Tom Uribes, a former Fresno State employee of 30 years, has been selected to receive the Chicano Alumni Legacy Award, which will honor Uribes’ work as a journalist and a proponent of education in the Central California Latino community over the last 45 years, according to a university press release.
The award will be presented at the Chicano Alumni Awards and Scholarship Banquet on Oct. 12 at 6 p.m. at the University Square Hotel.
Uribes, who retired in December 2017, began working at Fresno State in 1988 and had most recently served as the university’s spokesman. Before his retirement, Uribes was named Media, Communications and Journalism Fellow at the MCJ Hall of Fame dinner.
During his time at Fresno State, Uribes was editor of the student-run newspaper La Voz de Aztlan in the mid-1970s, and later worked for a Chicano community publication in the late 1970s and The Delano Record in the mid-1980s.
The Chicano Alumni Legacy Award is presented to an individual who has served the Fresno State Chicano community as well as the greater surrounding community. Three other Fresno State student journalists will be presented during the award banquet, the release stated.
George Garnica, a KSEE-TV 24 news photojournalist pursuing a degree in media, communications and journalism, will receive the Chicano Alumni Club Scholarship.
Fresno State sophomore Jennifer Madrigal, a public health administration major who is also minoring in media, communications and journalism, will receive the Fresno State Amigos Scholarship.
Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado, editor-in-chief of the Fresno State student-run newspaper and media, communications and journalism major, will receive the Zack and Carmen Uribes Scholarship.
Manuel Olgin, founding president of the Chicano Alumni, which is an affiliate of the Fresno State Alumni Association, said this year’s banquet will be dedicated to promoting a strong free press. Olgin also stated Uribes had regularly promoted journalism as a career choice for many Latino students and other minorities.
“Tom was part of the generation of Chicano students in the ’70s — and since — who worked to help open the doors of higher education to more students of color, and he was among just a handful who made their contributions through journalism,” Olgin said, according to a news release from the university.
Tickets to the banquet are $40, and are expected to sell out, with all proceeds going to the Chicano Alumni scholarship endowment fund.
For more information, or to RSVP, please contact the banquet chairwoman Frances Pena-Olgin at [email protected].