March 5, 2008
The 2008 Alice Wright Franzke Feminist Award recipients were honored Wednesday during a luncheon on campus.
The recipients are Diedra Coleman (staff recipient), Associate Director, Counseling and Testing Center; Sonia Garcia (faculty recipient), Ph.D., Associate Professor, Political Science; and Vanessa Torres (student recipient), Graduate Student, Political Science.
Coleman has chaired the St. Mary’s University Martin Luther King Celebration Committee for more than 10 years. She has also served as an advisor to the Black Student Union, and been involved with the President’s Task Force on Diversity, and has moderated a program to help make women more aware of acquaintance rape issues.
Garcia is known as a mentor and role model to her students. She was hired as the first tenure-track woman in the Political Science Department and was the first woman to chair the department. She is one of the founders for the Women’s Studies minor and has served as coordinator of the program since 2005.
Torres is the current president of Pi Sigma Alpha, which is the political science honor society, serves on the Women’s History Month Committee, and has been recognized as both a Distinguished Leader and as a recipient of the Transformational Leader Award. She has participated in the Student Lobbying Day at the Texas Legislature and ran for the Hondo City Council – losing by only a few dozen votes.