Success Story

Engineer Patty Tovar Gomez was 10 years into a successful corporate career track in the biomedical industry when she decided to take the next logical step: She dropped it all to teach Spanish to high schoolers. Today, the mother of three holds an M.S. degree in Spanish Language Education from NSU’s Abraham Fischler College of Education, she is excelling in her new career, and she is happier than ever.

“I fell in love with teaching,” said Gomez, who joined Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale as a world languages teacher in 2014. She teaches advanced Spanish classes to juniors and seniors and serves as faculty advisor to the school yearbook.

A native of Venezuela, Gomez earned a five-year degree in engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela. Her first job was teaching materials science at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela.

In 1997, she moved to the U.S. and worked in the corporate and biomedical field for 10 years before moving to South Florida with her family. Through her children, she shifted her focus to education.

“At the end of my first year at Pine Crest, they asked me if I would like to stay. I knew it was a turning point in my career. I absolutely loved the experience and I wanted to get a formal education in the field of linguistics and teaching Spanish.

“I looked around and without a doubt NSU’s program was exactly what I was looking for,” Gomez said. “It was designed for professionals from other fields who had experience in education but who wanted to foster or strengthen their careers as Spanish educators. It was a perfect fit. It was very exciting for me.”

Gomez founded a nonprofit called The Enrichment Circle, and started a monthly, non-profit newspaper called The Circle Gazette, designed to engage children in writing. She also taught creative writing workshops for K-12 students at Broward County North West Regional Library.

“I created educational opportunities through my non-profit and one of the first classes I offered was a program designed by the Museum of Science in Boston called Engineering is Elementary, which teaches complex engineering concepts to elementary school children through stories. My experience with that curriculum highlighted for me the importance of literacy and communication in mastering any discipline…My interdisciplinary background definitely influences my style of teaching.”

At NSU, Gomez took classes online while teaching full-time.

“Having the flexibility was perfect,” she said. “Being in the classroom every day and taking classes was a great combination. It reinforced and validated many things I was doing intuitively.

“One of my goals was to [create] advancement opportunities at my work place,” said Gomez, who was chosen to participate in GOAL (Growing Our Aspiring Leaders), a faculty/leadership development program.

“Now I want to pursue a doctorate. Two years ago, I might have said, ‘I don’t see a way to do that.’ My experience at NSU gave me the confidence and opportunity to discover that I can do it.

“For me, the master’s degree in Spanish Language Education consolidates a transition in the making for the past 10 years,” said Gomez, whose husband and children were there on graduation day, June 2017.

“I’m 45 years old and I’m walking up to the stage to get a diploma and my kids were right there watching. It was a wonderful experience. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”