Two to receive Distinguished Alumnus Award

Dr. Ciro Valent Sumaya and Ruben Gallegos are recipients of this year's Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

A reception for both will be held at 6 p.m. Friday in the Science and Engineering Technology Building Lecture Hall on the UTB-TSC campus.

Sumaya will be the commencement speaker for spring graduation, which will be at 9 a.m. Saturday on the Student Union lawn. Gallegos will be the commencement speaker for winter graduation.

Sumaya is a medical doctor and TSC alumnus. He is the founding dean of the School of Rural Public Health at the Texas A&M University System Health Science Center.

He has been dean of Texas A&M's School of Rural Public Health since 1997 and holds the school's Cox Endowed Chair in Medicine.

Sumaya was born in Brownsville and was the valedictorian of Brownsville High School's Class of 1959. He attended TSC from May 1959 to August 1960. A 1962 Phi Beta Kappa graduate with high honors from The University of Texas at Austin, Sumaya also earned his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1966. He also has a master's degree in public health and tropical medicine from Tulane University School of Medicine and School of Public Health in New Orleans.

Gallegos is executive director of International Educational Services, an agency that provides children of undocumented immigrants who have been arrested with a basic education as they await deportation or reunification.

Gallegos was an associate professor at the University of Texas-Pan American at Brownsville, the predecessor to UTB-TSC, from 1984 to 1991 and retired from public school administration in 1993. He has also been an assistant elementary school principal, a Head Start program coordinator, assistant superintendent and chairman of the Texas Association for Mexican American Educators.

Gallegos was born in El Calavoz and is a graduate of Brownsville High School. He earned an associate of arts degree from TSC in 1957 and a bachelor's degree in education from Pan American College, now the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, in 1959. He earned a master's degree in education from East Texas State College, now Texas A&M University at Commerce, in 1962. He continued his studies and was awarded a doctorate from East Texas State in 1970.

Also to be honored are Jim Mills and Sylvia Peña Mills, who will receive the Chancellors Teaching Excellence Award. He is an assistant master technical instructor in the history department and advisor for history education majors at UTB-TSC. Peña retired in August 2007 from the School of Education. She will be honored at Professor Emeritus.