Andrew Debicki was a Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas (KU). He was born in Poland on June 28, 1934 and lived in Cuba from 1942-1949. He received his B.A. in 1955 and his Ph.D. in 1960, both from Yale University. He taught at Trinity College in Connecticut from 1957-1960, and was a professor at Grinnell College in Iowa from 1960-1968 before coming to the University of Kansas in 1968.

During his time at the University of Kansas, Debicki served as Co-Director for the Center for Humanistic Studies, Director of the Hall Center for the Humanities (1989-1993), Vice-Chancellor for Research, Graduate Studies, and Public Service (1994-1996), and Dean of the Graduate School and International Programs (1996-2000). Debicki retired from administration in 2000, but remained on the faculty to teach and conduct research.

Debicki is the author and editor of many publications -- both books and articles -- in both Spanish and English. His monographs include Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea (La generación de 1924-25) (1968) and Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond (1994).

Debicki held postdoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (in both 1970 and 1980), the National Endowment for the Humanities (in 1992), and the National Humanities Center. He received the Balfour Jeffrey Research Award from the University of Kansas in 1984, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency in 1993. He was named University Distinguished Professor in 1976. He was awarded the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession in 1999. In 2002, Debicki was honored as a pioneer in modern Spanish poetry by an international group of poets and scholars, as a part of the KU Symposium "The Discovery of Poetry."

Andrew Debicki married Mary Jo Tidmarsh in 1959; she passed away in 1975. He remarried in 1987 to Mary Elizabeth Conway Gwin. He was the father of two daughters, Mary Beth and Margaret, and became the stepfather to four children, Melissa, Betsy, Michael, and Christopher. In 1998, Debicki and his wife Mary Elizabeth, former director of KU's Office of Study Abroad, donated funds to the University of Kansas to establish the Mary Elizabeth and Andrew P. Debicki Graduate Fellowship Fund for graduate students in the humanities.

Dr. Andrew Peter Debicki died on January 20, 2005.