Education and Exploration:
Undergraduate Research at Rice

Reynaldo Romero, Jr.
Spanish, Linguistics, and French Triple Major

Like many Rice undergraduates, senior Rey Romero has several majors, reflecting his many interests. He came to Rice in part because he knew that Rice had strong language programs, allowing him to explore his interest in Spanish and French, as well as linguistics. And Rey, who grew up in Mexico, liked Rice’s location, which he characterizes as “not very far away from home, but far enough to foster independent thinking at the academic and personal levels.”

Since coming to Rice, Rey has ventured a little farther from home than Houston. Through funding from Rice’s Clyde Ferguson Bull Travel Fellowship and outside organizations such as the National Hispanic Institute in Houston and the Mellon Undergraduate Minority Fellowship, Rey has been able to travel to Spain to conduct his research. “I visited the Jewish Quarters in Gerona and Barcelona and did a research paper on the geography of the Barcelona Jewish Quarter, from its beginnings to its virtual disappearance in 1391.”

Rey began his undergraduate research early in his sophomore year. His focus is on Judeo-Spanish, which is a language spoken by the descendants of the Spanish Jews expelled from the Spanish Kingdom in 1492. As Rey explains, “After the expulsion, the Jews settled all over the Mediterranean and in the Americas, where they preserved the Spanish culture and Medieval Spanish (with hundreds of borrowings from French, Hebrew, and Turkish). I research the history and linguistics of this language, as well as the traditions of its speakers. I interview speakers from all over the United States—mainly Seattle, St. Louis, Dallas, and New York— and record their stories. I plan to travel to Europe and collect data from speakers in Paris, Brussels, and Istanbul.”

Rey’s mentors include Professor Hector Urrutibeheity, now retired from Rice, who was his Spanish linguistics professor for four classes, and Professor Rafael Salaberry, who advises him on his reports. He adds, “Other professors and mentors at Rice, such as Veronica Albin, Roland Smith, and Deborah Nelson-Campbell, have always been eager to help me, and they provide me with technological and academic support. Rice is unique in this, in that I get to work one-on-one with the professors, and they become more like friends. Also, I feel that they are genuinely interested in what I am doing, and they encourage me to seek the answers. This is a great incentive to me.”

Rey, who has already given many presentations to the Houston branch of the National Hispanic Institute and the Mellon fellows on Judeo-Spanish language and folklore, plans to attend graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in Spanish linguistics. He credits his undergraduate research experience at Rice with giving him the tools he needs to pursue graduate-level education. His research at Rice, he says, “has been very influential because I am actually obtaining experience in my field. It is almost like being in grad school and working on an independent project.”