College to recognize five Alumni of Distinction

The College will recognize five alumni this spring as “Alumni of Distinction,” Dean John Wright announced. Including these five, the College will have recognized only 102 of its more than 22,000 graduates in this manner.

The alumni have been invited to participate in the College’s annual awards banquet on Wednesday, April 9 and the undergraduate commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 4. 

The five are:

• Richard (Dick) Bartlett, Mass Communication 1957, joined Mary Kay Inc. in 1973 to guide the company’s sales and marketing strategies.  Dick became an officer in 1976, a member of the board in 1979 and was named vice chairman in 1993. He directed the growth of Mary Kay while serving as president and chief operating officer from 1987 through 1992. In 2005, wholesale sales of Mary Kay products exceeded $2.2 billion and Mary Kay’s independent sales force exceeds 1.6 million in more than 30 nations worldwide.  Under his leadership, Mary Kay Inc. has received numerous awards for its stewardship of the environment: the first annual Texas Earth Friendly Award; the Environmental Excellence Award from Keep America Beautiful; the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region VI’s Environmental Excellence Award; the National Environmental Development Association’s Honor Roll; the first United Nations Environment Programme’s Award; the first Financial Times Television-Alp Action Film Award for Corporate Environmental Action presented at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland; the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence presented by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission; and the North Texas Conservation Leadership Award from The Nature Conservancy of Texas. He began his career in direct marketing by establishing Tupperware in Europe in 1960. He has held various leadership positions in the profession including twice chairing the Direct Selling Association Board of Directors. In 1994, he received the industry’s top honor, the Hall of Fame Award. He has authored three books including The Direct Option, on direct selling as a legitimate career choice, The Sportsman’s Guide to Texas, about blending conservation ethics and hunting, and Saving the Best of Texas: A Partnership Approach to Conservation.
• Andy Fletcher, ADV 1979, is president and CEO of Fletcher Martin, an Atlanta-based advertising agency.  Andy is recognized as one of industry's leading experts in marketing strategy development. Literally growing up in the advertising business, he began his career with Fletcher Mayo when he was a teenager. His experience includes DDB/Needham and Della Femina in New York, as well as Barkley & Evergreen in Kansas City. He has worked on major national brands including General Electric, First Data Corporation, Learjet, The Kansas City Chiefs, Northwest Airlines, Sonic Drive-ins and Western Auto where he led its sports marketing and NASCAR sponsorship efforts. Recently, he directed the strategic vision for the launch campaign for the Atlanta Thrashers. In 2005, Fletcher Martin successfully bid for University of Florida’s marketing campaign and launched the Gator Nation.
• Hal Herman, JOU 1949, is chairman and CEO of Worth International Communications Corporation, a worldwide publishing company.  Worth publishes RECOMMEND Magazine, for which Hal serves as president and editor-in-chief.  Worth's Custom Publishing Division's past and present clients include the State of Florida, Government of Mexico, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida, and Busch Entertainment Corporation. He worked at a Miami newspaper and radio station and for a public relations firm before starting his own business in 1953 as a newspaper representative.  He is past president of the Advertising Federation of Greater Miami, past president of the former Surfside-Bal Harbour-Bay Harbor Islands Chamber of Commerce, and a past vice chairman of the Greater Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.  He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Advertising Federation, past chair of the Florida Chapter of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Travel and Tourism Research Association, former chair of the Florida Tourism Association, and a board member of the Greater Miami Hotel and Motel Association.  He also is a former Florida Ambassador to the Southeast U.S./Japan Association appointed by former Governor Reuben Askew and former member of the Florida Council on International Development.  He received the prestigious Silver Medal from the American Advertising Federation and currently serves as an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors of VISIT FLORIDA, INC. (the Florida Tourism Industry Marketing Corporation) and the Florida Commission on Tourism.
• Kristi Krueger, TEL 1986, has built a distinguished reputation as a major market award-winning medical reporter. She currently is morning and noon news anchor on WPLG-TV and Local10.com in Miami. For many years she was the primary evening and late evening news anchor.  She joined WPLG as co-anchor and "Eye on Health" reporter in 1993 after working for three years as a medical reporter and anchor for WDIV in Detroit. In 1998, she received an Emmy for her groundbreaking report on possible side effects of the Hepatitis-B vaccine.  In 1996 and 1997, she received the Florida Heart Association Award for Outstanding Media Service for her "Heart Talk" project.  She also received the Excellence in Journalism Award from Florida's Association of Retarded Citizens and the Florida Cancer Communicator Award.  The Florida Medical Association has awarded her first place awards twice–in 1990 for her reporting on cosmetic surgery and in 1988 for her series, "Nurses Needed: Stat:."  In 2006 she was given the "Best Large Market" media award by the Florida Heart Association for a report, "Save the Everglades." In 2005 and 2006 she won the "Best Large Market" and the "Best in Show Media" awards for her two-part report, "Cardiac Arrest." In 2000, she was named "Woman of Vision" by the Weizmann Institute of Science and was appointed to the advisory board of Our Part of the Woods. In 1999, she was honored as the First Lady of Broward and in 1999 the Sun Sentinel newspaper named her "favorite female anchor."  She began her broadcast career at WWSB-TV in Sarasota.
• Stephanie Sinclair, JOU 1998, began her career at The Chicago Tribune, which hired her out of college and where she worked for five years. After covering the war in Iraq, Stephanie quit her job and moved to Iraq and then Beirut, Lebanon, to work out of the region. Her regular clients include The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Stern, German Geo and Marie Claire among others. Recently she was named winner of the Alexia Foundation for World Peace Award. In her short career, she has earned numerous awards including the Visa D’Or at the 2004 Visa Pour L’Image photography festival in France, a first place in World Press Photo, and the FiftyCrows International Fund for Documentary Photography's 2004 Central Asia and Caucasus Grant for her work on women’s issues in Afghanistan. She most recently won a third place in World Press Photo for her coverage of the 2006 war in Lebanon and was a participant in World Press Photo’s 13th Joop Swart Masterclass. She also has earned several awards in the Pictures of the Year International annual competition including a first place for a story she did on courthouse weddings in Chicago, and has been recognized in the American Photography competition for the last four years. The Chicago Bar Association's Herman Kogan Meritorious Achievement Award 2000 was awarded to her for her involvement in a series that the Chicago Tribune produced on the failure of the death penalty in Illinois. She also was part of the paper’s team that won the Pulitzer Prize for their documentation of problems within the airline industry in 2000.

Posted: March 27, 2008
Category: College News