It is no secret that the Spanish program at SMSU has been struggling. Up until now, many were under the impression that it was going to be discontinued, so it was exciting to hear that there was going to be a new Spanish professor, and even more exciting to hear that he is from Spain.

Professor Jose Losada-Montero was born in Santiago de Compostela, a historic city in the North-Western part of Spain. Throughout his high school career, Losado-Montero was involved in basketball and soccer and he continued his involvement at the University of Santiago de Compostela where he studied Spanish literature and completed courses to receive his teaching license.

From there he traveled to Madrid, Spain where he began his doctorate in Spanish literature and masters in social anthropology. Losada-Montero spent two years in Madrid and then he was given the opportunity to travel to France where he taught philosophy and Spanish music.

After his time in France, Losada-Montero moved to Norway where he worked with a non-profit organization collecting second-hand clothes and selling them to support different projects in parts of India and Africa.  Losada-Montero returned to Madrid following a year in Norway and received a scholarship to study in New York.

In New York, he began working on his Ph.D. in Hispanic literature at The City University of New York (CUNY). A year into his Ph.D., he began teaching Spanish courses at Brooklyn College. In 2013, Losada-Montero took a job at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee teaching Spanish, but returned to New York in 2014 to give courses in Spanish at John Jay College.

From there Montero came to Marshall to teach at SMSU, partly because the challenge of revitalizing a struggling Spanish program was attractive to him.

“It was one of the motives I had for accepting this job because it was a challenge,” Losada-Montero said (translated from Spanish).