Nick Ott, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2024), is an incoming Assistant Professor of German Studies who serves as the Language Program Director at the University of Arizona. Prior to this role, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah and was affiliated with the Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC). Dr. Ott’s research is situated within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and focuses on speech accommodation, the multilingual identity, and social justice-oriented pedagogy. His work has appeared in Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, and other venues. As a teacher, Dr. Ott actively integrates innovative approaches to teaching German, including AI- and virtual reality-enhanced instruction, multiliteracies pedagogy, and arts-based methods. At various points in his career, he has taught German, Spanish, and English as a second or foreign language at the secondary and/or postsecondary levels in the United States, Germany, and Costa Rica. Drawing on his experience as a Fulbright grantee and as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, Dr. Ott is particularly interested in supporting L2 learners’ transition from the classroom into real-world immersion environments.