Gary Elbow came to teach at Texas Tech University when he was 32 years old. It was 1970. He stayed 48 years, deciding to retire at the end of this past fall’s semester. He won’t miss the grading, assessments of students’ learning outcomes and other toils of being a professor. But there are things he’ll miss.
“Probably the students, and the classroom interaction, although I’ll miss my colleagues too. But the students most of all I think. Interacting with the students keeps me young,” he says.
The 80-year-old is a geographer, but not physical sort. Elbow’s interest is the study of human geography, which deals with human patterns of social interaction, as well as spatial level interdependencies, and how they influence or affect the earth's environment.
“I’ve worked throughout my career in Latin America, so my interest is in seeing what the relationships are with the people, the land, how they impact natural environments, how they respond to environmental change,” he says. “I’ve looked at peasant agricultural practices in Guatemala. I’ve looked at the organization of cities and mainly small towns in Latin America, Guatemala and other places.”
Elbow’s love for geography grew throughout his upbringing as he read Book of the Month Club volumes delivered to his home through his parents’ subscription.
At Tech, Elbow was an active faculty member, having served as parliamentarian, secretary, vice-president and president of the Faculty Senate at various times He also was long involved with the Honors College, having taught courses there since the early 1980s.
“It’s mainly a recruiting device. If you’re interested in high-end students, then an honors college is something that you really want to have.”
In 2003 he was awarded Preston James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award by the Conference of Latin American Geographers. He’s had research published in a variety of journals and contributed chapters many books.
His interests in Latin America are relatively wide-ranging, from urban concerns in Guatemala to political boundary issues involving Ecuador and Peru to economic integration in the Caribbean to something as esoteric as the "Depiction of Climate in the Works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez."
Elbow’s fondest memory during his time at Tech was being involved in the effort to gain tenure for the university’s faculty. Lauro Cavasos was Tech’s president at the time.
“It all ended with Cavasos caving in and we went back and rewrote the tenor policy, which was not very different than the one we had in the beginning,” he says.
Elbow says one thing is noticeably different in students’ abilities from his first years at Tech. He says he believes this skill is lacking because it isn’t emphasized as teachers prepare students for assessment testing statewide.
“I don’t feel that the students are getting the same kind of background, especially in things like writing, that they used to have. If you look back, let’s say at 1970, and the writing skills that students came in with, I think that they had had more practice at writing in public school than they do now.”
Elbow says he’s ready to continue his penchant for travel. He and his wife Margaret, who retired last year after 38 years teaching social work at Tech, are looking forward to doing more walking tours, including an upcoming one this spring in Italy.
“We’ve been traveling with Mario, and some of the same people now for about 15 years and it’s great fun so in April we’re going to go to Southern Italy,” he says.
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