The Rocket

Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Nate Daymut [Click to enlarge]

While other children her age were hoping Hansel and Gretel escaped from the witch, Eva Tsuquiashi-Daddesio (soo-kee-AH-shee duh-DAYS-e-o) was wondering what the story would sound like in the language it was written in.

"I knew that you could say something in one language that wouldn't translate to others," Tsuquiashi-Daddesio said. "I would hear these stories and think, 'What am I missing in other languages?'"

Even at an early age, Tsuquiashi-Daddesio, chairperson of SRU's Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, had the makings of a language instructor. Her curiosity about foreign languages took her all over the world, dropping her off in SRU in 1988.

Tsuquiashi-Daddesio was born in Lima, Peru, where she lived until her early 20s. Her grandparents had come to Peru from Japan to work and, eventually, return home, but World War II forced them to stay. Her parents would eventually raise five daughters in Peru, the first of which they named Fumiko, "child of treasured beauty." They also gave her the Spanish name Eva, because Peruvian law forbade non-Christian names.

"Japanese was my first language," Tsuquiashi-Daddesio said. "But when I went to school, kids would tell me 'Go back to your country' because I talked differently. So, I started speaking in Spanish only."

As a professor of French and Spanish at SRU, Tsuquiashi-Daddesio has been a highly regarded faculty member for 19 years. She has taught almost every French course the university offers, as well as a handful in the Spanish department.

Tququiashi-Daddesio was also awarded the 2006 SRU President's Award for excellence in teaching.

Deb Cohen, a professor of Spanish at SRU, said Tsuquiashi-Daddesio's colleagues have nothing but good things to say about her.

"She's the bus driver, the organizer, the decider," Cohen said. "She's extremely organized and very fair and open to sharing responsibilities."

Cohen said she appreciates Tsuquiashi-Daddesio's multi-cultural abilities.

"She lives simultaneously in three or four cultures at any given moment and can switch between them," Cohen said. "She'll be speaking French and I'll come in the room, and she'll switch to Spanish."

Continued...

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