Friday, May 9, 2025
  Accolades, Faculty Focus, Announcements, Around Campus

By News and Media Relations

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – MAY 9, 2025 – The UTRGV Office of Faculty Affairs has named six faculty members as recipients of the 2024-2025 UTRGV Faculty Excellence Awards.

These annual awards recognize faculty who have demonstrated outstanding contributions in teaching, online teaching, research, service, student mentoring, community-engaged scholarship and sustainability education. 

Dr. Luis H. Zayas, UTRGV provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs, congratulated this year’s awardees for their achievements and praised the impact of their work.

“This is an important moment for our institution, a time when we recognize our faculty for their excellent work and dedicated service to their disciplines and our students,” Zayas said. “This acknowledges a small portion of the sustained excellence of our faculty here at UTRGV.”

The recipients of the 2024-2025 UTRGV Faculty Excellence Awards are: 

  • Teaching: Azucena Herrera, clinical assistant professor, Management, Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship.
  • Research-Scholarship-Creative Work: Mataz, Alcoutlabi, associate professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science.
  • Online Teaching: Tracia Forman, associate professor, Health and Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Professions.
  • Service:Dumitru Caruntu, professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science. 
  • Distinguished Career: Robert Freeman,professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science.
  • Emerging Scholar:Mohamadhossein Noruzoliaee, assistant professor, Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Each faculty winner receives a $5,000 monetary award. The UTRGV awards are sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Office of Faculty Affairs and the Center Online Learning and Teaching Technology (COLTT). 



ABOUT UTRGV

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine and a School of Podiatry, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.

UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, Weslaco, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015; the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016, and the School of Podiatric Medicine in the fall of 2022.