30, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 5-5
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ADFL Update
Andrew Debicki Wins Fifth ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession
For Andrew Debicki, the roles of teacher, scholar, and administrator have been braided together in a career whose trajectory has led to the highest intellectual accomplishments that, shared with colleagues and students, have promoted the field of Spanish letters and the humanities to the forefront of the academic community. Bringing his fine intelligence, hard work, and generosity of spirit to all his endeavors, Debicki has gained a reputation for excellence in all aspects of academic life.
His love of his subject, modern Hispanic poetry, and his dynamic classroom presence have made Debicki a favorite teacher on his campus. One of his nominators pointed out his special knack for identifying his students' strengths and for drawing students into intellectual discoveries and understandings of their own. As director of three NEH Summer Seminars for College Teachers (1976, 1978, 1989), he became mentor to a large cross section of young Hispanists during a period of transition between an older generation of foreign language professionals and a new generation coming up through the ranks. In a few cases he helped jump-start the stalled careers of promising young professionals.
Known as an outstanding critic of modern Hispanic poetry, Debicki is one of the few who have turned their attention to both Latin American and Peninsular poets. He is known especially for developing almost single-handedly twentieth-century Hispanic poetry as a field of study and for creating an atmosphere in which younger scholars can thrive. His own growth as an interpreter of poetry has been marked by productive study and dialogue with modern critical theory through experimentation and the application of fresh approaches, from New Criticism and structuralism to the latest strands of deconstruction and postmodernism. His most recent book, Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond, a revisionist synthesis, is the culmination of a career-long gestation. The worth of his scholarship has been recognized by the support of major research grants from the ACLS, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the NEH over the more than thirty-five years of his dedication to study, reflection, and writing.
Knowing that teaching and scholarship can be cultivated only in structures that promote intellectual community, Debicki has devoted his considerable talents and energies to academic administration, imbuing even the seemingly mundane aspects of professional service with a sense of high purpose. The regard in which he is held at his university is evident in the positions entrusted to him: besides serving on countless search and planning committees, he has been department chair (1985-87); director of the Hall Center for Humanities (1989-93); Vice Chancellor for Research, Graduate Studies, and Public Service 1994-96); and now serves as dean of the Graduate School (since 1993) and of International Studies (since 1996). But he has not neglected the concerns of the language and literature profession at large, being active in both the MLA, where he has served on the Executive Council and eight other committees, and in the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, which includes both college- and precollegiate-level professionals. Because of his reputation for fairness and perspicacity, he has been asked to serve on the boards of seven scholarly journals, on ten evaluation panels at NEH, on the Graduate Record Exam Board, on the TOEFL Executive Committee, and on the Executive Committee for the Advanced Placement Exam in Spanish.
An enlightened teacher, scholar, and administrator, and mentor and friend to many students and colleagues, Andrew Dabicki exemplifies the model of leadership and collegiality envisioned in the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession.
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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