Apt# G 206
555 W. Middlefield Rd.
Mt. View, CA 94043
Saint Vincent College
300 Fraser Purchase Road
Latrobe, PA 15650
724-539-9761 extension 2315 Fax: 537-4554
e-mail: rtranquilla@email.stvincent.edu
| Current address: Apt# G 206 555 W. Middlefield Rd. Mt. View, CA 94043 Saint Vincent College 724-539-9761 extension 2315 Fax: 537-4554 e-mail: rtranquilla@email.stvincent.edu |
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My wife Penny and I have one son, Ryan, a 1992 Middlebury College graduate who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lori, a 1993 gradute of Stanford University. Penny worked as a telephone operator for Kennemetal, Inc., as a refugee services counselor for Lutheran Social Services, and as a stained-glass artist; she is now retired. Ryan is Director of California Programming for Poets & Writers and Lori, who has worked as a marketing specialist for several companies, is now enrolled in the MBA Program at UCLA.
I earned a B.A. in English at Allegheny College in 1963, my Master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964, and my Ph.D. (Pittsburgh) in 1973. My doctoral dissertation was on Henry David Thoreau and the New England Transcendentalists.
I began teaching at Saint Vincent College in 1964, serving as department Chair from 1968-1996. Most frequently taught courses and teaching interests are American Studies, The Harlem Renaissance, Growing Up in the USA, The Roaring Twenties, North American Writers and the Third World, Canadian Literature, and Poetry.
I was a co-founder and serve as a Board member of the Center for Northern Appalachian Studies, Saint Vincent College. I am the founder and Project Director of the Teaching Enhancement and Mentoring Project, a project instituted at Saint Vincent College to develop a library of teaching resources for its faculty, a series of workshops on teaching, and a system of mentoring for second-year Saint Vincent College faculty; as part of this project I am the founder and editor of SVC Teaching Notes, an in-house teaching newsletter. I am the founder and Project Director of The Common Texts Project, an interdisciplinary faculty development and curriculum enrichment project which has received commendations from its outside evaluator, from the Middle States Association, and from other organizations.
I have been awarded a Saint Vincent College Student Government Association award for teaching, and was a National Bronze Medalist, among the top 25 finalists in the U.S., in the 1989 CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) and Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year Program. I have been listed in Who’s Who in the East and in Who’s Who among American Teachers. In December 1999, I was awarded Saint Vincent College's Thoburn Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2002 I was awarded the Boniface Wimmer Award for "success in teaching, leadership of the English department and faculty at large, and many positive contributions to St. Vincent College.
My research interests and recent scholarly publications are in comparative studies of U.S. and Canadian writers such as Zane Grey and Ralph Connor; John Updike and Hugh Hood; Sherwood Anderson and Morley Callaghan.
I have published poetry and short fiction regularly since 1971; my short story "Where You Are Not, There Happiness Is" was awarded the Fern Chertkow Memorial Award for Fiction by Great Stream magazine in 1989.
During the 2002-2003 academic year, I am participating in the first teaching exchange between St. Vincent College and Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.