Shelly Vitanza:
Welcome to the LU Moment, thank you for listening. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at Lamar University. Each week, we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at Lamar University. Hey, big news on the Lamar University campus and across the community, Lamar University’s 15th president, Dr. Kenneth Evans has announced his retirement from LU effective June 30th of this year. Evans informed our chancellor with our Texas State University system, Dr. Brian McCall, which Lamar is a member of. The chancellor’s office will commence a nationwide search beginning February 1st. Dr. Evans’ legacy is one of renovation, innovation, and collaboration as president of Lamar for the past eight years. He came in July of 2013. He has overseen many buildings and construction projects including the remodeling of the Setzer Center and the quadrangle as well as the 85,000 square feet Science and Technology building.
This Spring, we will open a new welcome center on the LU campus, and it is the final project in a long-term project to create an official front door right off Cardinal Drive so we’re real excited about that.
That was all Evans’ vision to create an official front door for Lamar University. Evans established several centers on campus including the Center for the Advances and Port Management, the Center for History and Culture for Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast and the Center for Midstream Management and Science as well as some others. He’s also initiated a President’s Task Force on diversity, inclusion, access and equity to work collaboratively with the entire University community to transform LU into a more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and welcoming and supportive learning, working, and living environment for everybody on the campus. We grew our student enrollment from 15,000 students in 2013 to almost 18,000 in the Fall of 2020 amidst a global pandemic, I might add.
Dr. Evans has also been a huge community collaborator and initiating the Greater South Park neighborhoods partnership and enhancing research and granting proposals processes in order to conduct research beneficial to the entire southeast Texas region. Like flood mitigation, which we’re all really interested in, right? We’ve been very, very lucky to have Dr. Evans and we will wish him the best in his retirement. Like I said, the search efforts will begin February 1st and until then, he will remain at the helm of Lamar University. There’s another interesting ongoing project.
I wanted to make you aware of. It’s called the Texas Poetry Assignment. Google it. Texas Poetry Assignment and you’ll find it’s an online project the features poetry while also helping victims of hunger in Texas and several of LU’s professors have published works on this project. The project leader, Lawrence Musgrove, is a professor of English at San Angelo State University and he post’s topics or assignments for writers and then writers from all over then submit their works, so check it out and look for the works of Lamar University professors. Here’s another cool story you need to know about. A team of Lamar University journalists is one of the ten finalists in the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institutes 2021 Student Innovation Competition. The Cardinal Team will compete February 26th for big money, $10,000! Pretty Big!
They will implement innovative idea in partnership with a local media outlet and try to win that $10,000. Each year, the Reynolds Journalism Institute challenges college journalism majors across the country to implement innovative ideas in the newsroom. Our journalism students, Timothy Cohrs along with LU’s University Press editor, Oliva Malick and two other journalists on the UP team are the team leaders that are coming up with the project. And it’s a bit secretive of course because the competition is not until February 26th, but I visited Timothy Cohrs, the team leader and without giving away too many secrets, he disclosed that the LU team has created a reader engagement program that can be reproduced and will measure interaction between the Port Arthur community and the Port Arthur news. So, they are teaming up with Port Arthur news and competing against eight other schools.
I was pretty impressed with the competition, Kent State University, University of Maryland, Missouri School of Journalism, which is renowned in journalism, Syracuse University, University of Southern California, Ohio University, Washington University and two teams from New York University, NYU. That’s a big list of impressive schools and Lamar University was chosen. There were fifty schools that were buying for the final positions in Lamar University with one of them. Pretty impressive, our journalism group, I’ve got to say. So, congratulations to them and we’ll keep you posted.
They may win the $10,000 and we’ll let you know. So, occasionally on the LU Moment, we like to have alumni as a guest to find out what they are doing with their LU degree and today, we’ve invited Andrew Victores, Dr. Andrew Victores. Dr. Victores, welcome, thank you for joining us.
Andrew Victores:
Thank you for having me on.
Shelly Vitanza:
So, I know it was a struggle for you to fit this into your schedule, you are working in the Beaumont area. Tell us what you do.
Andrew Victores:
Yes ma’am. I’m an ear, nose and throat physician here in Beaumont. Treating kind of all range of medical and surgical problems in the head and neck area.
Shelly Vitanza:
Alright, so glad that we’re here in Beaumont. That you stay close to your alma matter. Let’s talk about your journey at LU. When did you attend and what was your major?
Andrew Victores:
Yes ma’am. I’m actually a native of Beaumont as well and I attended in 2006. The last year I was here at Lamar.
Shelly Vitanza:
Okay, and what was your major?
Andrew Victores:
My major was biochemistry and cell biology.
Shelly Vitanza:
Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor? How did that evolve and why did you choose Lamar? It was close to home? So, talk to us about that. How you came to be a doctor and decided you wanted to attend Lamar and then move onto medical school?
Andrew Victores:
Sure, so I always had a passion for science and that I kind of discovered that early on. I just loved how science allowed me to understand the world we live in better and kind of explain the world in a deeper way and so my passion for science ultimately lead me to my desire to become a physician.
Shelly Vitanza:
Got it. Where’d you graduate from high school?
Andrew Victores:
I did kind of an unusual path. I attended Westbrook, but I attended the Texas Academy of Leadership which is at Lamar University.
Shelly Vitanza:
Yeah! So, talk to us about that. That program that starts sophomore, junior, year? When did you join the academy?
Andrew Victores:
Yes ma’am. So, I skipped one year of high school and I attended Westbrook for a year and then I joined this program. Which would be my for basically the junior and senior year which would be the equivalent of that in high school. And I started at Lamar at this program there.
Shelly Vitanza:
Yeah! It’s an awesome program and I’ve had several of my friends’ children attend and one of them graduated a few years ago and is working on a Ph.D. because it puts you so far ahead. Is it like 60 hours that you graduate when you’re getting dual credits? You’re getting you high school degree and you’re getting college credit. Is it like 60 hours you graduate and then you’re ready to go to college?
Andrew Victores:
Yes ma’am. I ended up skipping through that program. I ended up being able to skip two years. Given that my path ended up being so long was, with medical training, it ended up being a nice thing to shave off a couple years on that journey.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, you doing this Texas academy here at Lamar is a parents dream. You save two years of college tuition. That’s awesome! Okay, so, you did Westbrook. You did the academy here at Lamar which is a very unique program. There’s only two in the entire state of Texas that come on campus and take dual credit high school and college. Then, talk to us about your path after that. Did Lamar prepare you for medical school? Were you ready to go?
Andrew Victores:
Yes, I was very well prepared. I ultimately went to medical school and residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. My background that I got here at Lamar was wonderful. It prepared me very well for that next step and then I completed a fellowship at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. Kind of focusing on my fellowship training with sinus and allergy diseases.
Shelly Vitanza:
Why ear, nose, and throat?
Andrew Victores:
It goes back to science. It was kind of my passion early on. As I started to kind of learn more about human anatomy and the different areas of specialization, I really enjoyed head and neck anatomy. Beautiful, beautiful anatomy and really complicated anatomy too. Really important stuff going through the head and neck. So, that complexity, the beauty of the anatomy itself. That was the seed that sprouted everything for me. That led me into a lot of research that I did in the area that everything kind of blossomed from that.
Shelly Vitanza:
Fantastic. And what would you say to students who are maybe thinking about a similar path? Any words of wisdom? Any advice?
Andrew Victores:
Sure. I think the best advice I can give is in a word, perseverance. As long as you really want something, you’ll get there, and Lamar University will definitely prepare you for that and has all the tools available to you. As long as you really have the passion for something, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. You definitely can.
Shelly Vitanza:
I love that. We just awarded the MLK Visionary Leadership scholarship to a young woman, a junior here at Lamar. When she accepted the award, she said, “because I’m Hispanic, a lot of people tell me that I can’t do what I want to do which is be a pediatrician.” She said that basically, “I’m going to prove them wrong because it’s my passion.” You’re saying the same thing. I think that students are struggling. Life is so hard right now because of this pandemic, the isolation and not being able to move around on campus the way we are used to moving around on campus. It’s good to hear those words of encouragement and inspire them to continue to pursue their passions, so we appreciate that. Any big memories from Lamar University? Favorite things? Do you still come back to campus?
Andrew Victores:
Yeah, I do. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to come back and speak at different events here to just be a resource here to current Lamar students particularly who are interested in my path. Since I’ve become a physician and I’ve had wonderful experiences doing that. Actually, my wife, believe it or not, is an attorney and she started teaching this past semester, so she’s been able to give back as well. So, I’ve had interactions through her as well with Lamar. And even patients! I’ve treated a number of Lamar University patients as well. I think many aspects of my life are still connected to Lamar.
Shelly Vitanza:
Well, you’re one of about 12,000 alumni within the southeast Texas area and going strong. We have nearly 100,000 alumni nationwide, but here locally, we’ve got about 12,000. So, I’m glad you decided to move home and stay home, and we appreciate it. Real quickly, tell us, what is the name of your office? Where do you work? In case somebody needs to come see you.
Andrew Victores:
Absolutely! I work with Southeast Texas ear, nose, and throat and we’re the primary ear, nose, and throat doctors here in this area. So, they won’t have to look hard. They should be able to find me at that practice.
Shelly Vitanza:
Very good. Thank you so much for your time and your great information. We really appreciate it. I want to let you know before we sign off that volleyball and football are on the LU calendar. We’re so excited. It looks like normalcy. We’ve got a virtual study abroad fair which is online because of the pandemic. Things are looking up, looking more normal and we’re excited about that. Thanks for listening to the LU Moment. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at Lamar University, the pride of Southeast Texas.