ELENA Roco, a former mathematics professor at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, died on Nov. 22 at the UST Hospital. She was 91.
Roco graduated from the University with a bachelor’s degree in science, major in mathematics and physics, on Nov. 15, 1966.
Roco taught in Artlets from July 1967 to March 1996.
“She was one of the pillars that built the Faculty of Arts and Letters. She was a person with a jovial personality, you could say she was the life of the party,” Artlets Asst. Dean Narcisa Tabirara told the Varsitarian.
Tabirara, who was a student of Roco, said the professor was loved by her students despite mathematics being the “waterloo of Artlets,” because she knew the balance of being “terror” and a “prankster.”
Asst. Prof. Josephine Placido, chairwoman of the Department of Sociology, remembered Roco as a “very strict” professor when she was still her student, and a motherly colleague when they were both members of the faculty.
“With my highest regard to Ma’am Elena Roco, I would say that it was a job well-done, because she was able to pass on the legacy of interest in math, making the social sciences students like Math,” Placido told the Varsitarian.
