

A native Puerto Rican, bilingual, Hispanic, and a woman, Maria certainly has a lot of skills and attributes that allow her to reach out to the community. “I want to not only give students an excellent education,” she says. “I also want to be a very positive role model. There aren’t many Hispanic women yet who have achieved a PhD in Anatomy, and I’m already getting great responses from my SMC students. Two girls from one of my classes came to me and said, ‘Oh, Dr. Dell, we are so proud of you. We didn’t want to study science, but then we found out about you, and now we’re studying hard!’ When I hear things like that,” recounts Maria, “it makes me all the more determined.”

Maria says that “one of the strongest things at work at this college is the closeness between teachers and students. Of course, I want people to be studious and hard-working,” she says. “But I also want them to feel at ease and to know that whenever they need to talk, I’ll be there.”

SMC Human Anatomy Professor Maria Dell began full-time at SMC in Fall ’99. Welcome!

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