UW-Green Bay’s Ortiz awarded Patricia Wood Baer Professorship in Education

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Prof. Cristina Ortiz, Humanistic Studies, has been named to the Patricia Wood Baer Professorship in Education, effective July 1, 2014. She is appointed for a five-year term.

The professorship recognizes and gives support for a tenured faculty member who has demonstrated a productive commitment to scholarship and/or outreach and whose work exemplifies the spirit and mission of UW-Green Bay. It is named for the late Patricia Wood Baer, the daughter of Paper Converting Machine Corporation founder L.G. Wood and wife of longtime Paper Converting leader and 24-year president and CEO Frederick E. Baer. She was a graduate of Denison (Ohio) University and was a deeply committed volunteer and philanthropist in the Green Bay area. Patricia and Frederick, also a UW-Green Bay professorship namesake, were presented with UW-Green Bay’s highest community honor, the Chancellor’s Award, in 1991.

Ortiz is chair of the Modern Languages program and coordinator of the Spanish program at UW-Green Bay. She joined the faculty in 1993 after receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Ortiz has authored a monograph on Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges and has published her research on contemporary Spanish and Latin American female writers in top-tier journals in Spain and the United States. Her area of research focuses on issues of gender, nation and nationalism in contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature and film. Her work has also been included in several edited collections, most recently in “Across the Straits: New Visions of Africa in Contemporary Spain.”

Ortiz is a member collaborator of the American Academy of the Spanish Language and a special contributor to the academic journal of this organization. In addition to teaching a wide range of courses at UW-Green Bay, Ortiz has been instrumental in the creation of a Visiting Spanish Scholar in Residence program and the Spanish in the Professions program at the University, as well as in establishing numerous local internships for UW-Green Bay students and institutional connections with the Hispanic/Latino community. She also has led study abroad programs to Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Australia and Cuba. Ortiz is the recipient of two UW-Green Bay Founders Awards. She received the Founders Award for Excellence in Institutional Development in 2004-05 and the award for Excellence in Community Outreach in 2013-14.

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