Elijah Clarence Hills (July 2, 1867 Apr. 21, 1932), professor and philologist, was born in Arlington, Illinois, to Elijah Justin Hills and Mary Eleanor Larkin Hills. At a young age, his family moved to Tampa, Florida, where he acquired his early and intimate knowledge of the Spanish language. (Morley, 314) In 1892, Hills graduated from Cornell University, where he was a teaching fellow for one year before spending a year abroad in Paris.
In 1896, he joined the faculty of Rollins College in Florida as a professor of modern languages, where he taught for seven years. In 1898, Hills married Metta Virgil Strough. Together, they had four children. It was during his tenure at Rollins College that Hills joined the staff of the Cuban Summer School program at Harvard in 1900. He served as the director of English classes coordinating forty separate classes taught by students of Radcliffe College and Harvard College.
The English classes proved to be among the most popular among the Cuban teachers and Hills wrote a very detailed account of the programs origins, participants, and activities in the Harvard Graduates Magazine in September 1900. He informed his Harvard readers that the Summer School was "the most representative gathering of Cubans that has ever been held in Cuba or elsewhere, a claim that was correct in many respects.
As he noted, 125 of Cubas 129 municipalities were represented, and a majority (52%) of the teachers were women, roughly the same proportion as on the island as a whole. At that time, only 30 percent of the population was literate and white Cubans were more than 20 times likely to have a degree than black Cubans.
In 1896, he joined the faculty of Rollins College in Florida as a professor of modern languages, where he taught for seven years. In 1898, Hills married Metta Virgil Strough. Together, they had four children. It was during his tenure at Rollins College that Hills joined the staff of the Cuban Summer School program at Harvard in 1900. He served as the director of English classes coordinating forty separate classes taught by students of Radcliffe College and Harvard College.
The English classes proved to be among the most popular among the Cuban teachers and Hills wrote a very detailed account of the programs origins, participants, and activities in the Harvard Graduates Magazine in September 1900. He informed his Harvard readers that the Summer School was "the most representative gathering of Cubans that has ever been held in Cuba or elsewhere, a claim that was correct in many respects.
As he noted, 125 of Cubas 129 municipalities were represented, and a majority (52%) of the teachers were women, roughly the same proportion as on the island as a whole. At that time, only 30 percent of the population was literate and white Cubans were more than 20 times likely to have a degree than black Cubans.