PIEDAD Guinto-Rosales, a former Artlets assistant dean and literature professor, passed away on Sunday, Dec. 1, due to old age and natural causes. She was 94.
Her death was announced in a Facebook post on Monday by Henry Tenedero, president of the Artlets alumni association.
“She was well-loved and well-respected [in] the University. Her reputation preceded her name so to speak. She contributed immensely to the wealth of academic discourse on English, Speech and Drama,” Tenedero told the Varsitarian.
Rosales graduated summa cum laude and earned her philosophy degree from the defunct UST Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (Philets), now the Faculty of Arts and Letters.
She pursued further studies in literature and communication in prestigious universities, including the Catholic University of America.
Rosales began teaching at UST in 1950 and became the assistant dean of Artlets and chair of the Department of English from 1988 to 1990.
“She made the literary classics come alive,” Prof. Joyce Arriola, director of the UST Research Center for Culture, Arts, and Humanities, told the Varsitarian.
Arriola was a student of Rosales in a number of literature subjects.
“I understand that she was a philosophy graduate so that her approach in literature was very logical, methodical, clear, and she had a true flair for the narrative,” she added.
Now a professor herself, Arriola said she wished she could imbibe Rosales’s method of teaching, “particularly in teaching complex concepts.”
Rosales co-founded the Aquinas Dramatic Guild, the University’s theater group later replaced by Teatro Tomasino.
In 2013, Rosales received the Parangal Hagbong award during the 29th Gawad Ustetika, the longest-running campus literary derby in the Philippines.
The Parangal Hagbong is an annual lifetime achievement award given by the Varsitarian to alumni for their remarkable contributions in Philippine literature.
Rosales is the wife of the late Vicente Rosales Sr., former editor in chief and former adviser of the Varsitarian, and the mother of Vicente “Bambi” Rosales Jr., also a former editor in chief and former adviser of the Varsitarian, and Assoc. Prof. Maria Piedad Natividad, chair of the Department of Medical Education and Research of the UST Hospital.
Rosales earned various accolades, including the Golden Owl Award for Education, in 2005.
She had served as a judge in prestigious award-giving bodies, such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Catholic Mass Media Awards.
She co-authored influential textbooks on literature and communication such as “A Study on Literary Types and Forms,” and “An Anthology of Continental Literature (13th Century to 20th Century).”
“The many students that she taught, they all bear or emulate a piece of her teachings or examples. They are out there ready to continue her sweet legacy,” Arriola said.
Her wake will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 3, until Thursday, Dec. 5, at the Loyola Memorial Chapels in Guadalupe, Makati. With reports from Angeli Ruth R. Acosta
