Fourteen years ago, Dreano and Smith were enrolled in a conversational French course taught by Lara Lomicka Anderson in which USC students conversed in weekly video chats with French students. They also traveled to France to meet their language partners and hosted them for a reciprocal visit in Columbia.

Since then, Smith earned a Ph.D. in linguistics and became a French instructor at USC. Dreano moved to France shortly after graduating from USC in 2010 and has taught English as a second language there for 13 years.

“A year ago, I was able to teach the language exchange course with Dr. Anderson, which was a lot of fun,” says Dreano, who is on the faculty of the engineering and science college at the University of South Brittany in western France. “But then she joined the provost’s office and couldn’t continue it, so I was looking for another teaching partner.”

Lomicka, now USC’s vice provost for undergraduate affairs and dean of undergraduate studies, soon found a match for her former student — another former student.

“I saw Lesley Smith’s name on the roster for teaching French 210 this fall,” Lomicka says, “and I thought that would be the perfect connection — they both were in my class together years ago, and now they could actually work together.”

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