Sigma Delta Pi and the AATSP: A Shared Century of Leadership and Collaboration

The AATSP has concluded its impressive centennial celebration in 2018 while Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, begins its own in 2019. The juncture of these commemorations provides a unique opportunity not only to reflect on the growth and success of both organizations and the many individuals responsible for such progress, but also to highlight the shared leadership, collaboration and mutual support over the past century.

With its founding on December 29, 1917 in New York City, the American Association of Teachers of Spanish (AATS) for the first and only time in its history named co-presidents for 1918: Juan C. Cebrián, Archer M. Huntington and Lawrence A. Wilkins. Cebrián and Huntington would later be named Honorary Presidents of Sigma Delta Pi in 1931 and 1935 respectively and would thereby start a long history of accomplished academic leaders who would dedicate their time to supporting the missions of both organizations in substantial ways.

Another accomplished academic, John D. Fitz-Gerald, was AATS president in 1921 and 1922 while a faculty member at the University of Illinois, and he was later named one of Sigma Delta Pi’s first three honorary presidents in 1931 after he had joined the University of Arizona. Fitz-Gerald served the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society in many capacities to include close adviser of the first national president, Leavitt O. Wright, and chair of the Committee on Constitution in 1938 that drafted Sigma Delta Pi’s first national constitution that was ultimately approved and adopted during the Society’s first triennial convention held in conjunction with the joint AATS-MLA conference in New York City on December 31 of that same year. This date marks the initial joint meeting of Sigma Delta Pi and the AATS, and the first of many subsequent collaborations to present.

A decade later in 1948, and four years after the AATS was renamed the AATSP, the University of Oregon’s Dr. Leavitt O. Wright became AATSP president after already completing a successful six-year term as Sigma Delta Pi’s first national president from 1931–37. Wright is considered instrumental with nationalizing Sigma Delta Pi and for rescuing the Society from near collapse when local leadership in California struggled with managing the organization’s rapid growth.

Sigma Delta Pi’s fourth national president from 1949–59, Dr. Carl A. Tyre of New Mexico State University was the only person to serve simultaneously as national president of both organizations when he was AATSP president in 1957. Tyre was also responsible for founding two different chapters of the AATSP.

Also in 1957, the University of Connecticut’s Robert G. Mead, Jr. began his eight-year run as Editor of Hispania, and immediately upon concluding his term in 1965 he became AATSP president; then in 1986 he was appointed honorary president of Sigma Delta Pi.

Further cementing the bonds between these organizations was the decision rendered at the AATSP’s 50th anniversary meeting in San Antonio, Texas on August 28–30, 1968, when the AATSP Executive Committee voted “to recommend that the AATSP officially recognize Sigma Delta Pi as an instrument for encouraging the study of Spanish in colleges and universities, and that the AATSP list in its official program the activities of the society at meetings held jointly with the association.”

Also historically noteworthy was the Sigma Delta Pi presidency of the University of Arizona’s Anita Dolores Brown, the first national female president from 1969–71, and later president of the AATSP in 1979.

Shared leadership was not restricted to presidents, however, as Mississippi State University’s James Chatham was Executive Director of the AATSP in the 1980s, and his outstanding service to Sigma Delta Pi earned him admission in 1989 into the Order of Don Quijote, one of the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society’s highest honors; ten years later he was further recognized as an honorary president of Sigma Delta Pi.

Another impressive organizational leader was the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s Dr. Richard E. Chandler, the longest continuously serving president in the...