University of Houston-Clear Lake celebrated and recognized alumni during the 2009 Alumni Celebration held at South Shore Harbour Resort. Pictured are Distinguished Alumni Award honorees Richard H. Anderson and Christopher J. Culbert; UH-Clear Lake President William A. Staples; Early Achievement Award honoree Corey J. Wilson; and Outstanding Professor Award honoree Gretchen Mieszkowski. Not pictured is Outstanding Professor Award honoree Caroline Crawford.

UHCL alumni, friends celebrate

Approximately 300 guests gathered to celebrate the varied paths and life journeys of University of Houston-Clear Lake’s 50,000 alumni and to honor two new Distinguished Alumni as well as recipients of Early Achievement and Outstanding Professor Awards during the annual Alumni Celebration in October.

 “Our event does more than honor great people who are part of the UH-Clear Lake story. Proceeds benefit alumni association scholarships,” said Master of Ceremonies and Associate Vice President for University Advancement Dion McInnis. “The alumni association and distinguished alumni are, in fact, the forces behind three important endowments at UH-Clear Lake.

“This celebration honors all UH-Clear Lake alumni by recognizing a select few.”

After brief introductions of some honored guests and remarks by UH-Clear Lake President William A. Staples, McInnis introduced four speakers that included alumni from each of the four decades of UH-Clear Lake’s existence and each of the four schools. Those speaking were United Space Alliance Vice President and Chief Information Officer Kathy Tamer, who received her Master of Science in 1977; dance instructor Christina Lidvall, who received her Master of Arts in 1983; La Marque High School Academic Dean Gayla Rhoads, who received her Bachelor of Arts in 1994; and Occidental Petroleum Corporation Senior Property Tax Agent and Alumni Association Executive Council member Bill Shock, who received his Bachelor of Science in 2003 and Master of Business Administration in 2006. 

McInnis then began the award presentation portion of the celebration. The first being recognized were the 2009 Outstanding Professor Awards, which were presented to Associate Professor of Instructional Technology Caroline M. Crawford and charter faculty member and Professor Emerita of Literature Gretchen Mieszkowski.

Crawford earned her Bachelor of Applied Technology from Sam Houston State University, Master of Liberal Arts from Houston Baptist University and Doctor of Education from University of Houston. Before joining UH-Clear Lake, Crawford taught in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD and at University of Houston. She has been UH-Clear Lake’s Piper Award nominee twice. Author of “The Emergence of the Field of Instructional Design and Technology: Guiding Trends and Issues,” Crawford has held numerous editorial posts with a variety of journals and served on the committees of several state and local education organizations.

Mieszkowski earned a Bachelor of Arts in literature from Vassar College and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in literature from Yale University.  Before joining UH-Clear Lake in 1974, Mieszkowski taught at University of Chicago, Yale and Queen’s University. A Piper Award winner, she is the only UH-Clear Lake faculty member to win the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award, President’s Distinguished Research Award and President’s Distinguished Service Award. Mieszkowski is the author of two books, “The Reputation of Criseyde: 1155-1500” and “Medieval Go-Betweens and Chaucer’s Pandarus,” and has served on numerous editorial and advisory boards as well as UH-Clear Lake committees.

McInnis followed with the presentation of the 2009 Early Achievement Award to Corey J. Wilson, who received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry from UH-Clear Lake in 2002.

“Within the first couple of minutes of conversation, our next awardee said, ‘My experience at UH-Clear Lake set the stage for everything else – it allowed me to do what I did at Rice in a quick and effective way,’” said McInnis in his introduction. “‘UH-Clear Lake encouraged me to reach for the brass ring.’”

Wilson earned Doctor of Philosophy in biochemistry and cell biology from Rice University in 2005 and now serves as an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Yale University. A U.S. Army veteran, Wilson was a Life Flight paramedic at Memorial-Hermann Hospital before entering academia. He conducted postdoctoral research at Rice, University of California-San Diego and California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at Yale.

McInnis then announced the recipients of the 2009 Distinguished Alumni Awards. Honorees included Richard H. Anderson, chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines, and Christopher J. Culbert, project manager of the Lunar Surface Systems project in NASA’s Constellation Program Office at Johnson Space Center. Both have pleasant memories of their time as students at the university.

“UH-Clear Lake engenders a certain fondness,” Anderson said during the celebration, “because of the positive atmosphere and open academic environment of those first years in the Bayou Building.”

Born in Galveston, Anderson earned a Bachelor of Science in American jurisprudence in 1977 from UH-Clear Lake, where he found “a fine faculty that seriously engaged students in an intense academic environment.” He earned a Juris Doctorate from South Texas College of Law in 1982.

During his distinguished career as an attorney and corporate executive, Anderson served as chief counsel for the Harris County Criminal Courts and worked with airline giants Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Before accepting his current role with Delta, he was executive vice president with UnitedHealth Group Inc.

In addition to Anderson’s support of charitable causes in the communities where he has lived, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Catholic Churches of Minneapolis, Twin Cities United Way and The Henry Ford Museum, he currently oversees all aspects of the largest merger in the history of U.S. airlines, making Delta the world's largest airline.

When Culbert came to UH-Clear Lake as a student, he discovered an environment uniquely suited to support the scholarship of working adults.

“Probably more than anything else, UH-Clear Lake helped teach me the importance of lifelong learning,” he said during the celebration. “Like most college graduates, I got my bachelor’s degree and immediately moved into the work force. I started taking graduate classes because I quickly learned there were topics relevant to my work life that hadn’t come up in my undergraduate course work. I found the value of those classes went well beyond what I needed for day-to-day work activities; I was able to use some of that knowledge in ways I would never have anticipated, making me much more capable.”

Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Culbert has built a career with NASA that spans 28 years, beginning just after he earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from University of Arizona in 1981. He earned a Master of Science in physical sciences from UH-Clear Lake in 1986.

During his career with NASA, Culbert has served as flight controller on 10 space shuttle missions and led initiatives to develop and introduce a number of advanced technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence tools in mission control and onboard the space shuttle to virtual reality training systems to state-of-the-art robotics.

Placing a high value on math, science and technology education, Culbert has volunteered for the last 10 years to help build a robotics education community in the Houston area. He is an active member of the organizing committee for five separate robotic competitions focused on school children. During these competitions, Culbert teaches students about solving problems, making decisions, communicating, innovating and leading, along with the technical engineering skills necessary to build robots. Culbert also handles much of the logistics for each program and competition. 

In addition to being honored at the Alumni Celebration, Anderson and Culbert will be recognized with photos displayed in the university’s Bayou Building and names engraved on the Distinguished Alumni Wall outside in Alumni Plaza.