By Christine Marin
Professor emerita and Founder of the Chicano/a Research Collection, Arizona State University
It’s March, 2022, and I celebrate and welcome Women’s History Month. I recognize the remarkable scholar and distinguished linguist, Dr. Maria Juliette Escudero. Specializing in Romance Literature, and during the course of her studies, Professor Escudero studied at the Institute of Phonetics and Linguistics at the University of Paris and earned a French teaching diploma. She received the Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics from Cornell University in New York in 1948. In that same year, Dr. Escudero was recognized for her scholarship and hired by Dr. Grady Gammage, President of Arizona State College in Tempe, now known as Arizona State University, to come West.
Dr. Maria Escudero is the first Mexican American AND the first Mexican American woman hired as an Assistant Professor at Arizona State College (ASC)/Arizona State University (ASU). She began teaching Spanish in the Foreign Languages Department in 1948. Her dissertation, “Contemplación del Quijote”, linked to her expertise of the writing style of Miguel de Cervantes, and her strengths in Romance Literature, caught the imagination of students who soon made Dr. Escudero a popular and well-respected faculty member in the department.
She had a nice and easy way about her, teaching Spanish literature and linguistics in the classroom that matched her demeanor. What made her endearing was that she rode a bicycle to campus every day, a practice she kept since her student days as a college student while studying French in Paris, France in the mid-1940s. She was small in stature, but mighty in the classroom.
It wasn’t long after her arrival at Arizona State College in Tempe that Dr. Escudero became a faculty adviser to two important and progressive student organizations at ASC/ASU, Los Conquistadores and La Liga Panamerican. Los Conquistadores was the first Mexican American student organization founded at ASC in 1939. This group’s interests in promoting the Mexican culture and Spanish language led them to become influenced by the progressive Mexican American civil rights organization in Maricopa County known as the Latin American Club, founded in 1947 by WW II veteran, Luís Cordova, a Mexican American railroad worker in Phoenix.
Dr. Escudero’s students of Spanish also became active in ASC’s La Liga Panamerican, an organization that promoted international good will and strong friendships with Latin American countries. Both student organizations, Los Conquistadores and La Liga Panamericana enabled students to participate in political, social, and academic activities that strengthened their bilingual skills and promoted academic leadership to help students open doors of economic opportunities for Mexican and Mexican American students in Arizona through scholarships and grants.
By 1955, Dr. Escudero earned the rank of Associate Professor of Spanish, the first Mexican American faculty member to do so. She became Full Professor in 1967, and received Tenure in that same year. University records show that Dr. Maria Juliette Escudero is the first Mexican American Full Professor, AND the first Mexican American Female Professor to receive Tenure in 1967.
“Chiquita, pero picosa,” her students of Spanish described her: “small, but mighty”, they said proudly.
Sources:
Bulletin of Arizona State College, Tempe, AZ, 1948-1950. University Archives, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Arizona State College at Tempe. Catalogs. 1953-1958. University Archives, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Arizona State University. General Catalogs, 1959-1980. University Archives, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Arizona State University. "Sahuaro." 1966. University Archives, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Distinctive Collections would like to thank to our guest author, Professor Christine Marin, for contributing this post about Professor Escudero for Women's History Month.