Hicham Assaoui holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies and a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. He is a former Fulbright Exchange scholar in Arabic at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He has taught all levels of Arabic as well as co-taught courses on language acquisition and linguistics. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Arabic at the department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Virginia Military Institute. His research interests include Arabic language and culture, Arabic dialects, linguistics, pedagogy, second language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.