By Victoria Brito Morales

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – APRIL 17, 2025 – Brownsville native Azenett Cornejo, former director of UTRGV Student Media and recently retired, is one of the two newest inductees into the 2025 Texas Intercollegiate Press Association’s Hall of Fame.     

Cornejo, the first from UTRGV, joins political journalist Tom DeFrank, an alum of Texas A&M University, in the TIPA Hall of Fame for 2025. Both were inducted during a special luncheon on Friday, April 11, in San Marcos. 

Cornejo said she was stunned when she got the email letting her know she had been selected.   

“I couldn't believe it,” she said. “I am humbled and honored. I have always just tried to do my best all these years and I'm just a regular person.”  

THE START OF A LEGACY  

Cornejo has been with the university since 1997.

In a full circle moment, her first job in journalism was as a student writer for The Collegian at Texas Southmost College. She went on to study journalism at UT Austin and graduated in 1981. Then she returned to the Valley to work for The Edinburg Daily Review, where she covered city meetings and other local news.

In 1988, she went to work at The San Antonio Light as a copy editor, then worked at The Chicago Sun-Times as a copy editor from 1993 to 1997.  

“Of all the places I've worked at, it was a great learning experience in Chicago,” Cornejo said. “There were about 50 copy editors, if I remember the schedule correctly.”   

Still, Cornejo was homesick for the Valley. So, when a position opened up at what was then UTB/TSC for a student publications coordinator, she came home to run The Collegian – the first publication she had worked for more than 20 years prior.   

“There were no journalism classes at that time,” she said. “I started a training program. I was their teacher and employer. I learned from them as much as they learned from me.”  

She grew The Collegian from a biweekly to weekly newspaper in 1999. Student media expanded to offer more news media such as radio, webcast and online, then magazine and television. With the formation of UTRGV, Cornejo became inaugural director of Student Media.   

During her time with student media, Cornejo has trained hundreds of students in news publications, many of whom have won TIPA awards.   

“I'm very proud of our students,” Cornejo said. “Many of them are working at local news organizations, some are out of state and upstate working as journalists.”   

Now that she is retired, Cornejo said, she has put news management behind her but will still consume news regularly, especially via her favorite medium – broadcast television.

“With my free time in retirement, I also hope to focus on physical fitness,” she said. “I want to travel a bit and give back to my Brownsville community.”