Awards & Highlights

Special Recognition Awards

UHV honors an outstanding student each year who has demonstrated leadership on campus and in the community. In addition, the university recognizes partners who have helped UHV and the community be successful. Those who received the 2016-2017 UHV Special Recognition Awards are as follows.

Left Ke'Andre Green, Right President Vic Morgan

Student Leadership Award – Ke’Andre Green

The People Who Make A Difference Award and the Community Partnership Award

Community Partnership Award – Victoria City Council and City Manager

Will Armstrong, left, Linda Armstrong, center, President Vic Morgan, right

People Who Make a Difference Award – Will and Linda Armstrong

Students and staff pose for photo in Jag Hall

Students pose for group photo at Jaguar Days event

Jennifer Ortiz-Garza poses with Dr. Vic Morgan

President Morgan poses with the Homecoming King and Queen.

UHV Students & Alumni Achievements

The following is a representative collection of UHV student and alumni accomplishments:

Donna McMullen was awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. She also received an Accounting Excellence Award from the Accounting Education Foundation of the Texas Society of CPAs.

Cassidy Marek (2016), Charlene Murphree (2016) and Kelsey Brown-Woods (2016) submitted research papers that were recognized by the National Social Science Association conference in Las Vegas. Marek received first place in the undergraduate category. Murphree won first place in the graduate category for her paper, and Brown-Woods was a runner up in the graduate category.

Sarah Holland earned an internship and then a full-time position working as a peer specialist at the Crossroads Area Veterans Center in Victoria, where she worked with female veterans and veterans’ families.

James Greene was awarded $1,000, and Stephanie Cano received $500 for designing a new logo for Zarsky Lumber Co. in Victoria.

Troi Taylor (2013), president of Taylor Construction Management, delivered the keynote address during UHV’s two 2017 spring commencement ceremonies.

Makayla Hargrove was recognized by Townsquare Media and McAdams Floral during Administrative Professionals Day for her outstanding work as an office assistant for UHV Student Life & Services.

Gary Moses (1974) was given the 2017 Distinguished Alumnus Award, and Adrian Cannady (2001, 2008) was named the Young Alumnus of the Year during the UHV Alumni Banquet.

Sophia Jorski continued to operate Summertime Cakery, a baking business she runs out of her home three months of each year.

Oscar Voigt, Forrest Harris, Caroline Maranga and Chung Wong were ranked second in the return on average equity category during the 12th and final week of the international Business Strategy Game competition.

Chad Hall (2004) was named to the Winner’s Circle and ranked 12th in the Top Corporate Leader Award for leaders older than age 35 during the Leadership Excellence and Development 2017 conference in Nashville, Tenn.

Kyle Davison-Gordon and Blue McCreary were named UHV Homecoming king and queen.

Anand Trivedi (2016), Elizabeth Mesa and Timothy Smith Jr. were awarded $1,000 scholarships by the Harold & Muriel Berkman Charitable Foundation. All three are U.S. military combat veterans pursuing business careers.

Muhammad Bilal, a student at Lahore University of Management Services in Lahore, Pakistan, was the first student to come to UHV for a semester as part of the U.S. Department of State’s Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Pakistan.

Paula Edging was named the UHV 2016 Employee of the Year.

Employees serving students a midnight pancake breakfast.

Faculty & Staff Achievements

The following is a representative collection of UHV faculty and staff accomplishments:

Barba Patton presented two papers and won an award for best workshop for her presentation “Mx: M=Mastering Math; X=Models, Mice, Monkeys, Moose …” during the Canadian International Conference on Education.

Paul Ebner and George Rodriguez were recognized by the NAIA Sports Information Directors Association at the annual CoSIDA convention. They received first and third place in the Walter Alexander single-sports schedule card contest, tied for seventh in the single-sport posters contest and placed eighth in the multisports posters contest.

Mark Ward Sr. presented papers at two National Communication Association conventions in Dallas and Philadelphia. He also was a panelist at the Philadelphia convention.

Paula Edging, who has worked at UHV since 2011, was named the UHV 2016 Employee of the Year.

Jennifer Ortiz-Garza received the UHV Enron Teaching Excellence Award.

Kaveh Moghaddam was given the UHV Research and Scholarly Activity Excellence Award.

Amy Barnhill earned the UHV Distinguished Faculty Service Award.

Trudy Wortham, Jeffrey Cass and Gary Hatter were part of a team that won first place for the second consecutive year in a Bowl-A-Thon hosted by Victoria Lions Club chapters. The event raised money to benefit the Lions Eye Bank of Texas.

Jeffrey Di Leo delivered three lectures about new and emerging trends in humanities research at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, China. He also edited the book “Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory” published by Bloomsbury Academic in London.

Marketing & Communications staff members worked on projects that earned the university four ADDY awards for advertising excellence from the American Advertising Federation-Corpus Christi chapter and an ADDY award in the district contest. Christopher Perez and Akalina Sanchez won a Gold ADDY for a UHV/American Book Review Reading Series poster campaign. George Rodriguez received a Gold ADDY in publication cover design for the UHV 2016 Baseball Game Day Program. Shane Blucher won a Bronze ADDY in the integrated branded content campaign category for his I Love UHV campaign promoting Giving Tuesday. Sanchez also was awarded a Bronze ADDY for a poster created for the 30th annual Martín de León Symposium. The UHV/ABR Reading Series poster campaign went on to win a Bronze ADDY in the district American Advertising Federation contest.

Liping Wei, Wayne Smith, Jennifer Boswell and Amber Gates received awards for their outstanding work in the UHV School of Education, Health Professions & Human Development.

Marketing & Communications staff members Paula Cobler, Shane Blucher, Jeremy Shapiro, Chris Perez, George Rodriguez, Akalina Sanchez, Lonnie Holcombe, Lauren Emerson and Della Rampley earned a MarCom Gold Award recognizing outstanding creative achievement for the 2014-2015 President’s Annual Report & Excellence Awards website and collateral pieces. Sanchez also won a gold award for her design of the UHV University North naming pocket folder.

Don Smith delivered the keynote address during UHV’s fall commencement ceremony. During the past three decades, Smith served as the university’s dean for academic affairs, provost and vice president for academic affairs, and interim president four times.

Rupak Rauniar, Barjinder Singh and Rachana Kalelkar received teaching or research awards from Bloomberg Businessweek.

Liping Wei and Gen Kaneko were awarded $10,000 summer junior faculty research grants from UHV.

Joe Ferguson fully endowed the Doris W. Ferguson Endowed Scholarship at UHV to honor his mother, who was an educator.

Joseph Locke released his book, “Making the Bible Belt: Texas Prohibitionists and the Politicization of Southern Religion,” published by Oxford University Press.