Foreign Language Professor To Retire After 31 Years

After arriving from Ecuador in 2015, Melani Andrade was hesitant to speak English because she feared her peers would ridicule her accent. 

But after she took an English for Academic Purposes course at North Campus, professor Myra Medina-Cabral encouraged her to speak up. That push gave Andrade confidence that she has carried  into a career as a crime scene investigator at the North Miami Police Department. 

“I will thank her for being that angel in my life that had the patience and the love to teach [me] important things in order [for me] to learn English,” Andrade said.

Andrade is one of hundreds of students Medina-Cabral has impacted during her three decades at Miami Dade College. Now, the 66-year-old professor is set to retire on May 31.

Colleagues and students say they will miss her. 

“If she’s working with you, she supports you and works with you on the project until it’s done,” said Leon Palombo, a professor in the Foreign Language Department at North who became friends with Medina-Cabral after they won a grant from the Center for the Advancement of Language and Cultural Studies in 2016. “She is an awesome friend that you can always count on in good and bad times.”

Medina-Cabral’s love for languages began after she arrived in Providence, Rhode Island at a young age from the Dominican Republic. She soon discovered that she was the only student in her class who didn’t speak English. 

Learning a new language sparked an interest to study foreign languages and understand other cultures. Today, Medina-Cabral is fluent in English and Spanish and can speak some French and Portuguese. 

Her interest in languages was momentarily sidetracked in 1973 when she enrolled at Rhode Island College as an interior design student. 

However, one semester later she switched her major to Spanish literature and has never looked back since. 

In 1978, she completed her master’s degree in English as a Second Language at Rhode Island College. Seven years later, she became a Spanish professor at her alma mater and had a brief stint as a high school professor in Rhode Island. 

Medina-Cabral’s career at MDC began in 1991 when she became a full-time faculty in the  Department of Language Studies at Medical Campus.

Five years later, she transferred to North Campus’ EAP and Foreign Languages Department.

“She encouraged us as students to always have a plan,” said Yanitza Llanes, who was Medina-Cabral’s ESL student in 2000 and is now an engineer. “That changed not just my personal life, but it also changed my academic life.”

In 2008, Medina-Cabral took a brief break from teaching and became the interim associate dean of academic affairs at Kendall Campus.

A year later, she was back in the classroom teaching foreign languages at North Campus.

“Working directly with students is very fulfilling,” Medina-Cabral said. “When you see your students finally graduate, walk across the stage and receive their diploma, that is to me like I’m graduating.”

Her dedication was recognized in 2013 when she was appointed as a peer reviewer for the Fulbright Specialist Program by the United States Department of State.

In 2018, Medina-Cabral published El Cambio De Las Estaciones (The Change Of Seasons), a novel that explores the position of women in Caribbean society throughout the twentieth century. 

Medina-Cabral, an avid reader of fiction—her favorite literary works include One Hundred Years of Solitude, Si la Mar Fuera de Tinta and From Whom the Bell Tolls—plans to continue dabbling in creative writing in retirement. 

“I hope she enjoys her free time,” Andrade said. “She deserves it.”