Welcome Back, Manny!

Manuel (Manny) Gonzalez ’84 was born in Bethlehem, the son of parents who grew up in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and fled to the United States. His dad worked at Bethlehem Steel, the family lived at Goepp and Linden Streets, and Manny attended Liberty High.

The war put an early end (4th and 8th grade) to the formal education of Gonzalez’s mother and father, but they insisted their son go to college, and they had saved enough to pay for it. Gonzalez chose Moravian.

“My success from high school on is because of Moravian,” says Gonzalez. “My parents didn’t have the tools to help me during my college years, and the faculty here took good care of me—especially Astrid Kromayer and Mary Arenes [professors emeritae of Spanish].”

Gonzalez majored in French and Spanish, studied for a year at the University of Madrid, and earned his bachelor’s and a teaching certification. He went on to teach high school for eight years and earn a PhD, and in 1992, he took a position as director of adult basic education at Northampton Community College (NCC), where he was quickly identified as the perfect candidate to head up international education.

During his 26-year tenure at NCC, Gonzalez developed the college’s study-abroad and international-enrollment programs, and today NCC ranks among the top community colleges for its international program. In 2012, Community Colleges for International Development recognized Gonzalez with the Dr. Werner Kubsch Award.

This spring, Gonzalez returned to Moravian College as executive director of international enrollment. He is charged with developing international programming here. “I like to build things,” says Gonzalez, who is already bringing more students to the college.

He’s happy to be back at a place that has meant so much to him. “Moravian changed my life,” Gonzalez emphasizes. And, like the professors who guided him, he is ready to change the lives of many, many students.