Photo by Chris Meyer
 “Whether one looks at Russ as a teacher, as a scholar, as a diplomat, or as an administrator, one finds a special mark: generosity, enthusiasm, and a joy in sharing knowledge and new insights with others.” — Lewis Miller Jr., professor emeritus of English, IU Bloomington |
Retirement does not seem to be a word in Russell Salmon’s vocabulary—not in English, not in Spanish, not in Portuguese. Though five years into emeritus standing, Salmon is as busy as ever working to heighten visibility and understanding of Latin America in the IU community and beyond.
As a scholar, Salmon is renowned for editing and publishing in English the writings of Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal. He also is recognized for a career that has artfully balanced teaching with service.
Some of Salmon’s many roles include professor; former director of IU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; creator of academic and community exchange programs in Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba; and planning committee member for the Indiana Humanities Council’s International Awareness Project on Mexico with a related yearlong project in Bloomington that involved exhibits, library reading groups, lectures, seminars and film series.
A seasoned traveler, Salmon has a vita that includes teaching at and leading foreign study programs in Latin America and Spain. Since 1991, he has co-directed the annual IU Spanish Language Teachers’ Workshop in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. In the spring of 2001, he created a service learning course, Mexico: In Service, in collaboration with the Mexican state agency Integral Development of the Family, in which students spend spring break in Guanajuato, Mexico, working for the agency in three venues. This is the fourth year for the collaborative effort.
Salmon has been equally busy at home in Indiana. In 1990, he brought Nobel laureate Oscar Arias to IU to inaugurate the Indiana Center for the Study of Global Change and World Peace. As a founding board member and past president of Bloomington Sister Cities International, he initiated the Posoltega, Nicaragua, sister city relationship and represented Bloomington in 2001 and 2003 at annual meetings of the United States–Cuba Sister Cities Association in Havana.
He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including IU’s Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (1999) and Teacher of the Year, Postsecondary Level, Indiana Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (1995). He was also the first recipient of the IU Distinguished Service Award (1987).
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