Christian Aguiar has served as Assistant Professor of English at UDC Community College since the fall of 2017. A first-generation college student, his research interests include approaches to support first-gen and low-income (FLI) students in first-year composition, multimodal assessments, democratizing teaching practices, multi ethnic literatures, and second-language literacy. His research has been published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Faculty Focus, The Explicator, Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies and other publications. He has also had essays, short fiction and poetry featured in Ocean State Review, Maryland Literary Review, Pigeonholes, Poetry Virginia, Alimentum, Connections and other journals. He frequently delivers professional development workshops throughout the DMV and, often in collaboration with colleagues, presents at regional and national conferences in English, composition and teaching.
Christian holds an A.B. in political science from Brown University, an M.A. in English from Georgetown University, and is currently a doctoral student in education at Northeastern University. He holds a certificate in TESOL from the University of California Los Angeles, a certificate in effective teaching from the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), and credentials in online teaching, open educational resource development, and trauma-informed teaching. He has helped the community college’s writing program develop an OER-based curriculum that features zero textbook cost to students. His teaching and advising work at the college has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2020 John and Suanne Rouche Teaching Excellence Award from the League for Innovation in the Community College, the 2019 UDC Community College Faculty of the Year Award, and the 2021 UDC Beyond Student Success Award.
In addition to his work at UDC, he is academic director for the Summer College Prep Program at Georgetown University and a lecturer in the School of Continuing Studies. He has served on numerous advisory boards, including for Georgetown’s Summer College Immersion Program, an intensive 3-week summer program for soon-to-be first-gen college students from around the country; the D.C. State Title III Advisory Board, which helps guide implementation of ELL programs for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education; and Big Brothers of Rhode Island. His service to the discipline has included work supporting conferences with the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Working Class Studies Association, the Two-Year College English Association, and the NASPA First-Gen Student Success Conference. He also regularly presents on college readiness for D.C. non-profits.
