Name:  Sarah Heiller

Hometown:  Boone, IA

Major(s) and graduation date Animal Science and Spanish, May 2020

Favorite ISU class? AN S 214L, Domestic Animal Anatomy and Physiology Lab.  I am a visual learner, so the weekly dissections in this class helped me visualize everything I was learning in my other animal science classes.  Seeing the anatomy while we learned about physiology made the science feel real; it was no longer just concepts I memorized out of a textbook.

Job Title & Company: Spanish Field Liaison, Partners for Production Agriculture

Major Job/Position Responsibilities:  As Spanish Field Liaison, my primary goal is to help people working with language barriers in swine production to be as effective as possible.  I work with producers and allied industry members to provide language education, translation, training, and cultural consultation services.  I also help internally with our company's HR and marketing. 

What you like most about your job/position?  My favorite part of my job is teaching Spanish to people in the swine industry to help them communicate with their Spanish-speaking coworkers. I always loved Spanish classes in high school and college, so this is the perfect way to combine that with my interest in swine production. 

With increasing shortages in domestic labor, more and more companies are hiring international employees, mainly from Spanish-speaking countries.  Out of necessity, many people in the industry have tried to learn Spanish with different online classes and apps, which are good resources for learning everyday Spanish.  But swine production is full of technical terminology and industry jargon that no traditional Spanish curriculum will cover.

It has been a lot of fun designing Spanish curriculums around specific job roles and teaching people exactly what they need to communicate for their position.  People in swine production don't have much downtime, so the challenge is to make the content as digestible as possible by focusing on key terms and phrases and not getting too caught up in grammar and structure. 

What advice would you give to current students pursuing a career in Agriculture and Life Sciences?  I would recommend students go out of their way to spend time abroad.  My summer internship in Costa Rica and semester in Spain were two of my most impactful college experiences.  The language immersion was a critical step in getting to the job I have today.  Traveling long-term is a unique and enjoyable experience.  You will never have as much time and resources available to help you do so after you graduate!