Florencia G. Henshaw has a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she is now the Director of Advanced Spanish. She has taught 19 different undergraduate and graduate courses, and she has designed 8 online courses, including a section of Spanish Composition for Heritage Learners. Dr. Henshaw has published and presented nationally and internationally on technology integration, heritage language instruction, and research-based pedagogical practices, and she has been an invited speaker at prominent institutions, including Harvard and Yale, among many others. Dr. Henshaw is a certified ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tester, an AP Spanish Language & Culture reader, an AAPPL rater, the author of two Spanish textbooks, an Editorial Board member of FLTMAG (an online magazine on technology integration in language teaching and learning), a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), the President of the Downstate Illinois Chapter of AATSP, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Dr. Henshaw is as passionate about helping students develop communicative ability in the target language, as she is about helping teachers make the connection between what we know and what we do. To that end, she launched a YouTube channel and podcast called "Unpacking Language Pedagogy," where she summarizes and discusses research articles, activities, terms, and various topics related to language teaching. Furthermore, her new co-authored book, "Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory goes to the Classroom," aims to help educators visualize how to put principles into action.

Dr. Henshaw has received a number of awards, including the Excellence in Language Instruction Award within the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, the Academic Professional Award within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Sheppard Memorial Award, conferred by the International Association for Language Learning Technology, the ACTFL/Cengage/IALLT Postsecondary Award for Excellence in World Language Instruction Using Technology, the ACTFL/CALICO Award for Excellence in Online Language Teaching, and two highly-competitive campus awards at the University of Illinois: the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence Award and the Campus Award for Excellence in Online & Distance Teaching.