October 21, 1996

UCSC hosts American Council on Education fellow

A professor from North Carolina has joined UCSC as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow for the 1996-97 academic year.

Kathleen Kish was most recently head of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro--a position from which she took leave to come to Santa Cruz. She is one of only 34 ACE Fellows nationwide for 1996-97.

The ACE Fellows Program is designed to strengthen the leadership of American higher education. Through seminars, extensive study, and mentor relationships with administrators at their host institutions, the promising faculty and staff who are named as ACE Fellows prepare themselves to take high-level positions in university administration sometime in the future.

Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood is acting as Kish's primary mentor for the fellowship year.

While at UCSC, Kish plans to gain a broader understanding of the issues and challenges affecting higher education, she says. She is exploring ways to increase access to higher education, ensure its quality, and promote the diversity of its students. She is also helping UCSC forge partnerships with other educational institutions, community organizations, and businesses.

A specialist in Spanish literature, Kish earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish from UC Berkeley and master's and Ph.D. degrees in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has studied in Spain as a Fulbright scholar and received grants from such agencies as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Kish has published two books and a number of articles on early translations of the Spanish masterpiece Celestina, a work of prose fiction in 21 acts that became a best-seller in sixteenth-century Europe. Her other publications have centered on the multisecular Hispanic ballad tradition and on eighteenth-century Spanish letters.

ACE's membership includes more than 1,600 degree-granting institutions and more than 200 higher-education associations and organizations nationwide.

--Francine Tyler