Debicki, Andrew Peter

Andrew Debicki was a Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas (KU). Debicki received his B.A. from Yale University in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1960.

Debicki was born in Poland on June 28, 1934 and lived in Cuba from 1942-1949. He taught at Trinity College from 1957-1960, and was a Professor at Grinnell College from 1960-1968 before coming to the University of Kansas in 1968. He was named University Distinguished Professor in 1976. During his time at the University of Kansas, he served as Co-Director for the Center for Humanistic Studies, Director of the Hall Center for the Humanities (1989-1993), Vice-Chancellor for Research, Graduate Studies, and Public Service (1994-1996), and Dean of the Graduate School and International Programs (1996-2000). Debicki retired from administration in 2000, but remained on the faculty to teach and conduct research.

Debicki is the author and editor of many publications -- both books and articles -- in both Spanish and English. His monographs include Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea (La generación de 1924-25) (1968) and Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond (1994).

Debicki held postdoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (in both 1970 and 1980), the National Endowment for the Humanities (in 1992), and the National Humanities Center. He received the Balfour Jeffrey Research Award from the University of Kansas in 1984, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency in 1993. He was awarded the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession in 1999. In 2002, Debicki was honored as a pioneer in modern Spanish poetry by an international group of poets and scholars, as a part of the KU Symposium "The Discovery of Poetry."

In 1998, Debicki and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Debicki, former director of KU's Office of Study Abroad, donated funds to the University of Kansas to establish the Mary Elizabeth and Andrew P. Debicki Graduate Fellowship Fund for graduate students in the humanities. Dr. Debicki died on January 20, 2005.

From the guide to the Personal Papers of Andrew Debicki, 1968-2000, (University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library University Archives)