Romo, Harriet.

Professor and university administrator Ricardo Romo was born in San Antonio in 1944, and attended Fox Tech High School. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin on a track scholarship, and went to Los Angeles to earn a masters degree from Loyola Marymount University and a doctorate in U.S. History from the University of California at Los Angeles. He began his career as a social studies coordinator in the Los Angeles public schools in 1967, and then went on to teach Chicano Studies as an Asst. Professor at California State University at Northridge (1970-73) and at the University of California at San Diego (1973-1980).

Romo returned to Central Texas in 1980, serving on the UT Austin History faculty, simultaneously directing the Trinity University Tomás Rivera Center (1987-1993), and moving into the position of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (1993-1999). Also during this time, Romo wrote East Los Angeles : History of a Barrio, which deals with the assimilation of the Latino community into American society during World War II. In 1992, Romo was named Educator of the Year by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). In 1999, Ricardo Romo replaced outgoing UTSA President Sam Kirkpatrick, becoming the leader of the only public four-year higher education institution in his hometown.

Romo met his wife, Harriet, a native of Pasadena, while an undergraduate student at UT Austin. The couple was married in 1967, one year after she earned and M.S. in Education from UT Austin. In 1971, she earned an M.A. in Education from UCLA, followed by an M.A. in Sociology from UC San Diego, and in 1985, a Doctorate of Philosophy in Sociology, also at UC San Diego. Since then Dr. Romo has studied at Stanford University and has been involved in various research projects related to ethnicity, immigration, and education. In 1996, she collaborated with photographer Alan Pogue, documenting the lives of Head Start program families in an exhibit entitled “Photographs and Fieldnotes: An Ethnographic View of Head Start Families”. This exhibit was shown at Southwest Texas State University in 1996. From 1990 to 1996, she taught in the Dept. of Sociology, at SWT. Dr. Harriett Romo went on to teach Latino studies at UT Austin, where she co-authored Latino High School Graduation: Defying the Odds, in 1996. As a part of the Romos’ ongoing and wide-ranging interest in Latino culture and studies, they also collect Latin American art and rare books concerning Southwestern borderlands.

From the guide to the Ricardo and Harriett Romo Collection, 1967-1991, (Southwestern Writers Collection, Special Collections, Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos)