Dawn Smith-Sherwood is professor of Spanish in the Department of Language, Literature, and Writing.
She received her PhD in Spanish from the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY, Buffalo) in 2001.
At IUP, Smith-Sherwood teaches courses in Spanish language, literature, and culture at all levels.
In 2021, Smith-Sherwood published A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture (Vanderbilt University Press) with co-editors Debra Faszer-McMahon (Seton Hill University) and Victoria Ketz (LaSalle University). Additionally, she published six pieces (2019–25) on the use of the ACTFL Integrated Performance Assessment in second-language literature courses, four in collaboration with Mark Darhower (North Carolina State University).
To complement her language and literature teaching and scholarship, Smith-Sherwood developed a service and research interest in high-impact practices. She accompanied students abroad in Spain, on the Camino de Santiago (2011, 2016) and as director of the Valladolid program (2013–16). She served as a faculty liaison to the IUP Global Awareness Living-Learning Community (2006–21) and as a member of the Living-Learning Executive Team (2017–20). She participated in an Elon University Center for Engaged Learning research seminar (2018–20), undertaking team-based multi-institutional research on faculty needs in offering capstone experiences that resulted in three publications (2020–24).
Since 2022, she has served as director of Liberal Studies, and in 2025 became the inaugural director of First Learning Year (FLY).
During spring semester 2011, Smith-Sherwood enjoyed her first sabbatical and spent three months in Spain, residing with her family in the Poble Nou neighborhood of Barcelona and then walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, with a group of IUP students and Department of History colleague Caleb Finegan. In May 2016, she returned to the Camino de Santiago for an abbreviated, 200-mile pilgrimage beginning in Len with Finegan, Christine Baker (IUP History), and a group of 24 honors college students from across the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
Smith-Sherwood can be reached at smithshe@iup.edu.