UNMC’s Community Partnership and Center for Continuing Education will sponsor a special appearance to the campus by Guadalupe Quintanilla, Ed.D, one of the nation’s leading Latino educators, cultural diversity experts and motivational speakers.
Her presentation, “A Conversation About Ongoing Challenges and Lifelong Learning,” will be Tuesday, Nov. 9, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., at the Eppley Science Hall Amphitheater. Dr. Quintanilla was invited by Gov. Mike Johanns to speak at the Governor’s Summit on Workforce Development in Lincoln earlier that day.
Dr. Quintanilla was born Maria Guadalupe Campos in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico. Her parents divorced when she was 18-months old and she went to live with her grandparents. Before age 13, she never received any formal education past the first grade. She was consistently moving from city to city throughout Mexico with her grandparents. But when her grandfather lost his sight, Dr. Quintanilla was sent to Brownsville, Texas, to live with her father.
During those early years, Dr. Quintanilla had taught herself to read, but only in Spanish – she didn’t speak or understand any English. When she was taken to the local school in Brownsville and given a standard English language aptitude test, she did so poorly she was labeled “retarded” by the school administration and placed in a first grade classroom. Totally humiliated, within a matter of days, Dr. Quintanilla convinced her parents to let her drop out of school.
At age 16, she married Cayetano Quintanilla, became a housewife and had three children by age 21 – Victor, Mario and Martha. When her children began school they, too, were categorized by the teachers as slow learners or “Yellow Birds,” meaning they spoke Spanish, but no English. School officials told Dr. Quintanilla to stop speaking Spanish and start speaking English to her children if they were going to progress in the American educational system. That mandate opened old wounds for Dr. Quintanilla, but motivated her to learn English, in order to help her children.
At first, administrators for English classes rejected Dr. Quintanilla on four occasions – at a high school, community college, local telephone company program and a hospital.
Then she went back to the community college and asked Registrar Henry Wooren to allow her to audit an English classroom. Instead, Wooren, impressed by her determination, enrolled her at the Texas Southmost College, Brownsville, Texas, on an individual approval basis.
Eventually, Dr. Quintanilla enrolled at Pan American University (now University of Texas-Pan American) in Edinburg, Texas. Three years later, in 1969, the girl labeled “retarded” at age 13 received a bachelor of science degree with honors in biology.
Soon after college graduation, Dr. Quintanilla moved to Houston and enrolled at the University of Houston (UH) graduate school. By 1971, she earned her master of arts in Spanish and Latin American literature. Six years later, she received her doctorate in education and was hired by UH as an administrator – the first Hispanic woman hired in that capacity. During 30 years on the faculty at UH, Dr. Quintanilla has served as assistant vice president for academic affairs; director of the Mexican American studies program; and today is associate professor of modern and classical languages.
In addition to her academic career, Dr. Quintanilla was a consultant to the Houston Police Department on Spanish and Latino culture. The cross-cultural communication program she developed for police officers has been praised as the best of its type in the nation by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice.
She also was appointed to the United Nations Institute of Justice, an ambassador to the World Conference on International Issues and Women’s Affairs in Austria and was named one of 100 most influential women in Texas in the past 100 years. In 1995, author Mary Dodson Wade published a biography on Dr. Quintanilla, titled, “Guadalupe Quintanilla: Leader of the Hispanic Community.”
As for Dr. Quintanilla’s three children, who also were labeled “slow learners” in grade school, Victor and Martha are attorneys and Mario is a doctor who specializes in emergency medicine.