After a career in literary and film studies spanning more than 50 years, professor Richard Vela retired in 2024 from UNC Pembroke.
On Feb. 12 from 3:30 to 5:30 pm in the Chancellor’s Dining Room, Vela’s colleagues celebrated the momentous occasion with refreshments and words of heartfelt appreciation and respect. Three colleagues – Theatre professor Holden Hansen, English professor Scott Hicks, and English lecturer UNC Faculty Assembly secretary Robin Snead – shared their praise with the department’s publicity committee.
“Dr. Vela has been a supportive mentor to me since I began teaching at the University in 1997,” Hansen said. “He attended nearly every show I directed between 1997 and 2018 and guided me through the tenure and promotion process as the chair of my peer evaluation committees every step of the way. His expertise was invaluable to me, and I will greatly miss him.”
“Dr. Vela is an incredible teacher who made an impact in students’ lives,” Hicks said. “To overhear his classroom while walking by in the hall was to hear a buzz of voices grappling with the concepts he was teaching. He never stopped innovating in his subject matter, making him a model scholar-teacher to those of us who watched him at work. Most important, he was a role model to students of what an excellent university faculty member ought to be. He invited students to his office for individualized conversations about their writing; he practiced a deeply critical approach to his subject matter in class. In an era of students-as-consumers and faculty in loco parentis, he diverged: he treated his students as the adults they are, with all the rights and responsibilities and obligations of adults. He never talked down to them; he never dismissed them; he always saw the potential they embodied; he always considered them as individuals. I was always happy, for example, when he recommended an outspoken student of his to take my class. ‘You’ll appreciate her perspective, her energy,’ he would tell me. To my mind, this is a microcosm of what made Dr. Vela an unparalleled colleague: He knew his students, he respected them for who they were and who they became, and he related to them with dignity and undivided interest.”
“Dr. Vela was the very first professor I had in my Master's program at UNCP,” Snead said. From that moment on, Dr. Vela always offered constant and encouraging support, something I have appreciated so much over the many years I've known him. When I hoped to return to UNCP to teach, the day that I walked in for my teaching demonstration he looked at me and said, "Oh, it's you!" That recognition put me at ease, and I'm sure that I was able to do a better job as a result. Once I was back on campus, I brought my (at that time very young) son with me one day when I came to pick up something. We ran into Dr. Vela, who talked with Andrew as if he'd known him forever. He took him to his office and gifted him the largest shark's tooth I've ever seen outside of a museum. Andrew still has that shark's tooth. Just a few years ago, long after my Master's work was a distant memory and I'd completed the PhD, Dr. Vela walked up to me at a department meeting and handed me a stack of papers I'd written in his class. He'd kept them all those years and thought I might like to have them back.”
Photographs of the retirement reception are available for viewing and purchase.
