Congratulations to Professor Marcy Schwartz for receving the Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award. Named after the late and beloved Clement Price, a Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor, the award recognizes extraordinary contributions to diversity, inclusion, equity, and access at Rutgers.
Professor Schwartz's chair of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese and her area of research and teaching is Latin American literary and cultural studies from the twentieth century to the present. She has published on Latin American urban space, translation, photography, and public book culture. Her teaching and research focus on the Public Humanities by engaging with reading and book culture in community settings.
Since arriving at Rutgers in 1991, Schwartz has been one of the university’s most insistent and effective proponents for teaching approaches that take students into the broader community, especially the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods near campus.
Last year she organized a group of students to provide translation to and from Spanish during the first in-person parent-teacher conferences at Livingston Elementary School since the Covid-19 pandemic. Some students translated during the individual conferences while others served as guides for the Spanish-speaking parents, many of whom are new immigrants.
“To have a friendly face greet you and say, ‘I will walk you to where you need to go,’ makes parents feel comfortable and connected, and more likely to come back to school for events in the future” says Schwartz.
Besides Schwartz’s accomplishments as a teacher and scholar, she is also being honored for her work with People and Stories/Gente y Cuentos, a non-profit organization that presents short story readings in prisons, homeless shelters, and other settings.
To Schwartz, the work is both a moral calling, and fun. “It’s a way of giving back and a way of helping students, whatever their major is, find ways to be civically engaged while they are at Rutgers, and later in life,” she said. “It’s opening the door so they have kind of an entrée, hopefully making it less scary.”
Congratulations to Professor Schwartz's for receiving the honor, and Thank you for all your hard work to help our community!