Presidential Lecture series continues at FSU

By Katie Wilson
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT September 21, 2008 02:34 am

— Fairmont State is preparing for an evening of personal and community history this week.
On Friday, professor Judy Byers will present a lecture titled “Saluting Abelina Suarez and the Asturias-West Virginia Connection.”
The event will begin at 5 p.m. with a light buffet featuring ethnic foods and exhibits in Multi-media Room A of the Ruth Ann Musick Library on the FSU and Pierpont Community & Technical College main campus. The lecture will begin at 5:45 p.m. Sign language interpreting services will be provided.
Chris Lavorata, FSU associate provost, said a Presidential Lecture has been held each year since 1989.
The Presidential Lecture series was established in 1989 to provide faculty the opportunity to share their work with colleagues and members of the community.
This year, Byers’ lecture is part of that program as well as the annual Celebration of Ideas Lecture series.
She said Byers’ lecture mixes in wonderfully with the university’s efforts to become more globally aware. More and more, FSU students are studying abroad, and this year, the number of international students coming to FSU increased.
“This is an academic program that honors, welcomes and acknowledge our community and our roots,” Lavorata said.
Members of the Suarez family are expected to attend Byers’ lecture, Lavorata said.
Byers was named the first recipient of the Abelina Suarez Professorship in 2002 and completed volumes of research on Suarez and her family as part of her professorship.
The professorship is presented through a bequest by the estate of Abelina Suarez who died on Oct. 6, 2000, at the age of 90. Established as Fairmont State’s first named professorship, the award will be made every five years, but each honoree will carry the title in perpetuity.
Suarez was born in Asturias, Spain, in 1910 and emigrated to this country with her parents when she was 9 months old. Her life was spent in Harrison County with the exception of trips to her native Asturias province. She was an educator and leader of various civic groups.
During her research, Byers learned Suarez’s story paints a picture of a family overcoming ethnic and gender prejudices while finding their part of the American dream. The Abelina Suarez story is indeed a backdrop to the early 20th-century immigration connection that is just beginning to be fully recognized, analyzed and saluted in Appalachia, especially through Byers and the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center.
Byers has spent her career studying and recording various aspects of Appalachian culture and history. Known as a folklorist, English educator and storyteller, she is the executrix for the folklore estate of the late Dr. Ruth Ann Musick, eminent regional folktale scholar, which includes the holdings of the former West Virginia Folklore Society, housed at FSU.
Currently, Byers is the program chair for the Assembly on the Literature and Culture of Appalachia of the National Council of Teachers of English that encourages regionalism as a major component of literacy. She is actively involved in the restoration of the former Kennedy Barn as the future home of the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center.
As an extension to academia, Byers is an avid traveler who has encouraged cultural understanding by organizing and directing many study-abroad programs for college and community members, recently to such areas as Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Eastern Europe and Italy.
She is excited about the development of Italian studies in the Department of Language and Literature, its student exchange program with the University of Calabria at Consenza and the partnership between FSU and the Calabria-WV Italian Heritage Association.
For more information on the cultural heritage of Asturias, Spain, review the following Web site: http://www.asturianus.org.
E-mail Katie Wilson at kwilson@timeswv.com.