The phone rings for the 5th time but goes unanswered. A friend must have forgotten that at the Broner house, there is still at least an hour and a half left to go of uninterrupted conversation around the dinner table--all in Spansh, of course. English is just not allowed among family members in this household.

Loving life

After finally leaving St. Olaf when it is usually well past dark, Maggie Broner goes home to her other full-time job of raising two bilingual children (Annette, 15; and Matthias, 9), with her husband, Gabriel. This past January, her family was forced to get along without her for a whole month as she led the Spanish 234 interim trip to Costa Rica. When thanked for hosting the Costa Rica reunion at their house, Gabriel Broner responded, "Today was the easy part."

Even to those not acquainted with the Spanish department, Maggie Broner stands out in her chic outfits and her black-rimmed eyeglasses that match her short-cut hair. If she didn't love teaching so much, Maggie willingly admits that she probably would have chosen a career in fashion. Being noted for style may not be a difficult feat at a small conservative college in the upper Midwest, but Broner reports having always loved being different.

Growing up around the world

Maggie Broner's life has definitely been far from typical. Broner's father's job as a university professor necessitated living in quite a few different places.

She was born in Argentina and given the name Joaquina Claudia Aráoz-Durand Salceda, onto which was tacked "de Broner" when she married at age 22. This long string of sounds reveals her Basque, French, Galëcan, and Polish connections, but for short she's always been called Maggie. She was given this nickname after two cartoon characters from the 60's--Mr. Maggoo and Maguila the Gorilla. Don't bother asking her why. She's really not quite sure.

When she was 5, Maggie's father worked for a large research center and was sent to Venezuela. Although her parents had expected to live in Venezuela for only a year before moving back to Argentina, six months after they left the country there was a coup, which precipitated a work drain out of Argentina and other countries such as Venezuela, Spain, and the U.S. When Maggie was nine, her family moved to Canada for three years, where her father eventually received his doctorate from the University of Waterloo. They lived for one more year in Venezuela before returning to live in Argentina.

Her family moved once again to Venezuela, this time missing another coup by just three months. Being a traveling teenager was difficult; many of her friends at the time disappeared, and she never regained contact with them. Maggie continued living in Venezuela from age 14 until she was 21. She then moved with her family one more time, this time to live in Germany for a year.

A year after returning to Venezuela, she married Gabriel, who had been her best friend since she was 14. Looking back, they think of themselves as having been very young when they married. Gabriel had just finished college, and three years later (1985) their daughter Annette was born.

Finding a career

Gabriel began working for an American company in Venezuela and, after a year of marriage, the family moved to Minnesota. Maggie continued with her studies, transferring her credits to the Universty of Minnesota from the modern languages track that she'd begun in Venezuela, once again thinking the relocation would be only temporary. As it turned out, however, Gabriel loved his job here with Cray Research (now SGI), working with super computers. Maggie finished at the University of Minnesota with a degree in linguistics, followed by a masters and then a PhD.

Although her dissertation was on first and second language use in the classroom, Broner's real interests are much broader. The quick growth of the Spanish department at St. Olaf is only one reflection of a nation-wide realization that Spanish is a major factor in the linguistic make-up of this country. Broner is interested in Spanish in the U.S. in all of its different forms, including bilingual/Spanish homes and education.

Broner was attracted to St. Olaf partly by the "global" mission of the college and partly because of the FLAC (foreign language across the curriculum) program, which was the first of its kind in the U.S. Although she is likely the only professor at St. Olaf who is a trained linguist, she feels like she fits in with her colleagues here. She was also drawn by Professor Wendy Allen's work in 2nd language and culture acquisition. She feels that she has found a home here at St. Olaf, not only within the Spanish department, but also across departmental lines, thanks to the the linguistics concentration and the Hispanic Studies major. She describes St. Olaf like a big quilt with diverse, yet interwoven parts and is excited at the prospect of what the Spanish department might be able to accomplish in the future.

Speaking Spanish in the U.S.