James B.
Rainer '93
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Year Awarded: 2014
James B. Rainer earned his B.S. and M.S. from Texas A&M. Mr. Rainer was hired by the Safety and Health Office as a Student Worker I in 1991. He has been a loyal employee through multiple reorganizations, a department name change, several office moves around campus, and three different directors. Throughout that time, James advanced his professional career with a specialty in fire and life safety. He is directly responsible for the fire and life safety program and oversees the environmental program. He has received certifications and licenses in various areas, including Fireworks Flame Effects Operator, Fireworks Pyrotechnic Operator, Certified Fire Inspector I, II, and III, among others. He is the university’s Fire Marshal and is the guiding force in Kyle Field Command, ensuring a joint cooperative effort between emergency management, law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services, ensuring a safe game-day experience. With his leadership, Texas A&M committed to investing $33 million over ten years to upgrade fire and life safety systems on campus. These upgrades included the installation of automatic fire sprinkler systems, replacing automatic fire detection and notification system, installing or upgrading emergency lights, exit signs automatic door closers, fire-rated doors, and similar items.
A supporter wrote, “James’ expertise in his field and his sense of professionalism are only surpassed by his love for Texas A&M. His dedication to this University, working his way through the ranks of Environmental Health and Safety positions over his 20 year career, is evident in all he does. His selfless service to the school we love is reflected in his genuine care for the students, faculty, staff and visitors to this fine institution. James is a great ambassador for Texas A&M and truly embodies the Spirit he has embraced for more than half of his life.”
College: Division of Finance and Administration
Award Level: Staff
Kumbakonam
Rajagopal
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Year Awarded: 2002
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
Shawn
Ramsey '90
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Year Awarded: 2015
Shawn Ramsey, associate professor and assistant head for undergraduate programs in the Department of Animal Science, joined the faculty of the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences upon completing his Ph.D. at New Mexico State University. For the past 18 years, his teaching has touched the lives of more than 10,000 Aggies. By the numbers, Dr. Ramsey teaches close to 700 students each long semester and receives average course evaluation scores of 4.8 or above on a 5.0 scale. However, the real success of his teaching goes well beyond these statistics. A former student in one of his largest classes—typically 350 students—stated, “I felt like he was talking directly to me. Despite the 349 other students in that class, Dr. Ramsey always had a way of making me, and every other student, feel important, feel respected, and feel valued.” Another student stated, “He is the epitome of encouragement and motivation, and he went above and beyond to prepare me to achieve my goals.” Dr. Ramsey is known for his efforts to get to know each student, to learn about their specific interests, and then to introduce them to other students with similar backgrounds or interests. In addition to classroom teaching, Dr. Ramsey coaches the undergraduate wool and mohair judging team. He teaches them not only how to evaluate wool, he also teaches them how to succeed outside their comfort zones. Not surprisingly, he has coached four national champion and eight intercollegiate champion teams. Dr. Ramsey’s accomplishments do not stop with his classroom teaching or coaching a judging team. He also leads one of the largest study abroad programs to New Zealand and conducts the annual Aggieland Lamb and Goat Camp for junior high and high school students during summer. His nominator sums up, saying that Dr. Ramsey is unquestionably one of the most outstanding teachers in the college, the university, and the nation.
College: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
Neal
Randolph ’34
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Year Awarded: 1973
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
Clifford
Ransdell ’42
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Year Awarded: 1976
College: Engineering
Award Level: Student Relations
Chloe
Rape
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Year Awarded: 2010
College: Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academics
Award Level: Staff
Eugene
Ray
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Year Awarded: 1984
College: Grounds Maintenance
Award Level: Staff
Jerrilyn
Ray
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Year Awarded: 1993
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Extension/ Continuing Education
Sammy
Ray
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Year Awarded: 1974
College: Marine Science
Award Level: Research
Thomas W.
Reber
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Year Awarded: 2013
Tom Reber received a B.S. from the State University of New York at Geneseo and an M.S. from Western Illinois University. He has worked for Texas A&M for 30 years. His nominator writes that he is “the living embodiment of the Aggie core values.” His selfless service to the Aggie Community, and his spirit of giving coupled with his “let’s get it done and done well” leadership highlight the essence of his tenure at Texas A&M. He has served with distinction for many years, and his reputation for going the extra mile is inextricably intertwined with his legacy of excellence. A colleague writes, “His impact on the university is wide reaching and his dedicated service beyond the expectations of his position is without parallel.”
The evidence of his impact is best illustrated in the facilitation and guidance he provided to the following projects: the construction of the Recreational Sports facilities, the MSC renovation, the Becky Gates Children Center addition, the Joe Routt improvement project, and currently the Campus Golf Course renovation. An advocate says, “In an individual’s career, one might expect to accomplish only a single major project of this type. Tom, however, demonstrated actionable leadership to each one.” By the way, these projects are not in his position description. Yet in addition to fulfilling his assigned duties, he took responsibility and helped bring these projects to fruition . . . all for the betterment of Texas A&M students and the university.
He is enthusiastic about serving students. The current Student Body President says, “Tom will stop anything and everything to sit down and spend time with a student. He provides direction and insight into scenarios we face as students to ensure we are seeing all perspectives in every situation.” Tom Reber is revered by his colleagues, by students and by all who come in contact with him.
College: Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs
Award Level: Administration
Anne M.
Reber ’91
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Year Awarded: 2004
College: Student Affairs
Award Level: Student Relations
J.N.
Reddy
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Year Awarded: 2007
J. N. Reddy is a Distinguished Professor and the Holder of the Oscar S. Wyatt Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. He has authored of over three hundred and fifty journal papers and fifteen text books. Professor Reddy has extraordinary dedication to teaching and passion for facilitating students’ learning. His teaching and research contributions focus on applied mechanics and computational methods, for which he is internationally known.
An especially strong point of Dr. Reddy’s classroom teaching and the textbooks that he has authored is the clarity and physical insight of explanations of even the most difficult topics through relevant engineering examples, but without compromising on the mathematical rigor. He maintains his own course web sites where his meticulously prepared illustrations and learning aids have helped countless students, as well as teachers who adopt his books. Dr. Reddy earned institutional awards for both research and teaching excellence at every institution he has served, and he also won several national awards from professional societies for his research contributions to science and engineering.
College: Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
J.N.
Reddy
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Year Awarded: 2000
College: Engineering
Award Level: Research
David
Reed
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Year Awarded: 1999
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
David
Reed
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Year Awarded: 2016
After earning his Ph.D. from the Cornell University, Dave Reed joined the faculty of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1978. He serves the college as professor of horticulture and as the associate dean for graduate programs and faculty development. His research primarily focuses on nutrition, especially iron nutrition, and the effects of water quality and salinity on greenhouse crops. However, his “first love” is teaching, and he teaches to a packed house of several hundred students each semester in his General Horticulture course. His nominators wrote that Dr. Reed stands out as a memorable professor who makes his courses appealing to all students, regardless of their major. When looking at numerous student evaluations over the past few years, they noted that frequent comments include “very enthusiastic,” “entertaining,” and “easy to understand.” One student summed up Dr. Reed’s passion and enthusiasm best in writing that he was a “wonderful, amazing professor who keeps you wanting to learn more.” Dr. Reed’s teaching methods have most definitely been noted by his peers and colleagues. He has been invited to give presentations to large audiences across the state and nation and he has won numerous awards, including The Association of Former Students College-Level and University-Level Awards for Teaching, the Southern Region of the American Society of Horticultural Sciences L.D. Ware Distinguished Teaching Award, and the National Outstanding Undergraduate Educator award from the American Society for Horticultural Sciences. His popularity with students is evident in that he has been a Fish Camp and T-Camp Namesake four times. His nominators concluded that students leave his HORT 201 class with a fundamental knowledge of horticulture that they will carry with them throughout their lives and probably smile when they reflect on the stories that he shared related to plants and to life.
College: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Teaching
Helen L.
Reed
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Year Awarded: 2014
Helen L. Reed, Regents Professor and Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence, joined the faculty of the Dwight Look College of Engineering in 2004. She earned her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. She has been named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA), the American Physical Society, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and she has received numerous significant awards. But one award stands out as the mark of a truly great teacher. In 2012, the May and December graduating seniors selected her for the McElmurry Teaching Excellence Award, citing her as “exemplifying dedication and commitment to developing students professionally and academically by displaying a desire for students to succeed, creatively presenting classroom material, and offering opportunities for mentorship and guidance outside the classroom.”
Dr. Reed founded and directs the Texas A&M AggieSat Lab Satellite Program. AggieSat is an extracurricular student-driven organization, which to date has involved roughly 1,000 students and multiple departments and colleges. Through this program, students designed, launched, and operated Texas A&M’s first satellite in 2009, with the next mission planned for this year, 2014. A former student wrote, “It is without question that Dr. Reed’s small satellite program was the primary factor in my choice of undergraduate universities...I am sincerely grateful for the considerable impact Dr. Reed has had on my entire post-secondary education and subsequent career. I value not only the opportunities she provided, but also the unceasing optimism and support with which she interacts with all of her students.”
A colleague commented that her “overarching concern is providing her students with the best level of education possible.” He feels privileged to have had her as a mentor. But her nominator says it most succinctly; Dr. Reed’s classroom performance is “truly top notch.”
College: College of Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Roger
Reese ’81
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Year Awarded: 2009
College: College of Liberal Arts
Award Level: Teaching
Robert
Reid
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Year Awarded: 1960
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Research
Robert
Reid
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Year Awarded: 1987
College: Geosciences
Award Level: Teaching
Henry
Reinhard
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Year Awarded: 1959
College: Agriculture and Life Sciences
Award Level: Research
Raymond
Reiser
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Year Awarded: 1963
College: Science
Award Level: Research
Michael
Rekoff, Jr. ’50
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Year Awarded: 1964
College: Engineering
Award Level: Teaching
Cecil R.
Reynolds
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Year Awarded: 1986
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Research
Cecil R.
Reynolds
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Year Awarded: 2007
Cecil Reynolds is a Professor of Educational Psychology, Professor of Neuroscience, and Distinguished Research Scholar. He is the author of over 300 scholarly publications, author or editor of over 45 books, and the creator of numerous widely-used psychological tests, including the Behavior Assessment System for Children, the most frequently administered test of its type in the English-speaking world. Dr. Reynolds is past president of the National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) and the APA Divisions of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics, Clinical Neuropsychology, and School Psychology. He serves on 11 journal editorial boards. He is Editor of Applied Neuropsychology and Associate Editor of School Psychology Quarterly.
Dr. Reynolds has received many awards recognizing him for excellence in research, including the Lightner Witmer Award, Senior Scientist Award from APA Division of School Psychology, and NAN’s Distinguished Neuropsychologist Award (the Academy’s highest award). His service has been recognized through the President's Gold Medal for Service to NAN and the Academy’s Distinguished Service Award, and the UNC at Wilmington 50th Anniversary Razor Walker Award for Service to the Youth of America.
College: Education and Human Development
Award Level: Research
James
Reynolds
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Year Awarded: 1985
College: MSC
Award Level: Student Relations
Larry
Reynolds
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Year Awarded: 2014
Larry J. Reynolds, University Distinguished Professor of English and Thomas Franklin Mayo Professor of Liberal Arts, has been a faculty member in the College of Liberal Arts since 1974. Since receiving his Ph.D. from Duke University, he has gone on to become one of the most productive and influential scholars of the period of mid-19th century American literature known as American Renaissance. His nine books and numerous articles initiated the transnational and new historicist approaches that fundamentally altered traditional understanding of 19th century American literary history. Dr. Reynolds’ awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, and the United States Information Agency. As a Fulbright Scholar, he has lectured in Portugal, Italy, and Belgium. He serves on the editorial boards of five journals and is currently associate editor of the South Central Review.
His nominator says, “Professor Reynolds is one of the very few literary scholars to earn repeated acclaim for work that has dramatically changed our approach to the practice of literary scholarship as well as our understanding of major writers.” The importance of his scholarly achievements is reflected in his letters of support. The consensus opinion is that Dr. Reynolds is clearly among the most productive and most influential scholars working in American Literature. One supporter wrote that he is “known internationally as one of the most important scholars of American Romanticism, and certainly one of the half dozen best of his generation.” The letters frequently refer to his work as “seminal,” a term rarely used in literary studies. Others describe him as “a pioneer” or praise his “long, energetic, and continually developing career.” One supporter proclaimed that “there is no scholar in the field of American literature whose work I admire more.”
College: College of Liberal Arts
Award Level: Research
Cynthia A.
Riccio
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Year Awarded: 2018
Cynthia Riccio earned a bachelor’s from the University of Connecticut, a master’s and a specialist diploma from the University of Hartford, and a doctorate from the University of Georgia. She joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1997. In addition to her appointment in the College of Education and Human Development, she is also a member of the interdisciplinary Texas A&M Institute of Neuroscience. She has received the Lightner Witmer Award from the Division of School Psychology of the American Psychological Association, a Texas A&M University Faculty Fellowship, The Association of Former Students College-Level Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching, and an Outstanding Service Recognition from the College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Riccio has attained Fellow status in both the American Psychological Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology; she holds all credentials in her field. In addition to serving as director of training for the School Psychology program for the past 12 years, she has successfully obtained and managed training grants providing up to 4 years of support for 25 doctoral students with an emphasis on the preparation of bilingual school psychologists. She worked with students to establish a Texas A&M Chapter of the Student Affiliates in School Psychology as an official student organization for which she continues to serve as faculty advisor. She has published more than 76 refereed journal articles, 29 book chapters, first-authored two texts, and co-edited three texts. Across these scholarly activities, she engaged students in publication and presentations. She has chaired 33 School Psychology doctoral committees and serves on graduate committees across the college and university.
College: Department of Educational Psychology
Award Level: Teaching