Middlebury mourns loss of Kim Sparks,
longtime professor of German
A message from the president:
I write with the sad news that Professor Emeritus M. Kimberly Sparks died early on the morning of October 30.
Kim began teaching at Middlebury in 1966, when he was appointed associate professor of German. He was also named chair of the department and the first holder of the Jean Thomson Fulton Chair of Modern Languages and Literature. Kim was one of a number of young, talented professors that former Middlebury College President James Armstrong hired away from Princeton after he himself left Princeton to become president of Middlebury in 1963.
Kim went on to be appointed Charles A. Dana Professor of German in 1969 and an Old Dominion Foundation Professor of German in 1971. In 1973, he began a three-year term as chair of the newly formed committee on foreign languages and was later named chair of the division of foreign languages. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kim served several terms as director of the Middlebury College School in Germany. Kim retired in 1993 and was appointed professor emeritus of literary studies in 1994. He later taught a writing course on Vienna as professor emeritus and received another appointment as professor emeritus of German in 1999.
Kim graduated summa cum laude and with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Princeton in 1956, and earned his doctorate there in 1962. He interrupted his undergraduate studies in 1951 to serve for nearly four years with the United States Air Force Security Service in the United States, Germany, and England, during which he studied Russian at the Air Force Language School at Syracuse University. In graduate school, he held National and Samuel S. Fels Fellowships, and he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Vienna.
He is survived by his wife Suzann, their three children, and grandchildren.
Ronald D. Liebowitz
President