Trinity University Honors the 2025 Faculty and Staff Awardees

On Tuesday, May 6, Trinity University celebrated faculty and staff who have demonstrated remarkable dedication to student advocacy, inclusivity, research and scholarship, and advising and mentorship. Learn more about this year’s award recipients and the ways they embody Trinity’s commitment to excellence and student-centered education.

Dr. and Mrs. Z. T. Scott Faculty Fellowship

Each year, Trinity University honors one Trinity faculty member with the Dr. and Mrs. Z. T. Scott Faculty Fellowship for excellence in teaching and advising. The fellowship consists of a cash award and an additional stipend to be used by the recipient to enhance their professional development as a teacher and adviser.

Kathleen Surpless, Ph.D.

Professor, Earth and Environmental Geosciences

Kathleen Surpless is a role model of the highest quality due to the care with which she interacts with, mentors, and supports students at Trinity. Since arriving at Trinity, Surpless has mentored 35 undergraduate research students while serving several terms as department chair and serving as a leader in the geological community at the national level. Her pedagogy is methodical, intentional, and always in favor of the students’ learning needs and overall well-being. Her teaching philosophy is based on the premise that students learn best when they are active participants in their own education. Surpless’ cutting-edge lab work is preceded by strenuous field campaigns and meticulous sample preparation work. This type of research is typically undertaken by graduate students, but she has tailored the program to Trinity undergraduate students. As one colleague wrote, Surpless “builds learning experiences grounded in active learning and community-based practices … the result is a blurring of the lines between lecture, lab, and field work that occurs as students not only learn science but learn to be scientists.”

Dr. Deneese L. Jones Award for Inclusive Excellence

Dr. Deneese L. Jones is a multicultural educator, scholar of equity pedagogy, and senior academic leader with a career in education spanning more than 40 years. She served as vice president for Academic Affairs at Trinity University from 2016-21 and was the first woman of color to serve as Trinity’s chief academic officer. In honor of Dr. Jones, one award is given annually to one tenured or tenure-track faculty member, and another is given annually to one staff member, for their outstanding support of inclusive excellence.

Heather Haynes Smith, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Education

Heather Haynes Smith was described by one student as “the embodiment of someone who values inclusivity in every aspect of her life, but especially through her connections in the Trinity community.” Her courses on “Disabilities in School and Society” and “Cultivating Compassion and a Commitment to Justice” have been described as “transformative” and “eye-opening,” and through these courses, her students have contributed about 427 hours to service-learning partnerships in the community. Haynes Smith is an active scholar on experiences and interventions for students with exceptionalities. She coordinates the bi-annual Disability Inclusion Fair, now in its 10th year, which brings together more than 20 organizations serving disabled youth and adults to establish a vibrant network of resources and opportunities for the Trinity community that bridges classroom learning with real-world advocacy and community engagement. She is the faculty adviser for the TU Students with Disabilities Society, a member of the Student Information System (SIS) readiness collective, and part of the Science Alliance LCC1 Inclusive STEM Leadership Group.

Nicole Fratto Garcia

Associate Director, Admissions, Office of Admissions and Aid

Nicole Fratto Garcia is what one person called a “fiery” advocate for community and belonging, working to ensure Trinity provides equitable and inclusive opportunities for students. She has worked to increase the Semmes Scholarship pool and goes the extra mile to make sure our first-generation students and Pell-eligible students have the support and resources they need for academic success, even designing and managing a “Dorm Essentials Kit” initiative to ensure that students with significant financial need can start their Trinity education on solid footing. Throughout the COVID pandemic, Fratto Garcia worked tirelessly to bring inclusive, virtual programming to admitted underrepresented students, allowing them to visualize what it would be like to one day be on campus again. She currently oversees the Inclusive Excellence committee in the Office of Admissions, partnering with schools and organizations across San Antonio to attract and enroll underserved populations, and has also played an instrumental role in collaborating with Conferences & Special Programs to host the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zavala program at Trinity, which brought 200 high-achieving and talented National Hispanic Institute high school students from across the nation to Trinity for an 8-day residential experience. 

Danny and Kimberly Anderson Prize for Excellence in Teaching

The Danny and Kimberly Anderson Prize for Excellence in Teaching honors exceptional contributions by Trinity faculty members in the mentorship of research students. All tenured and tenure-track faculty members are eligible for consideration. 

Lauren Turek, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, History

Lauren Turek single-handedly developed the history department’s internship program, which launched in Fall 2018. Since then, she has supervised 27 history internships. Turek also served as director of the Mellon Initiative from 2020-22, and sat on the program’s steering committee from 2016-20. Through these accumulated efforts, she enabled numerous student research projects and raised the profile of Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships in the arts and humanities. Turek’s groundbreaking course, “Oral History,” designed in collaboration with the University Archivist, resulted in research projects where students conducted authentic historical research that confirmed that history extends beyond the classroom. She has been a member of the Trinity University Roots Commission since 2018 and has co-chaired the Commission since 2020, when she was a faculty supervisor for the first student researcher to join the Roots Commission. Turek designed a new minor in museum studies and has run it since its inception, directing numerous students toward related internships and careers. Furthermore, she has directed the First-Year Experience since 2023 and frequently works hands-on with our newest students as a teacher in the program.

Distinguished Achievement Awards

Distinguished Early Career Faculty Teaching and Research Award

Gregory Clines, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Religion

Gregory Clines has taught courses that fulfill multiple Pathways, including Global Awareness, Written Communication, the Humanities Approach, and Oral and Visual Communication, as well as two First-Year Experience courses. He also created three new courses for the religion department, including the surprisingly popular “Introductory Sanskrit,” the first Sanskrit course ever taught at Trinity. Clines’ course “Religion in the Environment” is especially popular amongst non-majors. Clines has also published one monograph, four peer-reviewed journal articles, and two peer-reviewed chapters in edited volumes. His monograph, Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation, is considered a premier monograph series for the field of Jain studies. 

Suning Zhu, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Finance and Business Analytics

Suning Zhu teaches some of the most technical courses in the finance and business analytics department, and students frequently praise her for her clarity, patience, and real-world examples. Zhu has introduced case studies and hands-on projects that deeply resonate with students, bringing real-world experience into the classroom with passion and persistence, creating transformative learning experiences. Zhu also collaborates with colleagues in the mathematics department to coordinate the “Machine Learning and Math for Data Science” course, ensuring that the topics covered in the mathematics course are not only aligned with but also meaningful for the subsequent course in machine learning in the Michael Neidorff School of Business. Zhu has an impressive list of six publications in her time at Trinity, with one publication in an A* journal, and three in A-level journals, and she has established herself as a leading scholar in the fields of supply chain analytics, big data, and analytics training, with her research addressing critical gaps in these areas.

Award for Distinguished Advising and Mentoring

Jason Johnson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, History

Jason Johnson has been the adviser for approximately 60 students since 2019 and sees his commitment to mentoring as a way to “pay it forward.” Explaining his philosophy of advising, Johnson writes, “I grew up working class in rural East Tennessee. I am a first-generation college student. I would not be a professor at Trinity if not for the advising and mentoring I have had across my entire life. Thus, I see a central part of my role at Trinity to be helping students in whatever ways I can, since mentorship has been key in getting me here in the first place.” From Fall 2020 through Spring 2023, Johnson served as a Trinity McNair Faculty Fellow, mentoring first-generation, low-income, and/or underrepresented students across their undergraduate education, ultimately preparing them to further their education in graduate school as they pursue doctoral studies. Since 2017, Johnson has served as Trinity’s program adviser for Fulbright, and he has served as president of Trinity’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa since 2021.

Award for Distinguished University, Community, and Professional Service

Angela Tarango, Ph.D.

Professor, Religion

Angela Tarango has provided extensive and significant service to the university for more than 10 years, supporting undergraduate research and engagement and belonging initiatives on campus. In 2016-17, she was awarded a Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religious Studies Large Department Grant, which granted the religion department $30,000, allowing them to undergo a large-scale revision of the major, resulting in the creation of two new courses. Since 2018, Tarango has served as a member of the Mexico, the Americas, and Spain Executive Committee, as well as the Roots Commission. Her work in the Roots Commission traces the history of the Cumberland Presbyterian church leaders who founded Trinity. She has served as a McNair Faculty Fellow to the Class of 2020, and in 2023, she became director of the Mellon Initiative. Tarango has also provided extensive service to the Latinx community, serving on the Executive Council for the American Society of Church History in 2018-20 and on the North American Religions Steering Committee for the American Academy of Religion in 2017-22. Tarango is dedicated to including more Latinx scholars of religion in higher education.

Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Research, or Creative Work or Activity

David Pooley, Ph.D.

Professor, Physics and Astronomy

Since arriving at Trinity in 2015, David Pooley has published over 20 peer-reviewed publications, several with undergraduate co-authors. In 2017, the LIGO gravitational-wave detector observed for the first time the merger of two neutron stars, and Pooley was able to make the definitive determination that the resulting object was not a larger neutron star but a black hole. In 2022, he was invited to participate as well as present at the International Space Science Institute Workshop on Strong Gravitational Lensing in Bern, Switzerland. This resulted in his most significant publication: being one of the three leading authors for a chapter in the upcoming book Strong Gravitational Lensing, which is likely to be both crosscutting in astronomy and foundational for the subfield. In 2019, Pooley was awarded the NASA Group Achievement Award for “outstanding group accomplishment that has contributed substantially to NASA’s mission.” He currently serves on the NASA Physics of the Cosmos Program Analysis Group Executive Committee. As one faculty member wrote, “It is rare for a professor at a small, liberal arts university to rise to such heights, and he represents Trinity well with his scholarship.”