Teach For America Rio Grande Valley has announced the honorees for its sixth annual Honor Roll Gala set to take place Friday, March 31, at the Mission Event Center, 200 N. Shary Road in Mission.
Founded in 1991, TFA-RGV works in partnership communities across the Valley to expand educational opportunity for children. TFA-RGV recruits and develops a diverse corps of leaders who make an initial two-year commitment to teach in high-need schools and become lifelong leaders in the effort to end educational inequity.
The honorees are:
>> Julieta V. Garcia, the former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, will receive the Educational Champion Award.
>> Valley Grande Institute for Academic Studies in Weslaco will be honored with the Institutional Catalyst Award.
>> Santapaula Gama Garcia, TFA-RGV 1998, is to receive the Alumni Leadership Award.
When Julieta García was named president of Texas Southmost College in 1986, she became the first Latina to serve as a college president in the United States. In 1992, she helped lead the formation of UTB-TSC, a pioneering institution that eventually became one of the two legacy institutions that formed the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley when UT Brownsville and Pan American University in Edinburg merged.
She served as president of the UTB-TSC partnership for 22 years from 1992-2014. The partnership created a seamless pathway for community college students to a four-year university degree.
García grew up in Brownsville, received her Ph.D. in communication and linguistics from The University of Texas at Austin, and her M.A. and B.A. in speech and English from The University of Houston.
This past July, President Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, 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.
García is now a communications professor at UTRGV.
Valley Grande Institute is dedicated to serving the Rio Grande Valley by supporting every student through their journey to becoming a medical professional. The organization provides multiple certified medical programs, from medical assistant to vocational nursing, and is one of the largest providers of new nurses in the Valley.
During the pandemic, VGI continued to train nurses and enabled them to meet their clinical requirements while serving the community, including running multiple vaccine clinics. The organization is headquartered in Weslaco and has been under the leadership of President Anabel Cardona since 2001.
Santapaula Gama García joined Teach For America as an elementary bilingual teacher in Mercedes ISD. Since then, she has served as a teacher, principal, district administrator and non-profit leader for organizations like Educate Texas and most recently Teach For America.
Currently, Gama García is a regional field executive at Teach For America, where she supports hundreds of Teach For America staff members across 23 geographic regions in their mission to ensure all students have access to an excellent and equitable education.
She also serves on the board of the Knapp Community Care Foundation and Vanguard Academy. Gama García holds a B.A. and a double masters in Spanish literature and education from the UTRGV, as well as a doctoral degree in educational leadership from Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
For more information about the Honor Roll Gala and to purchase tickets, visit www.teachforamerica.org/HonorRollGala.
