August 10th, 2007
Graduation Ceremony

Dr. R. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of English at the University of Texas, was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree.

Right to Left: Dr. Eddie J Davis Dr. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith (Honoree), Dr. Karen Watson and Dr. Victor Arizpe

Dr. R. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the most prolific and highly respected Hispanic novelists in the United States.

He is the first Latino author to receive a major international literary award, the Premio Casa de las Américas, for part of his series of 15 novels known as the Klail City Death Trip, a generational narrative set in his native Lower Rio Grande Valley.

He was born in Mercedes to a family with strong Mexican and American ties; his paternal family roots in Texas go back to the 1740s, predating U.S. annexation by a century. Like his grandmother, mother and three of his four siblings, Dr. Hinojosa-Smith became a teacher. After serving in the military in Korea and earning a doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he taught at several universities and held several administrative posts, including Chairman of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota, and Dean and Provost at what is now Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

Dr. Hinojosa-Smith's work has won the award for Best Writing in the Southwest (1981), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters (1998) and the Alumni Achievement Award from the University at Urbana-Champaign (1998). His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

In 1995, he was honored as an Outstanding Latino Faculty by the Hispanic Caucus of the American Association for Higher Education (source: Texas A&M University commencement booklet). Until Friday, only 73 honorary doctorates had been awarded since the university opened in 1876 (News Article by Kelli Levy).