Honors, Awards and Grants in the UTSA Community
Students
-- Twenty UTSA student athletes were named to the spring 2001 Southland Conference
All-Academic teams. Student athletes who had completed at least one full year
at their respective universities and earned at least a 3.0 cumulative grade
point average through the fall semester qualified for the teams. In addition,
the student athlete must have been a letter winner at her or his institution.
Monica Briggs, softball
Denise Briggs, softball
Chelsea DeMarte, basketball
Sarah Brock, basketball
Genny Garcia, basketball
Katrina Dorsey, basketball
Bobby Alford, baseball
Link LeGrand, baseball
Brette Parrish,baseball
Hunter Wenzel, baseball
Cara Cooper, track and field
Jessica Fowler, track and field
Kylene O'Connor, track and field
Samantha Perez, track and field
Theresa Perez, track and field
Katie Poindexter, track and field
James Cantu, track and field
Santos Gonzales, track and field
Vicente Gutierrez, golf
Court Watson, golf
-- Communication/public relations students Kelly Soyars and Christopher Lanoue placed third in the 2001 Texas Public Relations Association Student Case Study Competition in Dallas. They prepared and presented "Dallas: Our Time To Shine," a membership campaign for Dallas 2012, the Dallas Olympic City Bid Committee.
-- 2000-2001 UTSA Men's Club Volleyball Team honors went to: Defensive Player of the Year - Randy Baldwin; Offensive Player of the Year - Josh Farrimond; Most Improved Player - Coyt Johnston; and Most Valuable Player - David Salisbury. For more information on Wellness and Recreation activities, call 458-7575.
-- Thanks to the UTSA faculty, staff and students who helped to make the Martinez Street Women's Center "Girls Got Game" Sports Day a success. The spring break-program, which was co-sponsored by UTSA Wellness and Recreation and the East Side Boys and Girls Clubs of San Antonio, aims to build self-esteem among junior high school girls by encouraging participation in athletics. Suzanne Martinez and Kate McLaughlin helped to organize the event, and Karen Cataldo, Annette Livas, Jennifer Pfeiffer and Amy Jasperson served as volunteers. Thanks also to Wellness and Recreation Director Suzy Gray for her assistance in sponsorship.
Faculty and Staff
-- When mold was found in Chisholm Hall last May, the student residents were evacuated and their belongings were placed in storage. When help was needed to deliver the belongings to the students’ homes, a number of UTSA employees came to the rescue. Kudos go to these UTSA employees who devoted a great deal of time in helping the students:
Richard Hernandez, Quality Assurance (Coordinator)
Mike Badillo, Support Services (Coordinator)
Juan Macias, FS Purchasing (Needs Coordinator)
Gabriel Garcia, FS Stores Fred Weidner - Grounds
Theraran Blakes, Maintenance
Juan Villaral, Grounds
Armando Aoolinar, Maintenance
Jesse Ortiz, Maintenance
Jose Hernandez, Housekeeping
Jacob Castillo, Grounds
Joe D. Martinez, Grounds
Mike Zamaron, Sign Shop
Joe Arredondo, Maintenance
Jason Skow, Telephone Services (Information Technology)
Brock Jones, Telephone Services (Information Technology)
Erik Galvan, Telephone Services (Information Technology)
Jesse Rojas, Housekeeping
-- Harvey J. Graff, professor of history, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University (Sweden) on May 19. His work in the history of literacy and what he calls the "history of growing up" was lauded by his presenter, a baroness and member of the Swedish university’s communication faculty. Graff was presented the doctor of philosophy honoris causa during a three-hour ceremony in Linköping, Sweden. After Graff was presented to the audience in the town’s concert hall, a laurel wreath was placed on his head and he was given a commemorative ring.
Additionally, Dr. Graff wrote an entry on "Literacy" that appears in the just-published "The Oxford Companion to United States History" (Oxford University Press 2001). Graff, who joined the UTSA Division of Behavioral and Cultural Sciences in 1998, received a B.A. from Northwestern University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He served as president of the Social Science History Association 1999-2000.
-- A commentary, "Who Wants to Be the Weakest Link?," by modern languages and literatures faculty member Steven G. Kellman, appeared in the June 15, 2001 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The article discusses the issue of increased testing of American students. Kellman suggests in his article that the popular TV game shows "Weakest Link" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" are "compelling theater out of an examination in cultural theory."
-- Public administration professor Heywood Sanders was quoted in a July 17, 2001 USA Today article, "Smaller Cities Set Tempting Lures for Convention." Go to USA Today to read the article.
-- Mathematics Professor Manuel Berriozabal and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Education Kathleen Mittag have been appointed to serve as focus group members for Governor Rick Perry's Texas Talk Initiative. The initiative, in part, will address the shortage of mathematics teachers.
-- Joe L. Martinez, Ewing Halsell Professor of Biology and life sciences division director, is helping to plan a multidisciplinary outreach and education effort known as the Decade of Behavior 2000-2010. Martinez is one of 16 distinguished behavioral and social scientists serving on the National Advisory Committee providing leadership for this initiative, which seeks to focus behavioral and social scientists on meeting societal challenges like health, safety and education.
Specific goals include translating research findings into the public policy arena and recruiting new scholars into the behavioral and social science disciplines. One important development of the initiative is "FundSource," a new database for researching funding available for studies in the behavioral and social sciences. For more information, go to the Decade of Behavior Web site.
-- College of Liberal and Fine Arts Dean Alan Craven was recognized for his extraordinary service to the San Antonio Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the architectural community at the annual Beaux Arts Ball, a tribute rarely given by AIA to non-architects.
-- Professor of Anthropology Richard Adams was honored with a symposium on his scholarly contributions at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting. Presenters at the symposium, entitled "Maya Political, Economic and Social Organization," included two current UTSA anthropology students and 21 scholars, some former students of Adams.
-- From modern languages and literatures, Santiago Daydi-Tolson presented the paper "Motherly Love and the Act of Feeding" at the 34th Annual Conference of the Southwest Council of Latin American Studies held in Santa Fe, NM. He also chaired a panel on literature in New Spain.
-- Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz, modern languages and literatures, presented the paper "Black Virgins and White Goddesses: Identity and Cultural Exchange in Latin America." In May, Oleszkiewicz taught a 40-hour graduate seminar, "European, Indian, and African Manifestations in Latin American Religiosity, " at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas . She has also organized and will lead a panel of experts in their discussion of "Popular Religion in Venezuela vis a vis the Caribbean and Latin America: Influences, Syncretisms, New Developments."
--From foreign languages, Frank Pino and Barbara Gonzalez Pino have returned from San Juan, Argentina, where they participated in the VI Congreso nacional de hispanistas. Pino presented a paper on Chicano visions of hispanismo, supporting the theme of the conference, which was 21st century visions of hispanismo. Gonzalez Pino presented a paper on the status of teaching Spanish to heritage speakers in the United States, integrating material from studies done by her at UTSA.
-- Also from foreign languages, the short story by Nancy Membrez, "May I Have This Dance?," was one of six winners selected from among 45 entries in KOOP's Writing on the Air: Radio Anthology of Short Shorts in Austin. The contest was sponsored by the Austin Writers' League. Stories had to be 500 words or less and include the words "turquoise," "chandelier" and "gospel." Membrez and the other winners read their stories live on KOOP, and the show was rebroadcast in San Antonio on KRTU 91.7 FM.
-- College of Liberal and Fine Arts Assistant Professor of History John Giggie has received the Violet B. Gingles Award, given by the Arkansas Historical Association to the author of the best unpublished manuscript (article or book) on the American South with a focus on Arkansas. His award-winning essay is entitled, "Disband Him From the Church: African Americans and the Spiritual Politics of Disenfranchisement in Post-Reconstruction Arkansas.
-- From the College of Education and Human Development, Assistant Professor Wan Xiang Yao has been awarded the Switzer Research Distinguished Fellowship by National Institutes of Health National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Yao will use this award to conduct research on wheelchair propulsion. More specifically, research to determine optimal movement parameters and to examine different practice strategies in improvising propulsive skills that affect the efficiency of wheelchair propulsion.
-- "Interdisciplinary Inquiry in Teaching and Learning," written by Professors Emeriti Marian Martinello and Gillian Cook and published by Merrill/Prentice-Hall, is now in a Spanish language edition and will be marketed in Central and South America and Spain.
-- Assistant Professor Patricia McGee, College of Education and Human Development, has been appointed to the 2001 Navy-American Association for Engineering Education Summit Faculty Research Program. She will be working with the Joint Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab, established by Department of Defense in 1999 at the Institute for Defense Analysis to foster collaborative research and the development and assessment of common tools, standards, content and guidelines for the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative.
-- Advising Director Linda Chalmers has been elected to a two-year term as secretary of the Texas Academic Advising Network (TEXAAN). Chalmers and seven UTSA academic advisers from the six colleges and the Tomas Rivera Center attended the recent TEXAAN and National Academic Advising Association Region 7 combined annual conference in Houston.
-- Ron Ribble, lecturer in psychology has recently been appointed a member of the Board of Governors of the International Platform Association, Washington, DC and will chair a committee which will oversee the organization’s College Internship Program. He will be addressing this years IPA August convention with a speech entitled, "The Remains of Yesterday: Human Belief in the Year 2001.
Ribble, who is also a publisher, recently released "Troubadour: The Best of Rhyme--2001" showcasing some of the English speaking world’s finest lyric poets and featuring an Interview with Dr. James Ragan, Internationally acclaimed poet and director of the USC Graduate Creative Writing Program. Dr. Ribble has recently been selected to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of The International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England.
-- An article by faculty member Fred Bonner was featured in the May 10 issue of Black Issues in Higher Education. His article was titled "Making Room for the Study of Gifted African-American Males."
-- From engineering, Amir Karimi, UTSA's campus representative to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), has won the national award for the highest number of faculty members recruited. He also won the Gulf southwest section award for both the highest number and percentage of faculty members recruited. Karimi and other award winners were honored during the 2001 ASEE annual conference in Albuquerque.
-- Wendy Barker, professor of English, recently completed a month as guest poetry editor for the San Antonio Express-News. Barker's poetry appears in recent issues of Poetry Magazine and The Kenyon Review/Stand Magazine and is being showcased as part of Austin's new Poetry in Motion project, which places poems in buses all over the city. Barker is currently on faculty development leave, after spending last fall as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sofia University in Bulgaria.
-- UTSA alumna Veronica Ramirez has joined the Office of Graduate Studies as coordinator of Special Programs. In the position, she will have responsibility for graduate recruiting, publications and Web sites. Ramirez is a graduate of UTSA and has extensive experience in recruitment.
Grants
-- UTSA researchers have received grants totaling over $140,000 from the San Antonio Area Foundation, which supports projects that seek to improve the quality of life for San Antonians related to education, medical services and health care, the environment, the arts and culture, community and social services, animal services, historic preservation, visual services and research, and biomedical research.
Recipients include six faculty members from life sciences:
Joe L. Martinez Jr., for "Genes of Addiction: Which Genes are Turned
on By Amphetamine Abuse"
James P. Chambers, for "Imprinting of ApoE Alleles in Alzheimer's Disease"
Brenda J. Claiborne, for "Estrogen Replacement Therapy and neuroprotection"
Esther F. Wheeler, for "NGF and Pain Regulation"
Hans W. Heidner, for "Construction and Evaluation of a Double-Transgenic
Alphavirus Vaccine Vector"
Aaron Cassill, for "Teacher Summer Science Institute"
Also receiving grants are:
Mathematics Professor Manuel P. Berriozabal, for the "San Antonio Prefreshman
Engineering Program"
Special Collections Librarian Dennis Medina, for the "Kathryn Stoner
O'Connor/SRT Collection Catalog"
The San Antonio Area Foundation combines gifts and bequests from many individuals, families and corporations into grant awards. Since its inception in 1964, it has awarded more than $57 million in grants and in 2000, had $101 million in assets. The deadline for 2002 grants is Dec. 15, 2001.