Dr. María Carmen Riddel earned a B.A. in Spanish Education from Marshall in 1975, an M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literature from the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Twentieth Century Spanish Peninsular Literature from The Ohio State University in 1988. She joined the Marshall faculty in 1983 and served as the supervisor of the departmental Study Abroad Programs in France and Spain, as the faculty advisor and Director of the Summer Language and Culture Program in Madrid, and as Chair of the Department of Modern Languages. She was the recipient of the Dr. Charles E. Hedrick Outstanding Faculty Award in 2010, and in 2011, she was one of five state-wide finalists for the prestigious Edward H. Greene Professor of the Year Award given by the Faculty Merit Foundation of West Virginia. Dr. Riddel is the author of La Escritura Femenina en la Posguerra Española: Análisis de Novelas Escogidas de Carmen Martín Gaite, Ana María Matute y Elena Quiroga (Peter Lang Publishing, 1995). She has also translated two books, including Gabriel Tortella’s The Origins of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Contemporary Social and Economic History (Routledge, 2010), as well as numerous articles and documents. She also frequently serves as an interpreter for law enforcement and medical agencies in the area. Since her retirement in 2011 as Professor Emerita, she has participated as an interpreter in yearly medical missions in Ecuador.