French professor Odile Mattiauda is far more than a language professor, but rather dedicated to lifelong learning. PHOTO CREDIT: uri.edu
Odile Mattiauda, French professor and the director of the International Engineering Program in French, has worked in many positions far beyond being a language professor.
She has taught communications courses in gender, gender society and gender and sexuality. However, her real gift and focus of her life was learning and working with languages. Her educational career involved learning three languages and self-teaching herself one.
“I took, I think, English and German,” Mattiauda said. “English in, I think, sixth grade, German in eighth grade. And then I took Spanish in high school and then I self taught myself Italian.”
As she was working on her undergraduate degree in two languages, she ended up getting involved in the founding of the French American School of Rhode Island located in Providence. While she has not been involved with the school in recent years, she was involved for the first three to four years of the school’s operations.
Her involvement made her very interested in the field of education. From there, she went to pursue a Ph.D. in education, which she and many people believed to be a late decision at the time.
“I got to work with RIC professors and URI professors in the field of education,” Mattiauda said. “I was [becoming] more and more interested in gender and language. Language had been my focus for many, many years, and my dissertation research was about the language of sexuality.”
Interacting with many professors at Rhode Island College (RIC) in the Gender and Women’s studies program there got her even more interested in the field, and it ultimately led to her being asked to teach a course in the program which she happily agreed to.
When teaching in this program for RIC, the Director of Sojourner House, Vanessa Volz, was searching for help. Mattiauda said that she had coffee with her and the rest is history.
The Sojourner House started out as a shelter for people who were exposed to violence, and now it has grown to be a caretaking house for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
“She said ‘oh, I need people on my board’ and that’s how I got on the board and I was on the board for like about 10 years,” Mattiauda said. “I started off with the secretary and then I was still pursuing my Ph.D.”
They also have a place/work unit that focuses on immigration too and of course have a team that deals with HIV and sexually trasmitted diseases.
While still completing her Ph.D., Mattiauda said that she didn’t have enough time to be the secretary of Sojourner House and be a parent all at the same time. Ultimately, she had to step down from the secretary position.
With doing all of this, Mattiauda also was a singer with the Chorus of East Providence.
“Well, I haven’t sung with them since COVID to be honest,” Mattiauda said. “I haven’t gone back, they restarted but I didn’t go back.I love all kinds of music and I was in the Chorus of East Providence during the COVID-19 crisis. I was with a choir called the stay at home chorus out of London.”
Hannah Rhoades, a fourth-year political science major, talked about having Mattiauda as a French professor in the spring 2022 semester.
Rhodes said Mattiauda was set on her students speaking all French, which was nerve wracking, but that the hands-on and very involved teaching style Mattiauda utilizes helped her make the transition in the classroom.
“She was very kind and very helpful, but definitely very big on everyone talking to each other all in French, which was a little nerve wracking, but she was just so helpful overall that after a while it became kind of like second nature and it wasn’t nerve racking to speak in class,” Rhoades said.
Professor Mattiauda has been able to juggle everything she has been a part of since she graduated from college. However, being a mother got in the way sometimes so she simply had to drop some things and focus on her family and her education to become a professor.