Advanced degree

Courtesy Guillermo Albán

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Lots of people take some time between college and grad school. For Guillermo Albán ’46, it was a little longer than usual. Just before his 91st birthday in February, Albán earned a PhD in linguistics from the Universidad de Jaén in Andalucía, Spain. Albán teaches English and directs the Writing Center at the Universidad Espíritu Santo in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and he thought it would be “interesting” to do graduate work in linguistics applied to teaching English as a foreign language. He says his teaching career goes back to his undergraduate years during World War II at Yale. In his junior and senior years, he was appointed assistant in instruction and taught Spanish. “I was very happy and proud to be a member of the faculty while still an undergraduate,” Albán says. “My classmates were often my students, too.”