With great sadness, Sigma Delta Pi announces that yesterday Sunday morning, July 16, 2023, Dr. Marie-Lise Gazarian, Sigma Delta Pi’s vice-president of the northeast and long-standing chapter adviser at St. John’s University, left us.
“Marie-Lise,” as her many close friends and colleagues knew her, was first elected as Sigma Delta Pi’s regional vice-president of the northeast in 1989, and was in the midst of serving her latest 3-year term (2022-2025) as the longest serving national officer in our Society’s 104-year history. As chapter adviser at St. John’s University, she distinguished herself as one of the longest serving and most accomplished Sigma Delta Pi advisers in our Society’s history with 17 Honor Chapter distinctions beginning in 1995, one Ignacio and Sophie Galbis Award in 2001 for outstanding chapter of the year, two Octavio Paz Awards in 2004 and 2007 respectively for earning the Honor Chapter distinction for each year of a triennium, and the Frida Kahlo Award in 2017 for St. John’s outstanding chapter website. In addition, Dr. Gazarian was inducted into Sigma Delta Pi’s prestigious Orden de Don Quijote in 2001 for her exemplary contributions to the Society’s mission and Hispanism, and more recently in 2019 during the centennial celebration of the Society in San Diego, California, she was awarded the Jorge Luis Borges Award, one of Sigma Delta Pi’s highest honors for “lifetime achievement of those committed to the activities of the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society.”
Anyone who knew Dr. Gazarian was fully aware of her unwavering loyalty and dedication to her beloved Sigma Delta Pi, and she sought every opportunity at both the local and national levels to raise the profile of the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society.
She truly embodied the mission of our organization, and she will be dearly missed but never forgotten. “Spanías Didagéi Proágomen,” Vice-President Gazarian, and may your enduring legacy continue to inspire us all for many decades to come.
Dr. Marie-Lise Gazarian, second from left, at Sigma Delta Pi’s Triennial Convention in 2019
where she was awarded the Jorge Luis Borges Award for lifetime achievement.