Loss of a former colleague

September 18, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

 The Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature regrets to announce the passing of Professor Katherine Hampares, who died peacefully in her sleep on July 10, 2020 at her home in Lighthouse Point, Florida.  

 After earning degrees at the University of Michigan, she obtained her PhD at Columbia University with a thesis on the image of the Yankee in the Contemporary Novel of Spanish America. After beginning her teaching career at New York University, she came to Baruch College in its early years as an independent unit of CUNY and served as chair of Romance Languages in 1975 prior to the financial crisis of 1977. 

 She published extensively in the fields of pedagogy and linguistics, as well as on topics on Latin American literature. One of her major contributions was the innovative text SPANISH: A MODULAR APPROACH for Harper Row, with her life-long colleague Prof. Nelly Santos. At Baruch she centered her teaching on advanced courses in language training and advanced Spanish grammar through the 1970’s and 1980’s.

 She retired as professor emeritus in 1989 and moved to Florida where she embarked on a new endeavor, the then emerging world of computers. The Department conveys its condolences to her family.

Prof. Wayne Finke

Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature