Vol. 19, No. 2 - Winter 2003

Alumni profile: Rosalind Horowitz

Linking language and learning

On the surface it might seem that the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants from St. Paul would have little in common with Hispanic college students in the heart of Texas, but Rosalind Horowitz (B.S., ’68, English; M.A., ’73, English; Ph.D., ’82, reading education) can easily correct that assumption.

For this nationally recognized professor of literacy at the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA), and 2002 winner of the college’s Gordon M.A. Mork Outstanding Educator Award, the commonalities between her experiences and those of the first- and second-generation Hispanic students in her classes are clear.

“It’s an interesting turn of fate,” says Ricardo Romo, UTSA president, “that Dr. Horowitz assumed a position in San Antonio to work with students who, like her, are first-generation, bilingual college students.”

For Horowitz, perhaps, it isn’t really fate. “Because of my background, I have a strong commitment to building urban schools that will creatively serve first-generation Americans.”

Horowitz says her parents, although poor and lacking in formal education—her mother had the equivalent of a fourth-grade education, her father, seventh grade—“had great wisdom and a great commitment to education. My parents valued study, learning, and books. I was raised with the belief that America offered tremendous opportunities and I should go after them. I asked my mom, ‘Do you think I’ll ever be a professor?’ My mom said, ‘Of course! In America the world is open to you.’ I’d like to note my mother’s name, Fannie Hartman Horowitz, because she was very dear to me as an inspiration.”

Horowitz credits the college and the University in helping her to realize her academic dreams—through scholarships, jobs, and above all, the faculty.

“The University is an extraordinary school,” Horowitz says. “It is its faculty. It’s a big place but I always received one-on-one attention and mentoring. I was fortunate to have been astutely guided by Gene Piché (professor emeritus), my adviser for three degrees. Jay Samuels (professor of educational psychology) was also a mentor to me.”

Horowitz’ research and teaching is in literacy, examining the relationships between inside- and outside-school oral and written language. “It is the most important thing we can do to help children—teach them to read—and talk about what they have read,” she says. “This allows them to develop their minds and survive the difficulties that life brings. It leads them to give back to the world.”

Her study of talk and texts is especially useful in classrooms with learners of different cultural backgrounds and goals for cultural-social membership. “We have reached a time where there is a new confidence about the potential of classroom talk as a means of improving learning and memory,” she says. “In my mother’s world, on the west side of St. Paul, there was little opportunity for talking in classrooms, nor was there an appreciation for what the immigrants brought with them in wisdom and experience. The world has changed dramatically since the 1920s.”

Horowitz is the editor of a book now in press, Talking Text: Knowing the World Through Instructional Discourse. She also produced the book, Comprehending Oral and Written Language, with Samuels, which has been used in doctoral classes internationally.

Horowitz accepted a position at UTSA upon completion of her Ph.D. and has been a leader at that school ever since. “She has helped to position UTSA as a top-tier research school and as a premier Hispanic Serving Institution (HIS) through dissemination of her research, international projects, and lectures on text processing which are famous,” Romo says.

Samuels says Horowitz “has truly devoted her life to the low-income schools and literacy education of Hispanic students.”

Romo agrees. “Her service to teacher education and in the local school districts and communities of south Texas has been exceptional,” he says.

In 1985 Horowitz was one of five people internationally to win a Spencer Fellowship awarded by the National Academy of Education. Her research also has been recognized with awards from the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Reading Association, and the New York Academy of Sciences, Linguistics Division. In 1998 she was selected by the University of Iowa as a visiting scholar to Russia and the Ukraine where she investigated the linguistic and cultural world of her parents.

—Peggy J. Rader