“Where’s the best place to study your Spanish flashcards? In the checkout line at Wal-Mart … if you take them out and start practicing out loud, the people behind you won’t talk to you, and the people in front of you will let you ahead of them!”

Dr. Robert Adler is known among the foreign languages department for cracking jokes like the one above. A self-proclaimed “street kid” at heart and a man who truly does it all, Adler has been teaching Spanish at UNA since 1994.

He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Adler’s father was a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, and his mother was a native of the Dominican Republic.

From a very young age, Adler was exposed to foreign languages. His cousin’s family, who lived down the street from him, spoke German, and Spanish was the primary language in his own home. He spent several summers of his childhood living with family in the Dominican Republic, where he learned more Spanish.

Adler began attending Queens College at the age of 15, after skipping several grades. When he was 20 years old and in his final year of school, Adler participated in a study abroad trip to Spain for an entire year.

“When I was there, I felt at home for the first time in my life,” Adler said. “That year completely changed my life.”

Once he returned to the states, Adler began graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. He only completed one year before enlisting in the army for three years.

Before Adler left for basic training, he took a 120-day deferment and went to Spain, where he bought his first motorcycle and learned how to ride.

His time in the army took him to several places, but he spent the majority of his enlistment in Vietnam and Heidelberg, Germany. During his time in Heidelberg, Adler would use his three-day passes to visit Spain. By the end of his two-year stay, he had visited Spain over nine times.

Adler returned to the states and finished graduate school and began to interview for teaching positions at colleges in the U.S. He has taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Montevallo University, and has spent six months teaching at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil.

While teaching at UAB, Adler got involved with a local Flamenco dancing company, now called Corazon Flamenco, which he is still active in. He travels weekly to meet and practice with the company, and they have performed shows all over North Alabama.

In addition to Flamenco dancing, Adler is also a member of three different ballroom dancing clubs and spends his Thursday nights donning his cowboy boots and hat while line dancing at the Sundance Saloon in Muscle Shoals.

“I really love that dancing involves both exercise and coordination; it’s much better than just pumping iron at the gym,” Adler said.

As if Adler’s weeks are not already busy enough, he is a member of the Shoals Dance Theatre, the Florence Rotary Club, the Alabama Holocaust Commission and the Shoals Interfaith Council. He is a bell-ringer for the Salvation Army every Christmas, and he is a translator for courts in the North Alabama area.

Adler enjoys riding motorcycles with one of his good friends, Dr. Terry Richardson of the biology department, who he claims gave him “Hawaiian print shirt disease.”

Adler loves to travel and teach, and he has been leading study abroad trips to Spain for over 20 years.

“Spain changed my life,” he said. “It could do the same for someone else.”