A personal story
On October of 2005, I attended a workshop organized by the Pew FTLC (Faculty Teaching and Learning Center). The title of the workshop was: "Toward an Intercultural Campus: Issues of Pedagogy". The presenter was Greg Tanaka. Dr. Tanaka said that everybody has a personal story and that sharing our personal stories helps us appreciate other people, their efforts, their successes, their struggles and their values.
Thus, I am using this page to tell a little bit of my personal story.
I was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia, South America. I was born in 1960.
My Dad's Family
My father, Helmuth Trefftz, is German. He was born in Bremen in 1926. He came to Colombia in 1952, originally on a three-year contract. He fell in love with my Mom and with Medellín and he has lived there ever since.
My Dad is a talented musician. He plays the cello and he is also a good singer. He was a cellist at the "Orquesta Sinfónica de Antioquia" in Medellín. While he was living in Bremen, he sang with the "Domchor", the choir of the Cathedral in Bremen. My brother Helmuth had an intership in 1981 in Bremen and he also sang with the "Domchor". Some members of the choir still remembered my Dad.
My Dad has been a cello player at performances of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Händel's Messiah and J.S. Bach's Saint John Passion. He has also sang in choirs at performances of those very same great choral works.
My brother Helmuth plays the recorder quite well and sometimes we would play together recorder, cello and piano. We have also played with Pablo, my son, who plays the violin.
Pictures of the Trefftz Family in Germany can be seen by clicking here Those pictures were taken between 1925 and 1935.
The following persons appear in those pictures:
- Oskar Trefftz, my grandfather
- Gertrud Trefftz (Abegg), my grandmother
- Martha Borchardt (Trefftz), my aunt
- Erika Weber (Trefftz), my aunt
- Helmuth Trefftz, my father
- Georg Trefftz, my uncle
- Lily Trefftz ( Anna Eliza Runge ), my great-grandmother (Oskar's mother). Lily wrote her memoirs. Rolf Borchardt, the late husband of my aunt Martha, typed them and published several copies of them. They are called "Erinnerungen" (Memories).
The Abegg family's house was in Holler Allee 12, in Bremen. Right behind the house, there was a nice common garden called "Die Harmonie".
The house of the Trefftz family was in Dijonstrasse 7, in Bremen.
Some of the pictures were taken in Hexenberg.
My Mom's Family
My mother, Olga, was Colombian. Several pictures of my parents and members of my Mom's family can be found here.
The following persons appear in those pictures:- Jael Muñoz de Gómez, my grandmother
- Lola Gómez de Jaramillo, my aunt
- Jael Gómez Muñoz, my aunt
- Catalina Gómez de Delgado, my aunt
- Aurora Gómez Muñoz, my aunt
- Pablo Julio Gómez Muñoz, my uncle
- Ligia Gómez Muñoz, my aunt
- Luz Gómez de Villa, my aunt
- Antonio Jaramillo Tamayo, Lola's husband
- Alberto Delgado Cardona, Catalina's husband
- Gabriel Villa Villa, Luz' husband
- Concha Medina Olano, Pablo Julio's wife
My mother's family is a closely knit one. I had six aunts and one uncle and we all lived in the same city. Christmas celebrations were wonderful. Growing up, we lived very close to my aunts and my maternal grandmother Jael. I spent many hours at their house, playing "tute" (a cards game) and parcheesi. One of my aunts, also named Jael, taught me how to read.
My Brother
I have one brother, Helmuth. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Rutgers University. He is now retired. He still teaches a couple of courses at Universidad EAFIT. Helmuth is married and has three children. Helmuth is now a grand father! He used to compete in triathlons. Here is a picture of him after competing in a race. He is the one on the left, wearing a GVSU t-shirt! In December of 2012, he competed in a "Half Iron-man" triathlon, in Calima, Colombia. He finished in six hours, twenty-two minutes and eight seconds. Helmuth has many musical talents. He has a very good voice. He sings with a great choir in Medellín called "Tonos Humanos". In his early 20s, he used to play the piano with a band called "Bossamba". He plays recorders (flutes) of different types. He used to sail, windsurf and scuba dive.
Helmuth worked for the Colombian Ministry of Education for several years. He was the coordinator of the Colombian "Consejo Nacional de Acreditacion" (CNA), the body in charge of accreditation of Colombian Universities. In recognition for his contributions, the Ministry of Education gave him the "Simon Bolivar" award in the "Orden Gran Maestro". This is a picture of the diploma of the award. This is a picture of the associated medal.
Growing up...
I went to school to a Catholic School in Medellín called Colegio San Ignacio. The alumni of that school have a very nice alumni association called ASIA. ASIA supports several charities in the city of Medellín. Before the 1980s, Medellín was a safe city, with very little violence. There were problems, but those problems were never as serious as the ones the city experienced in the late 80s and 90s.
College
I went to college to Universidad EAFIT. in Medellín. I graduated in 1984.
I started working, part time, as a programmer at Compañía Nacional de Chocolates in 1981. I worked there until 1985, when I transfered to a subsidiary, Colcafe, where I worked until July of 1987.
Ana
In August of 1987 I married Ana Posada. We were classmates in College. We attended Western Michigan University where we graduated with our master's degrees in Computer Science in the summer of 1989.
Ana worked at Grand Valley State University as an affiliate faculty member. She started in the fall of 2002 and she retired in 2023. In 2020, she received the Burch, Jacobs & Moore Diversity Teaching Excellence Award.
MSU
Between 1989 and 1994, I attended Michigan State University. In 1994 I graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. My advisor was Professor Phil McKinley. He was(is) a terrific advisor, who taught me how to do research and how to write in a scholarly manner. It was a challenging yet gratifying experience. Before working for Professor McKinley, I worked for a year for Professor W.-J. Hsu, also a nice advisor. Ana worked for MSU between 1990 and 1994.
EAFIT
After my graduation, we went back to Colombia, with the help of Colciencias, the Colombian equivalent of NSF. I taught at Universidad EAFIT between July of 1994 and December of 2000. I enjoyed working at this institution very much. I had a very nice group of colleagues and students. In 1999 and 2000 the security situation in Medellín and Colombia was worrisome, and therefore...
GVSU
In January of 2001, we came back to Michigan. I have been teaching at Grand Valley State University, a fine teaching institution! I am now a professor. I have taught short summer courses at EAFIT in 2003 and 2004. In August of 2005, I gave a talk on String Searching Algorithms at EAFIT. In May of 2009, I spoke about GPU and CUDA, again at EAFIT. In August of 2014, I gave a set lectures on MPI.
Pablo and Camila
Ana and I have two children, Pablo and Camila.
In October of 2013, Pablo competed in a marathon, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He finished in four hours, ten minutes and eight seconds. Pablo also completed a 50 mile ( 80 kilometers) race in Pickney, Michigan, on September 6, 2014. He took 11 hours and 18 minutes to complete the course. Pablo and five friends took part in the Ragnar Northwest Passage race. His team, "Started from the border now we are here", took 27 hours, 18 minutes and 50 seconds to run 196 miles. They took the second place in the Ultra - Mixed Open category. On October 1, 2016, Pablo ran the Leavenworth Oktoberfest Half Marathon. His time was 1:30:05 (one hour, thirty minutes and five seconds).
Pablo graduated from the University of Michigan as an aerospace engineer in May of 2014. He worked for Ford for a year. He started graduate school in Aerospace Engineering (Computational Fluid Mechanics) at the University of Washington in Seattle in the fall of 2015. This is the web page of the group he worked for. This is a link to a journal paper he published with his advisor: On the interaction of Taylor length-scale size droplets and homogeneous shear turbulence. On December 7 2023, Pablo defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Pablo graduated from the University of Washington with his Ph.D in May of 2024.
Pablo is a talented photographer. You can see a sample of the pictures he has taken here. He went camping to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan in June of 2015. He took some very nice pictures that are available here.
He is also a gifted amateur violin player. He has played in his High School Orchestra (Forest Hills Northern), in the Grand Rapids Youth Symphony, in the Michigan Pops Orchestra and in the Campus Symphony Orchestra, at the University of Michigan. In Seattle, he is playing as one of the second violins in the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra.
Camila has faced some health problems. Fortunately, she is doing much better now. In 2014, she was one of the "Marathon Miracle Mile Patients" at a Marathon that raised funds for the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The marathon took place on Sunday, October 19th. 2014. Pablo ran a half marathon.
Camila is a gifted singer and she has sung in many choirs and ensembles. She sang in High School in the choir and the jazz ensemble (Northern Singers), and she sang with the Grand Rapids Symphony Youth Chorus. During the academic years 2014-2017 she has sung with two choirs in Kalamazoo College: The College Singers and Women's Ensemble. In 2017 she sang with the Kalamazoo Bach Festival Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
Camila participated in a Study Abroad program sponsored by Kalamazoo College at the University of Bonn in Germany. She was in Bonn between April and August of 2016. Camila's German improved tremendously. Our extended family in Germany was very hospitable and Camila enjoyed her time in Germany very much. She also traveled to many different places.
Camila graduated in June of 2017 from Kalamazoo College. Her major was Psychology and she also earned a minor in Political Science. She graduated summa cum laude and with honors in Psychology. Camila is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Camila's Senior Independent Project (SIP) was about transitional justice in Colombia. Her adviser was Dr. John Dugas.
After graduating from college, Camila worked for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center between June of 2017 and February of 2020 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She managed and facilitated the casework for over 370 immigrant children in federal foster care in the state of Michigan. In July of 2018, she became a Department Of Justice Accredited Representative. She represented unaccompanied children in removal proceedings including court appearances before the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review.
In February of 2020, Camila started working for the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights as a Case Support Associate. In December 2023, she was promoted to the National Program Manager. In the fall of 2021, Camila started studying at Columbia University. She completed her master's degree in Social Work in 2024.
On May 2018, Camila ran a half marathon in Brooklyn. Her time was 2 hours, 28 minutes and 14 seconds.
In October of 2020, Camila and her fiancé, Alex Werder, got engaged. On May 2nd. 2021, Camila and Alex married. Ana,Pablo and I are delighted for them.
We are parishoners at St. Robert of Newminster Parish in Ada, Michigan.