By Kinga Fraczkiewicz
Professor of Spanish, Dr. Enid Valle is retiring after 35 years of teaching at Kalamazoo College. Motivated by learning in all its forms from teaching literature to learning the ins—and— outs of snorkeling, Dr. Valle looked for a position where she could be a Latin-Americanist, teaching literature originating from Latin America and the Caribbean. Kalamazoo College had that position available in their department of Romance Languages. “It felt like it was a good fit,” said Dr. Valle, “I already knew parts of Michigan.”
Born in Camuy, a small town on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, Dr. Valle grew up hearing the ocean. She attended a catholic high school run by nuns with literature being her favorite subject. Since the seventh grade she read seven books in English and wrote a book report on each. She continued to study literature, earning a Bachelor and Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Puerto Rico and The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, respectively. She then earned a PhD in Romance Languages (Spanish) at the University of Michigan.
Reading the Spanish and English classics continued to influence Dr. Valle’s teaching, particularly in the advanced Spanish classes she taught. One seminar, that she taught about three times during her time at K, is a Spanish Senior Seminar on the works of Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Dr. Valle cites this as one of the classes she enjoyed teaching as the works of Neruda range from themes of love to politics, to odes. She created an assignment in which students in groups wrote their own odes on themes that were not present in Neruda’s writing. Later, Dr. Valle complied all the odes into a green booklet that she gifted to each student. “The last time I taught this class was Winter of 2024 because I wanted to teach it one last time before I left,” she said as she pulled out her copy of the odes from last year. “Whenever I teach literature, it doesn’t matter at which level, I love it,” said Dr. Valle, stating that each time she read the assigned literature she learned something new, more so, she discovered new things along with her class, calling learning a “two-way street.”
Dr. Valle joined the Kalamazoo College community when the Spanish Department had not yet existed. When she began teaching at K, she taught under the Romance Language Department with Spanish and French being the languages taught. “The thing that I’m excited about, that has happened during my time here is that Spanish became a department in 2017. That’s something I’m proud of, Professor Mc Clean and I worked very hard to make this happen,” she said.
35 years later, Dr. Valle is ready to retire. “You have to leave when you still love what you do, if you wait until you hate it that’s bad business, that’s a bad deal. You have to retire when you love what you like, I think many people made that mistake,” she advised.
Dr. Valle will spend two or three months living and exploring different places. For example, she has plans to live in California because “the people are relaxed,” she laughed. “The same reason why I want to spend a couple of months in Spain, people are relaxed.” As a tourist, Dr. Valle would like to see Turkey, particularly the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosques that is also a cultural and historical center in Istanbul, Turkey.
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