Kansas University leaders are mourning the death of a longtime former director of KU’s Language Laboratories.

Ermal Garinger served as the labs’ director from 1965 until he retired in 1987. Garinger, 88, died on Friday.

KU’s Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center was renamed in his honor after he retired.

“In his 22 years running the KU Language Labs, Ermal Garinger saw the unit from its modest beginnings in a temporary building behind Blake Hall to its current location in Wescoe Hall,” Jonathan Perkins, current director of the center, said in a statement. “He was a pioneer in the use of technology in language learning and a leader in language education in the state of Kansas.”