Southwestern's Vicente Villa Recognized with National Teaching Award

May 19, 1998

Southwestern University biology professor Vicente Villa has been awarded the Outstanding Educator Award by the United Methodist Foundation for Christian Higher Education.

The Outstanding Educator Award honors teachers in United Methodist-related institutions whose accomplishments have made an extraordinary impact on their students, peers, academic institution, church and community.

This national recognition by this prestigious foundation follows several other teaching awards for Villa including his recognition in 1993 as U.S. Professor of the Year. Villa was chosen over 409 other nominees from public and independent universities across the country, including Ivy League and research universities, small liberal arts colleges and large state universities. Villa traveled to Washington, D.C. to accept the award, to deliver a lecture at the Smithsonian Institute and to receive an in-person commendation from President Bill Clinton.

In 1996, Villa was given the Carski Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award by the American Society for Microbiology. He also received Southwestern's 1988 Piper Professor Award, given to outstanding professors who emphasize undergraduate preparation in Texas.

At New Mexico State, where Villa taught from 1972 to 1985, he received the first annual Donald C. Roush award. Which recognizes the university's best science professor. Later, he won the New Mexico Academy of Science Award for best science college teacher in the state.

A Mexican American who was raised in Laredo, Texas, and labored as a shoeshine boy along the Rio Grande River banks, Villa's parents and teachers pushed him to excel. After completing two years at Laredo Junior College, Villa completed his bachelor of arts degree in biology at UT-Austin and his doctorate in biology at Rice University.

Since then, a large part of Vila's focus has been education and mentoring of minority students. He taught Principios of Bioligia in Spanish to science majors at New Mexico State. There, he was also co-principal investigator for the Minority Biomedical Research Support and Minority Access to Research Careers programs for nine years. The initiative provided collaborative research opportunities for undergraduate students to work with Villa on his cell research.

At Southwestern, few Hispanic students were majoring in the sciences when Villa arrived in 1985. To change that, he became a member of the Pre-Med Advising Committee and the Academic Affairs Council, and he has served as a trusted mentor to scores of Hispanic students. Today, more than ten percent of those graduating with biology degrees from Southwestern are Hispanic. On average, three-quarters of Villa's graduates are admitted to the nation's top medical schools.

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