Kent did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Santa Barbara, completing a double major in Spanish Linguistics and Experimental Psychology. He continued at Santa Barbara to complete his M.A. in Spanish Linguistics. During this time, he also studied a year at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and a year at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. He completed his doctorate in Romance Languages (Spanish Linguistics) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He came to Gettysburg College in 1986 to teach Spanish linguistics, Spanish language, Hispanic cultures, and occasionally Portuguese language. His research interests include second language acquisition--especially of accurate pronunciationand dialectology. He hopes to help students break through linguistic, cultural, and racial stereotypes by encouraging contact with other languages, cultures and peoples and by teaching students to observe and analyze the world around them from different perspectives.