Liv Thygesen on Equitable Education at Empire State University

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – April 7, 2025) For the past year, Liv Thygesen has worked hard to develop disability services materials in Spanish in preparation for Empire State University’s new Spanish BBA. As a bilingual disability specialist for the Office of Accessibility Resources and Services (OARS), she serves the university’s Spanish-speaking student population by connecting them to necessary accommodations and resources that will support and enrich their learning.

Thygesen, a Greenwich native, comments, “It’s very rural,” about the area. Though Spanish speakers aren’t strongly present in the area, Thygesen’s dad strived for his children to grow up speaking more than one language: “When I was little, my dad took time to give us Spanish lessons. We had a pyramid on a piece of paper, and for each lesson, we would get a star. If we filled up the pyramid, we would get a prize,” she recounts. This eased Thygesen into the idea of bilingualism from an early age.

Having excelled in French classes throughout high school, Thygesen decided to enroll in Spanish classes as a sophomore and continued  testing out of beginner’s courses. At nineteen, she was a part-time college student when she decided to enlist in the Marines, where she frequently encountered Spanish in her duty stations. “Spanish was everywhere [in the military], and I knew enough that I could pass as a speaker without schooling,” she says. Thygesen recalls having the ‘noticias’—the news—on often while being stationed in San Diego, always seeking opportunities to further her knowledge and command of the Spanish language.

After serving in the Marines, Thygesen was GI Bill-eligible and earned her degree from the College of Saint Rose in just three years—a dual bachelor’s degree in Spanish and education. There, she was taught and mentored by two other members of Empire State University’s ‘bilingual team’: Linguist Claire Ziamandanis and Director of Spanish Language Programs Silvia Mejía. Under her advisor, Ziamandanis’s, guidance, Thygesen went on study abroad trips to Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. Supplemented by personal travel whenever she was able, Thygesen developed her Spanish skills through bursts of immersion.

Once she became a parent, she encouraged bilingualism in her own children’s upbringing: “I never let my two older kids listen to or watch English shows,” she says, “If they wanted to watch a cartoon, it had to be in Spanish, so they actually spoke Spanish going into kindergarten.” Starting to learn Spanish at an early age undoubtedly shaped her drive for language learning, which she brings to her family life, as much as she does to her work at Empire State University. She has been steadfast in her pursuit of language, remarking, “I taught high school French and Spanish, and while I was doing that and working full time—a single mom at home—I went to grad school full-time to get my master’s in English as a second language.”

She reflects on being brought onboard at Empire State University: “It was an honor when I got hired, and they said, ‘we’re going to be doing translations and building this program—we’re doing this.’ It’s awesome. I’m using all my degrees now and doing what I went to school for, for the first time,” Thygesen shares.

The Spanish BBA program is an initiative she feels is advancing equitability in higher education, particularly from her vantage point as bilingual disability specialist. “Language is not a barrier, if you don’t let it be,” Thygesen explains. “Just like with disability—we have the social model, which means society reshapes itself so that the disability is not framed as a problem.”

Language is the next logical area for development at Empire State University, given its mission of increasing access to higher education in New York state and beyond. Spanish speaking populations are steadily growing across the country, increasing the demand for Spanish language academic opportunities—a need that the Spanish BBA is designed to fill. “I hope this sets an example culturally, countrywide, that we can accommodate more languages than English,” Thygesen says.

Her work, like that of other bilingual employees at Empire State University, focuses on ensuring equitable access for Spanish-dominant students to the same materials and opportunities available to English-speaking students. Doing so evens out the terrain of higher education, with the aim of bolstering the academic success of each student by meeting individual needs. “To have something completely in Spanish means people who normally may have been intimidated by a language barrier can now show their full capability, full knowledge, in the best way possible—through their first language,” comments Thygesen.