Juliet V. Garcia, former longtime president of The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, will be presented with the nation’s highest civilian honor, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, on Thursday, July 7, in Washington D.C.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.
Garcia found out a week ago that she was going to receive the award. She was told she would be getting a phone call from a 202-area code, she told The Brownsville Herald on Friday. She missed the call twice, but answered the third call. The caller was Christine Chavez, the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez.
“I was thinking I was going to be invited to serve on an advisory board. I have been wanting to serve in some way. She (Christine) was all excited,” Garcia said. “She said, ‘The president tried to call you twice.’ I am thinking, are you kidding me, and she convinced me it was the truth. She said I’m calling you because now I can tell you that he has chosen you to receive the award.”
Garcia was silent and didn’t know what to say. Her husband was standing next to her and told her, “Tell her that you are honored,” Garcia said with a laugh. “I said yes, I am greatly honored.”
Garcia, a current UTRGV communications professor, will join 16 distinguished Americans who will be the first to receive the honor under President Joe Biden’s term. She joins an elite group of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients that includes celebrities, politicians, and public servants.
Garcia said she felt unworthy to receive the award but that it was an honor because when you receive such an award it is because of the work you have done.
“The work we have done has been done with lots of people, so to honor the work is what this is really about, the work of building a university, building championship chess teams and physics departments that can attract SpaceX to the community and engineers, and musicians and artists. So it’s that work, believing it could happen and it should happen here. It has taken long enough, and it is our turn at that, “Garcia said.
Garcia said she knew everyone would have to give it their all to make the university happen and that is what everyone tried to do.
“Our job was to keep pushing to be an advocate. I studied communications so I knew what advocacy meant. So, the question was can we do it? Can we make it work?” she said.
She hired smart people and all worked hard to get the university where it needed to be.
“We got brilliant faculty that could have gone to many other places and done easier work and gotten paid more, but instead wanted to be part of building this university and decided to come here and be part of this. It is a great honor for the community,” Garcia said.
The medal is the latest of Garcia’s accolades. TIME magazine named Garcia one of the top 10 college presidents in the nation in 2009, and she was named one of the top 50 world leaders by Fortune magazine. In 2008, García was selected to join President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team.
Garcia’s name recognition has helped open doors for the community. When work on building the university started, nobody knew who they were, she said.
“We would walk into a foundation in Dallas, in Houston or New York looking for money for scholarships or trying to advocate for building a campus and nobody knew who we were or what we were doing,” Garcia said. “To be recognized for this work, not always positively because we had our moment with the Department of Homeland Security when we were in federal court, we had our moments when we had to take on difficult moments, but I have always believed that we did the work in an honorable fashion and that is something to be proud of.”
Garcia was the first Mexican-American woman to serve as a college president in the United States. During her tenure as president, Garcia pioneered a partnership between the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, a community college where she served as president from 1986 to 1992, when she assumed the presidency of UTRGV’s legacy institution UT-Brownsville.
She stepped down as UTB president in 2014 when UTRGV was established.
“Juliet has enriched the lives of many Rio Grande Valley students, from elementary to college,” UTRGV President Guy Bailey said in a media release. “Her contributions to higher education in South Texas and beyond are long lasting and have created pathways of success among a new generation of Latino leaders. On behalf of everyone at UTRGV, I congratulate Juliet on this well-deserved national award.”
Garcia, a Brownsville native, received a doctorate in communication and linguistics from The University of Texas at Austin and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in speech and English from the University of Houston.
UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken said in a media release: “Juliet Villarreal Garcia personifies the American dream. As the first Mexican-American woman to lead a U.S. college or university, Dr. Garcia has been the inspirational force behind countless individuals who made public service their life’s work and students who realized their academic potential. I am proud to call her one of our own – as a distinguished alumna of The University of Texas at Austin and President of UT Brownsville – and I congratulate Dr. Garcia on this prestigious and well-deserved honor.”
