Awards and Accolades

Faculty

John Nix, associate professor in the Department of Music, was nominated as editor of the Vocal Music Section of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Music Education, which includes a 1,200-page book, a Web site and stand-alone volumes.

Rebekah E. Smith, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, has been awarded a five-year, $1,052,324 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study adult memory. Smith, who directs the UTSA Cognitive Aging Lab, is studying prospective memory, the act of remembering to complete an action.

Ken Little, professor in the Department of Art and Art History, received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Utah in March 2009. Little also installed a public work in Austin for the Texas Biennial exhibition in February 2009. It is a 50-foot-wide picket fence in the shape of the continental United States titled Homeland Security.

Students

Patricia Trujillo, 2008 Ph.D. graduate in the Department of English, has accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of English at Colorado State University in Pueblo.

Marco Cervantes, a doctoral candidate in the Department of English, was awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. This award, which is open to anyone in any field, is the most rigorously refereed fellowship in the nation for graduate students. This year, only five dissertation fellowships were offered nationwide in the literature and languages category. Cervantes’ dissertation project is titled “Afro-Mestizaje: Towards a Theory of Blackness in Tejano Fiction, Poetry and Music.”

Elizabeth Ann Hubbs, a May 2009 modern languages and literatures graduate in Spanish, was accepted into graduate programs at three of five universities to which she applied. She chose to pursue a master’s certificate in English linguistics from the United Kingdom Telford Academy and its host, the EU Company, in Tai Pei, Taiwan. While studying for her certificate, she will also teach English.

Department of Communication students Kaela Dawson, Romina Gonzalez, Juliet Quintero and Tiffany Smith earned an honorable mention in the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) National Bateman Case Study Competition. Seventy-seven teams from across the nation participated in this year’s competition. This is the fifth time in the past six years that UTSA students have received such an award. The Bateman is considered by many to be the most difficult and prestigious national competition for public relations majors.

Andy Montee, a junior English major, teamed with Chris Thomas, a junior business major, to finish the debate season by winning six out of eight preliminary rounds in the Cross Examination Debate Association’s (CEDA) championship. Montee and Thomas advanced to the elimination rounds seeded 14th in a field of over 200 teams from across the country. Both were honored with CEDA’s All American Debater Award, placing them among the top 25 individual debaters in the country.

Alumni

Anthony Gutierrez, B.A. in political science 2002, is deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party.

Emma Ruiz, B.A. in English 2006, was honored as the Democratic GAIN (Grassroots Action Institute and Network) Rookie of the Year. Ruiz worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and for the Young Democrats of America in Washington, D.C.

Lauren Gulbas, M.A. in anthropology 2004, who went on to obtain her Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University, has accepted the position of research fellow at the Center for Mental Health Services Research in St. Louis, Mo.

Dana G. Hooker, B.A. in communication 2007, has completed her M.A. with a 4.0 GPA from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. She also was named the Graduate Researcher of the Year. An assessment created with her thesis, titled “Children’s Intercultural Readiness Assessment (CIRA (c)),” is being used around the world. This fall, Hooker begins her Ph.D. program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Leanne Haase-Goebel, B.A. in English 1989, was awarded a second place excellence in journalism honor in the “Top of the Rockies” Society of Professional Journalists regional competition for best blog. Additionally, Haase-Goebel won a third place honor for feature writing for “Artist, Gallery Owner Shares Insights,” published in The Durango Herald, and a second place honor for criticism for “Ephemeral Biennial,” also published in The Durango Herald.