Marilyn Kiss, an associate professor of languages at Wagner College, was honored Thursday afternoon, Feb. 22, at Omicron Delta Kappa’s 11th annual Faculty Colloquium. Kiss was cited for her excellence both as a teacher and as director of Wagner’s Study Abroad program.
Irena DeMario, Wagner’s current ODK president, and Valerie O'Donnell, ODK member and Spanish Honor Society member, introduced Prof. Kiss and presented her with an ODK National Appreciation Certificate at Thursday’s colloquium.
In accepting the ODK honor, Kiss delivered a meditation on her lifelong love of learning, language and travel, which she titled “From the Pastures of Missouri to the Plazas of Madrid: A Journey Made Possible by Language Study.”
“I have never gone to work a day in my life,” Kiss told her audience of 50 or so colleagues and students; “I have always gone to school. … The classroom is a place I love, a space where learning occurs, where young people blossom. It is a space I cherish.”
Raised amid the grain fields surrounding Kirksville, Missouri, Kiss credited her high-school journalism class’s subscription to the Sunday New York Times with opening her eyes to the outside world, and particularly the world of New York City.
“I learned about Broadway, Macy’s and enticing foreign films,” she said. “My parents thought my sojourn in New York would end after studies at Columbia — but how wrong they were, since it became my home. I had waited long enough to get here!”
The second factor that opened up a new world to Kiss, she said, was her experience studying Spanish in college.
“Thanks to my love for Spanish, I was able to get a Woodrow Wilson fellowship for graduate study at Columbia University, and it was my ticket out,” she said.
During the 18 years Kiss spent teaching junior and senior high school Spanish, she also became involved in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ efforts to develop rubrics for proficiency learning.
“Because of these experiences, my first college job was a dual appointment in both Spanish and education,” Kiss said. “Of all my positions, it was the most rewarding — but it was at Illinois State University, in Normal, Illinois, not quite within commuting distance of my beloved Big Apple!”
Kiss made it back to Gotham in 1989 when she joined the Wagner College faculty. Initially, Kiss taught the occasional course in language methods for future Spanish teachers in addition to being Wagner’s only full-time professor in modern languages at the time (today, there are four).
“It’s something I miss horribly,” she said on Thursday. “Of all the courses I have ever taught, watching future teachers develop their confidence and teaching styles gave me the most satisfaction. It seemed to fulfill the need to ‘pass on the passion,’ a definition of teaching that I heard at a conference that truly seems to explain what it is one wants to do in a classroom setting. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it is magical.”
In addition to her love of teaching, Kiss also spoke at the ODK Faculty Colloquium about her love of travel, which has found expression in her work as director of Wagner College’s Study Abroad program.
“After a childhood of road trips to all 48 states, my passion for travel to new places was engrained,” she said. “Once I learned Spanish, the world I wanted to explore expanded exponentially! I was determined to visit every country where Spanish was spoken. …
“Only one thing has kept me from fulfilling that original desire, and that is Spain itself … my true home, the only place for which I am constantly homesick … the place where the people — ay, la gente — speak the language, my adopted language.”
After spending a year in Madrid while studying for her master’s degree, Kiss said, she returned to Spain again and again.
She has been to Pamplona alone 19 times for the annual running of the bulls, a festival she characterized as “the world’s greatest existential party,” where “you are judged not on the make of your car or the size of your paycheck, but for your ability to participate in the festival, to live in the moment.
“Experiencing it is one of your homework assignments for life,” Kiss told her colleagues and students.
“The reason I want students, all of you, to study abroad is because it is a transformative experience,” Kiss said. “It changes your life. I wish it were a requirement for every college student. I love to speak with students who have returned from programs abroad and learn that the experience has indeed converted them into citizens of the world.”
About ODK
Omicron Delta Kappa, called “the oldest and most prestigious college and university leadership honor society in the country,” was founded at Washington and Lee University in 1914.
Wagner College’s ODK Circle was founded on May 28, 1960 at a chartering ceremony when the first members were also inducted. The Wagner Circle has set records on the number of national awards it has received every year for the past five or six years. In 2004 it was the first circle ever to receive the ODK’s national Circle of the Year designation.
The Wagner Circle of ODK has been coordinating a campus and community Thanksgiving turkey and canned food drive since 1985, and a holiday toy drive since 1988, the two longest-running community-service events on campus.
