A self-described "gypsy scholar," Robin Quizar will spend next year in the Czech Republic.

Robin Quizar’s newly awarded Fulbright Scholarship to teach in the Czech Republic for a semester is a continuation of a long career in studying other cultures and their languages. In fact, being a Fulbright Scholar is not new to the linguistics professor, who traveled to Costa Rica under a Fulbright in 1988, three years before she came to Metro State.

Quizar’s Fulbright will enable her to teach at Palacky University in Olomouc, “the second-most historic town in the Czech Republic, after Prague,” she says. It is a place with which she has some familiarity, having attended a conference there two years ago during which she met faculty and discussed the possibility of being a guest linguist. “I’ve been studying the Czech language for the past five years,” she says, noting that she has gone there for five summers.

Quizar will be taking a one-year sabbatical from the English Department at Metro State for the 2006-07 year, which will accommodate the different academic calendar of the Czech system. She will teach courses in American English and culture (as opposed to British English, to which the Czechs are generally more exposed) during Palacky’s October-January semester. The rest of the year she plans to do research.

“I am excited both to teach and to do the research,” she says. She describes her research as focusing on three areas. The first will address “why the Czechs are taught English language skills so much better than we Americans teach English as a second language within our own country.” Quizar also plans to research the Czech film industry and the Prague Linguistic School, both of which changed markedly as a result of the Soviet occupation.

Quizar’s career in linguistics has taken her all around the world. She speaks German and Spanish and has studied Mayan and Russian. Earlier in her career, she spent three years in Guatemala teaching Mayan Indians how to write one of the many Mayan languages. In Costa Rica, she taught linguistics at the National University. She has also studied and taught in Austria and Germany

“I was a gypsy scholar before I came to Metro (in 1991),” she laughs.

But of all the places she’s been, Quizar claims Metro State as her favorite. “I love teaching here,” she says. “The variety of students—age-wise and ethnically—is wonderful. I like my colleagues. And I love the focus on teaching here, and especially the size of my classes where I can interact with my students and know their names.”

A Colorado native, Quizar grew up in Colorado Springs, received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, her doctorate in linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and two master’s degrees, one in linguistics and one in anthropology.