Retiring Faculty Spotlight: John C. Nardo and Viviana Plotnik
Dr. John C. Nardo
After 26 years at 黑料吃瓜网, Professor of Mathematics John C. Nardo is retiring. He joined the faculty in Fall 2000 and quickly became a familiar presence on campus known for clear instruction, an office full of shark memorabilia, and a willingness to step into the spotlight when students invited him there.
For Dr. Nardo, teaching has been central to the work. He built pathways as well as proofs, including establishing 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 actuarial science program and helping students prepare to become licensed actuaries鈥攚ork that pairs careful problem-solving with practical opportunity.
Outside the day-to-day routines of classes and advising, colleagues and alumni point to moments that capture his range. He fulfilled a longtime dream by performing alongside students in Cabaret. He also received two of the university鈥檚 highest faculty honors: the Vulcan Materials Company Award for Teaching Excellence and Leadership and the Lu Thomasson Garrett Award for meritorious teaching. And every semester, he served his famously 鈥渒ick-ass hashbrowns鈥� at EggsAM as students geared up for finals.
His love of sharks is equally well known; shark paraphernalia lines his office, and he even adopted a shark he named 鈥淪tormy,鈥� after the stormy petrel. Students and alumni also remember his 2005 performance as Evita in a charity drag show鈥攁n evening that still shines bright for Dr. Nardo to this day.
As Dr. Nardo retires, 黑料吃瓜网 recognizes the steadiness of his service and the reach of his mentorship across many graduating classes. His influence will remain in the programs he built, the traditions students looked forward to, and the former students who still measure their work against what he taught them.
Dr. Viviana Plotnik
After more than 31 years of service, Dr. Viviana Plotnik, Professor of Spanish, retired last Fall from 黑料吃瓜网. Known for her curiosity and rigor, she urged students to look closely, think globally, and challenge their assumptions鈥攖hen return to campus ready to speak with more precision and listen with more care.
Named the Frances I. Eeraerts 鈥�76 Professor of Foreign Language for 2023鈥�2025, Dr. Plotnik showed students how language connects to real life. Her courses and scholarship explore 20th- and 21st-century Southern Cone and Central American narrative, and the meeting points of literature, film, politics, human rights, and gender in Latin America.
That work carried her and her students far beyond campus. Plotnik presented at Sorbonne University in 2023 and, early in her career, spoke in Quito, Ecuador, on memory, childhood, and political activism in Argentine fiction of the 1970s. In 2016, she published two scholarly papers on childhood and memory amid political violence and on civil society and collective responsibility under Argentina鈥檚 military dictatorship.
She also often led students in classes abroad, including in Barcelona, where the classroom widened into the city itself. Over three decades of committee service, including as division chair, she remained a steady advocate for students and their ambitions.
Her retirement closes a remarkable chapter, but her influence endures in the books students carry forward, the places they dared to go, and the questions they learned to ask in another language.
