Texas A&M Health Science Center President and A&M System Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs Nancy Dickey has been named chair-elect of the Association of Academic Health Centers board of directors.
The Association of Academic Health Centers is a national, nonprofit organization that aims to improve health and well-being through leadership of the nation's academic health centers.
Dickey is a former dean and current professor of family and community medicine in the college of medicine. She is past president of the American Medical Association and founding program director of the Family Practice Residency of the Brazos Valley.
She also is a member of the Scott & White Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees and has served on the National Institutes of Health's Advisory Council on Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dickey also is a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Freshmen in Texas A&M's Corps of Cadets Company D-2 spent three hours on the morning of Oct. 13 picking up litter and clearing overgrown areas as part of the Keep Navasota Beautiful campaign.
The Aggies did the work as part of a community service project. Freshman Jay Pool, who is from Navasota, organized the event with the city. The group collected trash along 9th and 10th streets and along the truck route, gathering about 60 bags of trash and clearing three overgrown lots along Washington Avenue.
Texas Forest Service Director and state forester James Hull was awarded the 2007 Public Service Award by the Association of Consulting Foresters of America.
Hull, director since 1996, was recognized for his long-standing vision and leadership for forestry in the state. The Texas Forest Service now serves as a national example of how state agencies can partner with forestry consultants to promote good forest stewardship for land owners.
Four outstanding alumni and three distinguished faculty were honored recently by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The 2007 Outstanding Alumni awards were presented to:
• John W. Bellinger, class of 1976 and the founder and CEO of Agri-West International, a food-industry marketing and brokerage firm in San Antonio. He is past chairman of the U.S. Meat Export Federation and chairman and founder of the Houston Livestock Show Intercollegiate Meat Judging Contest.
• Murray H. Milford of Bryan, who is a member of the class of 1955. He was a 33-year professor of soil and crop sciences until his retirement in 2001. He also is a founding member of Aggie Mentors and is the first faculty member to receive three Faculty Distinguished Achievement Awards.
• Ivan W. Schmedemann of Kerville ,who is a member of the class of 1966. A professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M, he retired in 1996 after 34 years. He developed and directed the Master of Land Economics and Real Estate program at A&M, and his research provided the basis for land appraisal across the country.
• Clayton W. Williams Jr., class of 1954, is chairman and CEO of Clayton Williams Energy Inc., of Midland, with operations across Texas and other states. He is the founder of more than two dozen companies, a member of the Petroleum Hall of Fame and a long-time benefactor of Texas A&M.
The 2007 Distinguished Achievement awards were presented to:
• Landscape horticulture professor Michael A. Arnold, an authority on ornamental plants. His real-world teaching projects led to the development of the Texas A&M Horticultural Gardens.
• Frederick O. Boadu, professor and assistant head for undergraduate student affairs in the department of agricultural economics. He is the founder of Aggie ACES, an enrichment program for freshman and sophomore honors candidates.
• Wildlife and fisheries professor William H. Neill, a faculty member since 1975 who has used online technology to open his classes to students nationwide. He has become widely known through his 15-year development of Ecophys.Fish, a computer model that simulates fish growth under various conditions.
Friends, colleagues and clients of Aggie alum Sam Svoboda have donated $50,000 to establish a scholarship in his memory. Svoboda died unexpectedly in May. He had worked with the accounting firm of Gainer, Donnelly & Desroches since 1993. The Sam C. Svoboda '82 Endowed Scholarship Fund for Aggie Accounting Majors was established within Texas A&M's Mays Business School.
Texas A&M senior Daniel Araya of Cedar Hill was presented Thursday with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation
Araya is majoring in aerospace engineering. As a cooperative employee at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, he also has conducted wind-tunnel experiments with NASA's T-38 aircraft, written computer code for the Orion spacecraft and developed designs for a hydrogen reduction system to produce water on the moon.
He was presented the scholarship by Apollo Astronaut Col. Walter Cunningham, who also lectured during the presentation.
Andreas Kronenberg has been named head of the Department of Geology & Geophysics in the College of Geosciences.
Kronenberg received his bachelor of science in geology from University of California at Los Angeles and his master of science and doctorate in geology from Brown University. He has received several honors including the Texas A&M College Level Distinguished Research Award, the Texas A&M College Level Teaching Award, the JGR Editor's Citation for Excellence in Refereeing and the Ray C. Fish Professorship in Geology.
Geography professor Daniel Sui has won the Michael Breheny Prize for best paper published in the journal Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design.
Sui serves as assistant vice president for research and director for Geospatial Information Science and Technology at Texas A&M. He held visiting professorships at the University of California-Santa Barbara in 2001 and the National University of Singapore in 2006. He also served as a senior research scientist at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization headquarters in Rome in 1999.
The annual prize was established to honor the work and memory of Michael Breheny, co-editor of the journal from 1989 to 2003.
The Center for Retailing Studies at Mays Business School hosted H-E-B Days recently, which brought H-E-B executives to campus to meet with about 2,100 students. The event gives undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to gain business insights from leading industry professionals.
Twenty-nine students from Brazos County are among the fall semester inductees into the Alpha Phi Lambda Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa at Blinn College in Bryan.
Phi Theta Kappa is the international academic honor society for two-year colleges. Students in the chapter must have completed at least 12 hours and have a minimum 3.45 grade point average.
The newest inductees include:
Maha Al-Maadeed, Nicholas Beuke, Ryan Buck, Deborah Kerr, Tiffany Pusker, Nereida Sanchez, Lori Stevens, Michael Stiner, Jared Whitaker, Amanda Aanstoos, Gilbert Alcala, Courtne Baker, Justin Bishop, Whitney Bissett, Debra Davis, Jessica Ellis, Richard Ferguson, Jennifer Freeman, Matthew Hand, Tami Hatfield, Francisco Hidalgo, Elizabeth Johnson, Ligia Kawano-Williams, Mary Keefe, Angela Mejia, Crystal Mineo, Jessica Ray, Lauren Smith and Nathan Stansfield.