Educator Ofelia Miramontes, who was 60 when she died of cancer Wednesday, helped create and lead the effort to bring ethnically and economically diverse students to the University of Colorado’s Anglo- dominated Boulder campus.
Raised in a family of modest means, she never assumed that college was in her future.
“But she was bright and capable and curious, and she matured into her passion for providing an education for kids who wanted it,” said her friend Alphonse Keasley, CU minority arts and science program director.
Miramontes was the first child in her family to graduate from college. After serving two years in the Peace Corps as a special-education teacher in Chile, she earned a master’s degree in social science and went on to earn a doctorate at Claremont College. She helped start San Diego’s landmark public school bilingual program and later became an associate professor of education at CU-Boulder.
There, Miramontes taught aspiring teachers to vary their approaches to bilingual students.
“Her expertise was in the learning needs of students who are linguistic and cultural minorities,” explained her friend and fellow CU education professor Lorrie Shepard.
“It’s often difficult for the predominantly white population of future teachers to appreciate the resources and the skills of the students who are different from themselves. She persisted in encouraging future teachers to find ways for those students to do the tasks by varying the way of eliciting their knowledge.”
For example, Miramontes favored using theater to teach students whose cultures emphasize storytelling and oral history.
“In drama, you might find words that you never used before,” she told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2001.
“A writer tends to write for richness, not just day-to-day conversation. So any of those kinds of experiences help broaden the way kids learn to say things,” she said.
In February 1998, Miramontes was appointed to the new position of CU vice chancellor for diversity.
The position was variously interpreted as a hopeful milestone that might improve the school’s flagging minority student retention rate, and as a sop to student activists like the two dozen who staged a sit-in the following week to demand more financial aid and administrative power for minority students.
Miramontes, with her open face and candid smile, proved an excellent diplomat, placating opponents and advocates of affirmative action and steadily winning more scholarships for minority students.
She and her husband often boarded those students at their Boulder home and frequently helped them financially.
Survivors include husband Bill Barclay of Boulder; and sisters Jeri Satterbloom of Chicago and Angela Snyder of San Diego.
A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Sunday at CU’s Koenig Alumni Center in Boulder.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
