Iva S. Youkilis is a Professor of Italian in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She has coordinated the elementary Italian language sequence and 300-level courses, administered and coordinated Placement Exams, served as a faculty liaison for the student-organized group Italo, worked as a faculty associate, facilitated a conversational hour during La Tavola Italiana, and participated enthusiastically in many extracurricular student-organized and community-based events. She has directed the Summer Language Institute in Italy. At Washington University, in an effort to encourage a greater sense of community among language-teaching faculty to share best practices and technology-inspired pedagogical advancements and to create more opportunities for information sharing, she collaborated with a colleague in another department to design and implement the annual Language Teaching Fair with the Center for Learning and Teaching. She is a board member of the Foreign Languages Association of Missouri (FLAM) conference and serves as an ACTFL mentor for Italian, an advisor to the Italian club Italian per Piacere, and is a participating member in many other Italian clubs in the St. Louis region. She received her MA in Italian Literature from the University of Virginia. Prior to coming to St. Louis, she taught Italian at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, at the Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan, and at a Community School for Foreigners in Milan, Italy.