Dr. J. Ricardo Pastor

Dr. Pastor was a faculty member in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages from 1977 to 2018. He served as the Department chair, chaired the International Studies Committee, Honors Committee, Ethnic Studies Committee. He organized the Poetry Recital Contest for high school students for several years. State of Michigan: Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 720 (1986) honored Dr. Pastor for promoting International Understanding. He was Editor of ALETHEA, the DMFL newsletter. In 1983 Spanish Today, a US Hispanic Publication, Dr. Pastor was named one of the ten nationally honored Hispanics by this publication.

He organized and founded the SVSU Omega Kappa Chapter of Sigma Delta Pi, National Spanish Honorary Society and served as-its advisor since its first initiation in 2012. He received the House Family Award for Teacher Impact. Dr. Pastor took SVSU students in annual cultural trips to Spain for over 20 years. During his tenure at SVSU he published eleven books. Some are his own short stories, others are essays on literary topics, and others are anthologies of Spanish American writers. In collaboration with Dr. Emilio Castaneda he published Yo Hablo Espanol, a beginning Spanish text book. For over a decade he was the editor of Bolivian Studies, journal dedicated to Bolivian writers and whose contributors were professors in US universities.