Driver dedicated much of her professional life to the MARC in various capacities for 40 years as the center’s director, assistant associate director, and curator of the Spanish Documents Collection. She contributed greatly to the island’s understanding of the Spanish colonization of the Marianas through her translations of European accounts, which she published through the MARC. She was the associate editor of the Guam Recorder and was an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Guam. Driver is largely responsible for the growth in size and quality of MARC collections, which continue to inform local, regional, and international scholars about the history and lives of the peoples and cultures of Micronesia.

“Dr. Driver helped to shape how research was done at the University, particularly with regard to the social sciences within the Micronesian region,” said Monique Storie, dean of University Libraries at the University of Guam. “She was instrumental in shaping the role the MARC has played in helping the community understand its place in the world, both through her 40 years of service to the MARC and as an ambassador for MARC after she retired.”

Driver retired in 2007 and that year received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Guam and was awarded the Ancient Order of the Chamorri, the highest civilian honor bestowed on a non-native resident of Guam, by the governor of Guam.

About the Micronesian Area Research Center

The Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center is a cultural repository and extensive library of Micronesian knowledge and publications at the University of Guam that has served Guam and the region for the past 50 years. The MARC’s collection contains more than 40,000 volumes of research materials on Guam and Micronesia, 800 unpublished theses and dissertations, approximately one million pages of archival documents, and a CHamoru Genealogy collection, which includes more than 100 family genealogies. The MARC also offers a notable list of publications produced by MARC scholars and houses the University of Guam Press, which extends the MARC’s mission of collecting, preserving, and providing access to reliable and accurate information about the peoples and cultures of the Western Pacific, thereby advancing scholarship and learning in and about the region.