El Premio Ricardo A. Narváez
The Life of Ricardo A. Narváez

Born in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, in 1921,
Ricardo Narváez spent most of his career as
a professor of Spanish and Hispanic
linguistics at the University of Minnesota
(1947-1951, 1958-1985).

Aspects of Don Ricardo's Life that are of Interest to Teachers of
Spanish in Minnesota

  • Don Ricardo served as president of the MN-AATSP during the 1965-
    1966 academic year. Years later both of his sons, Eric and León,
    would also be presidents of the organization.
  • He served on the board of directors of the International Institute of
    Minnesota as well as on the board of the Concordia College
    Language Villages. Don Ricardo was the first dean of the Concordia
    Spanish Language Village, which began in 1963.
  • Ricardo Narváez presented the sections on phonetics of the
    Conversational Spanish II program on KTCA-TV, a program which
    made Howard Hathaway the best known teacher of Spanish in
    Minnesota in his role as Don Miguel. On that popular program of the
    sixties, Don Ricardo's son Eric and daughter Darcia were the voices
    of the puppets Paco and María respectively.
  • Many, many future teachers of Spanish studied Spanish linguistics at
    the University of Minnesota with Don Ricardo, and dozens of them
    (Jim O’Neill, Phyllis Van Buren, Kathy Olson, Linda Norman, David
    George, Arturo Fox, Andrés Surís and Bonnie Brown, among others)
    went on to have distinguished careers in Minnesota and elsewhere.
  • Ricardo Narváez worked with Emma Birkmaier at the University of
    Minnesota and also in the development of the Concordia Language
    Villages. It seemed fitting that he received the Emma Birkmaier
    Award for distinguished professional service from the Minnesota
    Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 1984. He was
    recognized for both the breadth and depth of his contributions to the
    teaching of second languages.

Don Ricardo is a model of how to adopt a bilingual and bicultural lifestyle
with joy while encouraging cross-cultural understanding. His appreciation for
things Hispanic was communicated to his students and to his children. From
that beginning on the island of Puerto Rico, he moved to New York, then
Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, Illinois, Minnesota,
Puerto Rico and finally to his permanent home in Minnesota. Using
Minnesota as his home base, he would work in Puerto Rico, Mexico,
Colombia, Guatemala and Spain in the years that followed. His was a
bilingual and bicultural life spent exploring much that enriched his life and
that of others.

Additional Background Information

Ricardo Narváez became fully bilingual in Spanish and English while living
in Texas where he graduated from high school (Concordia Academy,
Austin, TX). Besides the University of Minnesota, he taught for some years
at the University of Puerto Rico in addition to having teaching assignments
at about a dozen other institutions (University of Illinois at Chicago, Colby-
Swarthmore Summer School, etc.). Perhaps what was most striking about
him was his impressive range of interests and professional activities. He
exemplified both the professional breadth and depth of which a teacher of
Spanish is capable. As a distinguished linguist, he taught as a Fulbright
Scholar at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, an entity devoted to the advanced
study of Hispanic linguistics in Bogotá, Colombia and he became an
experienced teacher of English as a second language as well, teaching first
at the University of Puerto Rico, then South Korean professionals at the
University of Minnesota, students at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico
by means of a U.S. Smith-Mundt award, Chilean professionals at the
University of Minnesota, and students at the University of Navarre,
Pamplona, Spain, as a Fulbright scholar.

Don Ricardo showed his versatility as a professional by working as an
interpreter for the Mayo Clinic and for professional and religious leaders in
Colombia and the United States, as a radio announcer for The Spanish
Lutheran Hour and La voz amiga, as a professional recording artist (he was
a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) for
companies such as John Deere, Control Data and EMC/Paradigm
Publishing, as a translator of numerous written materials, as an editor of five
books, seven language games and much more, and as a contributor to
teaching materials published by the University of Puerto Rico, the
Minnesota State Department of Education and Concordia College
(Moorhead, MN). His work in Spanish linguistics, principally phonology,
morphology and dialectology, led to the writing of four books and five
articles. Don Ricardo gave public lectures in Puerto Rico, Mexico,
Colombia, Spain and Brazil as well as dozens of lectures at conferences,
colleges and universities in the United States. Particularly popular were his
talks about Hispanic gestures and cultural differences between the Anglo-
Saxon and Hispanic worlds.



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