Yolopattli Hernández-Torres (Ph.D., Spanish, 2010) was recently featured in the Champaign News-Gazette as part of a series titled “University of Illinois 150 Years and Belong: Students and faculty who’ve gone on to interesting things.”

“How I miss our library,” Hernández-Torres (Ph.D. ’10, Spanish literature and cultures) says from Baltimore, where she’s an associate professor of Spanish at Loyola University, Maryland.

Hernández-Torres came to Illinois from Mexico in 2002 to pursue a master’s in Spanish literature. “I know that studying in the incomparable main Stacks was a key factor in my decision to continue with graduate studies,” she says.

She completed her Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Mariselle Meléndez, “who shared her knowledge, time and passion for colonial studies with me. She is still to this day a generous mentor, and a model for me as the ideal balance of a scholar-teacher.

“I also consider Professor Ann Abbott an inspiration (for showing) me to make your knowledge useful in the community and to promote social justice in education.

“Those years in Urbana-Champaign were filled with joy, hard work and friendship. It is hard to choose just one favorite spot in the whole campus.”

However, she mentions the Quad; the Foreign Languages Building; and various hangouts with her husband, whom she met at Illinois. “I was so lucky to walk everyday through the Quad to go to the FLB, a building that was often called ‘ugly’ but that has its charm and was a home to me for all those years, and gave me a nice office and all the resources to complete my studies, as well as to help my students as a TA.”