By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS
Eight alumni and friends of Fort Hays State University will be honored at the Alumni Awards and Recognition Banquet on Oct. 11 during 2019 Homecoming weekend.
This year’s four Alumni Achievement Award recipients are Buck Arnhold ’74, ’76, ’80, Olathe; Kevin Faulkner ’83, ’83, Pebble Beach, Calif.; Dr. Leigh (Bunn) Goodson ’94, Tulsa, Okla.; and Michael Miller ’85, ’86, ’93, Kansas City, Mo.
The Alumni Achievement Award, the association’s highest honor, was established in 1959 to recognize graduates who have made outstanding and unselfish contributions in service to their community, state or nation as citizens, in chosen career fields or through philanthropic work. The award is based upon career and professional achievements, service involving community betterment, philanthropic activities and educational achievements.
The Young Alumni Award will go to two recipients: Cole Engel, Ph.D., CPA, ’07, ’07, ’09, Hays; and Joshua W. Snider ’05, El Paso, Texas.
The Young Alumni Award is granted to graduates of 10- through 15-year reunion classes. The award is designed to recognize those early in their careers who have had outstanding professional and educational achievements, community activities, honors and awards received, and other accomplishments since graduation. Candidates must hold a bachelor’s degree from FHSU, be members of the 10-15 reunion classes, and be under age 40 as of Jan. 1 of the year the awards are presented.
This year’s Distinguished Service Award goes to Dr. Christie (Patterson) Brungardt ’01 and
Dr. Curt Brungardt ’81, ’84 of Council Grove.
The Distinguished Service Award recognizes a graduate or friend of the university who has demonstrated a continuing concern for humanity on a universal, national, state or community level, who supports spiritual, cultural and educational objectives, and who endorses and exemplifies the highest standards of character and personal attributes. It is reserved for alumni or friends of the university.
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Buck Arnhold
After 40 years as a full-time professional artist and entrepreneur, Buck Arnhold is still actively creating. Upon completing his B.A., M.A. and M.F.A. from Fort Hays State, he launched his own successful sign and graphics business in Hays. He painted Bob Dole’s presidential announcement backdrop and murals for many organizations and schools including FHSU’s Forsyth Library.
In 1989 he relocated to Kansas City where he worked for Acme Sign Company with clients such as the Kansas City Chiefs and Boulevard Brewing Company. For the latter, he painted the iconic smokestacks which have been recreated as tap handles found in establishments across the region. During this time, he also produced works for the personal foundations of former Chiefs players including Derrick Thomas, Joe Montana and Marcus Allen.
Among many other high-flying art projects, Buck’s job required him to repaint the Chiefs’ Arrowhead sign atop the stadium by being hoisted 100 feet up in the air on a boom truck and, still not reaching the sign, swinging another 15 feet on a wooden seat hung with ropes, a five-gallon bucket of paint, a roller and a brush.
Always generous to share both his art and his knowledge, he has painted murals in El Salvador and designed décor, paintings and murals for countless fundraisers. He has been especially generous to Literacy Kansas City and The Good Samaritan Project, among others.
He has also painted murals in 28 of the 36 Olathe elementary schools. Arnhold has provided annual drawing demonstrations for elementary students hoping to engage and inspire youth in the artistic process. In 1998 he went to work for Associated Wholesale Grocers, where he was responsible for 1,500 murals and art in 22 states.
Kevin Faulkner
When Kevin Faulkner graduated from FHSU in 1983, he was already a very committed Tiger who showed great potential. He earned two B.A.s, one in political science and another economics, served as SGA president, received the Torch Award, and continued his education at the University of Virginia Law School, where he earned a Juris Doctorate.
Faulkner has succeeded at the highest level in his professional career, most of which has been spent while working as an investor relations officer (IRO) for various technology companies in Silicon Valley.
After 12 years as a securities and corporate lawyer with two prestigious West Coast firms, he embarked upon a career in investor relations that revolutionized that role for technology companies from an administrative position supporting the CEO and CFO to an outward-facing position working directly with investors while ensuring that all securities regulations and insider trading laws are followed.
Faulkner has been a generous supporter of Fort Hays State University through the FHSU Foundation and the FHSU entrepreneurship program. While serving since 2010 on the Foundation Board of Trustees Investment Committee and Executive Committee, he led efforts to improve the Foundation’s investment goals and strategy, which created many millions more in returns than the former strategy would have generated.
He has championed FHSU’s W.R. and Yvonne Robbins College of Business and Entrepreneurship by providing resources to the entrepreneurship program, serving as a judge and supporter for the Faulkner Challenge entrepreneur competition, and developing support from local business leaders, regional economic development officials and potential investors.
Dr. Leigh Goodson
As a highly energetic advocate of education and community service, Dr. Leigh (Bunn) Goodson has risen through the educational ranks and is currently the president of Tulsa Community College. The foundation for Leigh’s stellar career achievements can be traced back to her experience as an admissions counselor for FHSU, a position she held while she completed work on a Master of Science degree in organizational communication. Her focus, then and now, is on students and helping change their economic trajectories.
Tulsa Community College is recognized as a nationally prominent urban community college that annually serves 27,000-plus students at four Tulsa metro campuses and two community campuses.
Under her leadership, TCC was selected as one of 30 colleges nationwide to participate in the Pathways Project, a program sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Through the Pathways program and with a significant financial commitment from the college and private funders, TCC was able to increase support services to help students graduate.
Those practices have transformed the college. Results include increased retention rates, an increased number of students taking full-time class loads, allowing developmental education students to access college-level classes quicker, and higher retention rates for students of color.
Prior to assuming the TCC presidency in 2014, Goodson served as vice president for research and institutional advancement at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, where she administered $30 million in grants and contracts and directed all federal government relations for both OSU campuses in Tulsa.
Her service includes membership on the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce Board, the Tulsa World Community Advisory Board, the Tulsa Area United Way Campaign, the YMCA of Greater Tulsa Metropolitan Board of Directors and the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, among others.
Michael Miller
Mike Miller earned several degrees from FHSU, including an A.S. in radiologic technology in 1985, a B.S. in general science in 1986 and an M.S. in physical education in 1993. After serving FHSU as a clinical instructor of radiology, he left to pursue his life-long dream of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming an agent for the FBI.
Miller earned his FBI special agent certification at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. Since 1998, he has served in many roles, most recently as a training coordinator and special agent for the FBI in Kansas City. Early in his FBI career, he obtained a conviction in a $28 million Medicare fraud scheme. After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Miller was deployed to New York on two occasions. During the first, he was a member of the response team that recovered a weaponized anthrax-laced letter sent to the New York Post. On his second deployment, he worked to search for, recover and document evidence and human remains from Ground Zero rubble.
He has received multiple awards for his FBI work in a variety of cases, including preventing violence against Westboro Baptist Church members and counter-protestors, recovery of the newborn baby of Bobbi Jo Stinnett, and coordination of searches and testimony in a plot to attack a mosque in Southwest Kansas.
As the Topeka Jewish community became more concerned about dangers from shooters and other threats, Miller became instrumental to the Beth Shalom temple.
YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD
Dr. Cole Engel
A lifelong FHSU Tiger, Dr. Cole Engel, CPA, earned two undergraduate degrees in 2007, B.B.A.s in computer information systems and accounting from Fort Hays State. He also earned an MBA in accounting from FHSU in 2009, and later became a licensed CPA. During graduate school, he served as a graduate teaching assistant. He credits that experience with molding his career path as a university professor.
Engel has been an instructor of accounting since 2009. After receiving his Ph.D. from Northcentral University in 2016, he was advanced to the rank of assistant professor of economics, finance and accounting. He has written multiple research articles for peer-reviewed publications.
During his 10 years teaching at FHSU, Engel has twice earned the Outstanding COBE Faculty Award. His work in academic advising has been recognized nationally by NACADA, the global community for academic advising as well as on-campus with the Edmund Shearer and Navigator Awards.
His most extensive and long-term community-service activity has been with the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. He started as a student volunteer and is now the faculty supervisor who works with student preparers. The program annually provides free tax assistance to more than 150 low-to-middle-income, local taxpayers who need help completing their tax returns.
Along with providing professional service-learning experiences for his students, leadership on the Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout boards of review, and support for other non-profit community organizations, Engel is a member of the FHSU Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on its Audit Committee. He created a named scholarship with the FHSU Foundation for undergraduate accounting students.
Joshua W. Snider
Completing his B.A. in political science, in 2005, and his Juris Doctorate, from Texas Tech University School of Law in 2008, Joshua Snider has become a shining star of Texas and FHSU for his tremendous impact on the U.S./Mexico border region.
He currently is a managing shareholder and attorney for Gordon Davis Johnson and Shane P.C., a business boutique firm in El Paso, Texas. He is licensed in Texas and New Mexico and admitted to practice before the U.S. Tax Court and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He served as an advisory member of the State Bar of Texas’ Professionalism Committee in 2014-2015.
Snider’s work includes inbound and outbound business transactions, with an emphasis on cross-border issues in Mexico, international tax planning and compliance, multinational joint ventures, complex international structures, wealth planning for high-net-worth individuals, international estate planning and a wide range of domestic and transactional tax and corporate matters.
His community service includes serving on the board and pro-bono legal counsel of the FEMAP Foundation, a multinational non-profit that raises funds to assist El Paso’s sister city, Ciudad Juarez, and its citizens to improve the quality of life through health services, education, research, and economic and social empowerment. The foundation primarily assists with funding for the Hospital de la Familia and its nursing school.
Snider formerly served on the Millennial Advisory Board for the Hospitals of Providence System, and on the board for the El Paso Chapter of March of Dimes. Josh also has provided pro bono legal services to families in need.
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD
Dr. Curt Brungardt and Dr. Christie Brungardt
The Distinguished Service Award could have been designed with Drs. Curt and Christie (Patterson) Brungardt in mind. Both are FHSU alumni and longtime faculty members in the Department of Leadership Studies, of which Curt Brungardt was the founding department chair. Upon their recent retirement, they were awarded emeritus faculty status for their service to the university.
The curriculum of the Leadership Studies Department, with 18 full-time faculty and nearly 1,700 students worldwide, is focused on citizenship and creating citizen leaders. Its methodology emphasizes service-learning and civic engagement. They have described the impetus for their work as: “We have committed our lives to be social entrepreneurs.”
They created the Center for Civic Leadership to expand civic engagement opportunities to all FHSU students and staff. The Center’s projects include the American Democracy Project; Tigers in Service; the Kansas Youth Leadership Academy; and the Benjamin Franklin Papers learning experience for K-12 students.
The Women’s Leadership Project, founded by Christie Brungardt, was created to “educate, inspire and empower women to be the leaders of tomorrow.” The Red Flag Campaign is an initiative of the WLP to educate students to recognize the warning signs of dating violence.
Red Flag was implemented from a separate, highly personal project. The Brungardts founded Jana’s Campaign, a national non-profit organization, as a result of a deeply personal tragedy, the murder of their 25-year-old daughter, Jana Mackey. Jana’s Campaign was created “with the single purpose of reducing gender and relationship violence.” The campaign has so far been carried to more than 600 middle and high schools and 400 colleges and universities in 38 states.