2016 Global Vision Awards Ceremony

“This has been a great year for Texas Tech’s global engagement,” Nagy said. “We significantly increased the number of international students and scholars on campus, the number of Texas Tech students studying abroad and international research activities. This year’s Global Vision Awards highlight some of the individuals and organizations which helped make this happen, and we congratulate them all for helping promote Texas Tech around the world as a first-rate global university.”

Awards

Student International Research Award

Recognizes international scholarship by a graduate student at Texas Tech. The award is based on the Graduate School poster competition that took place March 25.

Recipient: Keelyn Hanlon

A master’s student in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, received the Student International Research award for her poster on food safety research that investigated pathogen presence in sheep and goats, small ruminants that are of particular importance within the global community as they provide both food and fiber.

Global Engagement Community Award

Recognizes an individual or group who has made significant contributions to international understanding and engagement in the greater Lubbock community.

Recipient: Museum of Texas Tech University

The recipient of the Global Engagement Community award, was founded in 1929 as a cooperative venture between Texas Technological College and 47 surrounding counties. Formerly known as the West Texas Museum, it has created a special bridge between Texas Tech, the greater Lubbock community and the international community at large. The museum reaches more than 150,000 people each year through its exhibits, outreach programs and international research.

Texas Tech International Alumni Award

Recognizes the contribution made by international alumni. As Texas Tech welcomes international students, this award thanks students who embraced the Texas Tech community and helped introduce their home culture and customs to West Texas, then graduated and went on to do great things.

Recipient: James Young

Received the Texas Tech International Alumni award for turning a taco stand that he and his wife started into the well-known restaurant Abuelo’s. Young, an electrical engineering graduate student in the mid-seventies, noticed that many of his friends were getting engineering jobs only to be laid off because of the recession, so he decided to take a risk and do something outside of electrical engineering. He and his wife rented a small taco stand on 34th Street and turned it into a restaurant called Chinese Kitchen. The work he and his wife put into the restaurant paid off, and in 1988 they opened the first Abuelo’s restaurant in Amarillo. Today, Abuelo’s has grown into a chain of 40 restaurants stretching across 14 states and employing 3,000 people. He continues to reside in Lubbock, the city that welcomed him when he arrived as a young graduate student from Taiwan.

The Donald R. Haragan Study Abroad Award

Recognizes an individual for development and implementation of study abroad programs that support Texas Tech’s commitment to providing high quality international educational opportunities.

Recipient: Comfort Pratt

An associate professor of bilingual education, received the Donald R. Haragan Study Abroad award for her efforts in establishing study abroad programs for Texas Tech students. One of Pratt’s most innovative study abroad programs focused on the blend of Spanish and American cultural and linguistic features and traditions in the countries of the Caribbean. In 2009, Pratt recruited a group of Red Raiders to the Dominican Republic for a language-based course, which included the history of the land as well as features of their dialect of Spanish and where the influences came from.

The Faculty International Scholarship Award

Recognizes a tenure-track faculty member for excellence and sustained international scholarship.

Recipient:Yuan Shu

An associate professor of English and comparative literature, has contributed to international academic exchange between Asia and North America, engaging in academic collaboration with partners around the nation and the world, producing scholarship with national and international implications, and lecturing and presenting at national and international conferences and institutions of higher education. Shu also co-sponsored two symposiums on transnational American studies and co-edited the volume “American Studies as Transnational Practice,” proposing a paradigm shift in American studies from transnational to transpacific. He also has been involved with international projects and lectured and presented at international conferences and universities.

Global Vision Lifetime Achievement Award

Recognizes an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the internationalization of Texas Tech through his or her many years of leadership in promoting international scholarship and teaching.

Recipient:Gary Elbow

The winner of the Global Vision Lifetime Achievement award and professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences, has gone outside of the classroom to chair Texas Tech’s Fulbright Scholar committee for 12 years, serve on the Rhodes scholarship committee for three years and the National Fulbright Senior Scholar screening committee for three years. He was the recipient of two faculty Fulbright awards, the first for his research in Costa Rica and the second for his teaching in Ecuador. Elbow has dedicated his life’s work to making West Texas and Texas Tech part of a larger global discourse.

Campus Internationalization Award

Recognizes a college, department or office within the Texas Tech University System that has made significant contributions toward internationalization.

Recipient:The College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR)

The winner of the Campus Internationalization award. The college’s diversity has grown substantively in the last 10-15 years, and today one of every five students in CASNR’s graduate programs is from a foreign country. CASNR’s faculty has engaged with others around the world in research, study abroad opportunities, outreach and program development. Faculty members also have sought out international grants to support their work abroad and have been rewarded with international acclaim for their efforts. To date, CASNR has four Fulbright Scholars on its faculty and has been successful in securing ten Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development scholars.

The Global Vision Awards were first given in 2003 and have expanded since the beginning. The ceremony was a part of International Week that provided a weeklong celebration of different cultures from around the world.