Chiara Montera holds an MA in Italian from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA in History and Religious Studies from Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, and a certification for teaching Italian as a Second Language from the Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy. She obtained a Doctorate in Education (EdD) in 2021 at Pitt's School of Education. Her dissertation Employing a Genre-based Approach to Teach Written Communication in Italian as a Foreign Language explores the use of a Genre-Based Approach applied to writing presentational communication in intermediate classes of Italian. In 2022 Chiara began a collaboration with prof. Alberta Gatti (CUNY, The Graduate Center) and became the project coordinator for the Center for Integrated Language Communities (CILC), a federally funded program which focuses on the teaching and learning of languages other than English, with a special focus on community colleges and minority serving institutions.
In addition to writing pedagogy, Chiara is interested in FL pedagogy, the use of literature and history in FL instruction, and the creation of digital open education resources (OER) for the students in the Italian program. She also coordinates the Italian conversation club, the Tavola Italiana.