Sawsan Awad is a teacher of Arabic at Florida State University in Florida. She has an M.A. in foreign language learning from the Department of Near East and Asian Studies at Wayne State University and a B.A. in music from An-Najah National University in Palestine, where she grew up. She taught Arabic for three years at Wayne State University and has taught at the Middlebury College Arabic School during the summers of 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009. She taught the Arabic Language and Culture course for high school teachers in the Engineering Department at Wayne State University during the summer of 2007. She also worked in designing the work plan for beginning Arabic at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor. In 2008 Sawsan worked with the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) to test translations in Arabic that are used by the American Census Bureau.