UTEP Announces 2013 Gold Nugget Recipients

July 17, 2013 | UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

The University of Texas at El Paso and the UTEP Alumni Association proudly announce the recipients of the 2013 Gold Nugget Awards.

"This year's Gold Nugget honorees represent a range of fields, showing the breadth and depth of professional achievement at UTEP," said Richard Daniel, Ph.D., associate vice president for university advancement and special projects, and executive director for alumni relations. "This group of 18 men and women is the largest the University has recognized in the history of the Gold Nugget Awards. We are extremely proud of their accomplishments and continued support of their alma mater."

Since 1984, the University has recognized exceptional graduates from each of the University's colleges and schools who have distinguished themselves in their professions and lives, given back to their communities and alma mater, and serve as an inspiration for future generations of Miners. They will be officially recognized during the Homecoming festivities Sept. 29-Oct. 5.

The 2013 Gold Nugget Award recipients are:

John G. Lapham
B.B.A. in Business, 1974
College of Business Administration

Lapham put himself through school working odd jobs and graduated with a B.B.A. in 1974 before earning an M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Today, Lapham serves as managing director and co-head of leveraged finance for money-management company PineBridge Investments and manages about 13 percent of the company's overall assets of $71 billion.

David H. Lindau
B.A. in Accounting, 1961
College of Business Administration

Lindau is the senior wealth advisor and former president of Lauterbach Financial Advisors, LLC in El Paso, and is a certified public accountant, financial planner and valuation analyst. He serves as a member of the UTEP Trust and has established three scholarship endowments at UTEP.

Renard U. Johnson
B.B.A. in Management, 1995
College of Business Administration

Johnson founded and incorporated Management and Engineering Technologies International Inc. (METI) in 1994 when he was still a student at UTEP. The company became Johnson's full-time job in 1998 when he hired seven employees. METI, a professional services company that provides systems engineering and information technology support to federal and commercial customers, now has more than 300 employees around the world, including El Paso; Lima, Peru; and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Joe R. Saucedo
B.B.A., 1966
College of Business Administration

Saucedo, a first-generation graduate, worked as a cost accountant for North American Rockwell after college. He worked his way up to president and chief executive officer of Queen City Bank in 1982, and in 1992 founded Bolsa Resources Inc., his own management consulting firm.

Yolanda Berumen-Deines
B.S. in Elementary Education, 1972
College of Education

Berumen-Deines learned to stand up for those who cannot speak adequately for themselves, such as abused and neglected children. Today, Berumen-Deines is cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department. Through more than 30 years of private practice that coincided with work for nonprofits and government agencies, she has worked to improve the lives of those less fortunate.

Ramon Dominguez, Ph.D.
B.S. in Secondary Education, 1971; M.Ed. in Guidance and Counseling, 1974
College of Education

Dominguez started mentoring younger students while attending UTEP and realized he was more interested in helping others than in personal accomplishments. Dominguez received his doctorate in educational administration from New Mexico State University. In his more than 40 years in education, he has served as president of El Paso Community College, interim president of Carlsbad Community College and associate provost at NMSU.

Mary Carmen Saucedo
B.S. in Education, 1965; M.A. in English, 1968; M.Ed. in Linguistics, 1970
College of Education

After several years as a teacher, Saucedo began to climb the administrative ladder in the El Paso Independent School District and broke several glass ceilings along the way, serving as assistant principal, principal, modern languages consultant, director of personnel, and associate superintendent.

Laura Bosworth Bucher
B.S. in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, 1988
College of Engineering

As a 1988 metallurgical and materials engineering graduate, Bosworth Bucher has gone on to management positions at IBM, Dell, and EDCO Ventures, a nonprofit mentor for business startups. Now she has embraced the spirit of entrepreneurship herself as CEO and co-founder of TeVido BioDevices, an early-stage life sciences/biotech startup developing innovative tissue-engineered products for reconstructive surgery, wound healing and burns.

Charles R. Garcia
B.S. in Electrical Engineering, 1971; M.S. in Industrial Engineering, 1980
College of Engineering

Garcia graduated from UTEP as part of a cooperative education program with White Sands Missle Range. He has since served as the executive director of White Sands Test Center, division chief of Space and Missile Defense and Space Operations at WSMR, and chief of range support at the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is currently the program manager of Trax International LLC., where he supervises more than 500 employees at WSMR, and senior vice president of the Trax International Corp. headquartered in Las Vegas.

Irene Rico
B.S. in Civil Engineering, 1984
College of Engineering

Two years after meeting with representatives from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) at a University-sponsored career fair, Rico joined the agency in 1985 and has continuously moved up in the organization. Today she is Virginia's division administrator, the first Hispanic woman to hold the position.

Tony Harper
B.S. in Life Science, 1968
College of Health Sciences

Recruited from El Paso's Austin High School in 1964 by legendary coach Don Haskins, Harper developed the all-around basketball skills to dominate on the court and the academic fortitude to become a champion in the classroom. In his 41 years coaching varsity basketball, Harper became the fourth high school coach in the nation to win 900 games and the seventh-winningest coach in the history of high school basketball in Texas. He is ranked No. 1 in wins among active coaches in the state.

Ray Tullius
B.S. in Social Work, 1990
College of Health Sciences

As an Army veteran, the military helped Tullius earn his bachelor's degree in social work from UTEP in 1990 and his master's in social work from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Since then, he has paid it forward by offering homeless people a warm meal, a place to sleep and the support they need to get off the streets as the founder and executive director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso. Opened in 1994, the center is now the largest homeless shelter system in west Texas and southern New Mexico.

Ray Malooly
B.A. in History, B.A. in English, 1959
College of Liberal Arts

After several decades of business ventures with his parents and four siblings, Malooly founded his real estate and investment company, which acquired several shopping centers, including the historic Mills-White House Building and Cortez Building in downtown El Paso. Currently, Malooly is founder and CEO of Malooly Corp. and its subsidiaries, specializing in commercial lending, real estate and investments.

David A. Montoya
B.S. in Criminal Justice, 1986
College of Liberal Arts

After graduating from UTEP in 1986, Montoya served with the Drug Enforcement Administration for six years as a criminal investigator/special agent in the Rocky Mountain Division in Denver before moving to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigations Division, where he rose through the ranks to become deputy director. He later joined the Department of the Interior's Office of the Inspector General as the Assistant Inspector General for Investigations before being nominated by President Obama in July 2011 to become the first Hispanic Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he currently serves.

Susana Navarro, Ph.D.
B.A. in Political Science, 1968
College of Liberal Arts

Navarro landed a job soon after graduating from UTEP as a research analyst for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., before serving in leadership roles at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the Achievement Council. In 1991, she returned to El Paso, where with regional education, business and civic leaders, she founded the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence, a citywide effort to improve academic achievement among all young El Pasoans. The collaborative has become a national model for urban school reform.

E. Antonio Chiocca, M.D., Ph.D.
B.S. in Biology, 1982
College of Science

Chiocca is the chair of neurosurgery at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Since 2012, he has also been the Harvey W. Cushing Professor of Neurological Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Chiocca was instrumental in establishing The Ohio State University's Department of Neurological Surgery in 2004, which he helped build from two to 26 faculty when he left to return to Boston in 2012.

Helen M. Castillo, Ph.D.
B.S. in Nursing, 1974
School of Nursing

Among the first to graduate from the RN to B.S.N. (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) program in 1974, Castillo combined her two passions – helping others and teaching. In 1976, she began teaching leadership and management courses at what is today the UTEP School of Nursing. Castillo continued on as a faculty member at the school, eventually serving as chair of the UTEP nursing program when it was part of the College of Nursing and Allied Health. She retired in 2009 as dean of the College of Health and Human Development at California State University at Northridge.

Stan Harmon
B.S. in Nursing, 1993
School of Nursing

With a bachelor's degree in nursing from UTEP and an M.S.N. from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Harmon is now a family nurse practitioner at William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss. He serves on the Advanced Practice Advisory Committee to the Texas Board of Nursing and two committees for the Texas Nurse's Association representing Advanced Practice..