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.