HSU Insider

HSU Names 2008 Outstanding Young Alumni

• By Dave Coffield
• Posted April 7, 2008 4:09 PM
• 0 Comments

Hardin-Simmons University has named three recipients of its Outstanding Young Alumni Award. They will be honored at a dinner on Friday, April 4, at 7:00 p.m., in the Johnson Building on the HSU campus.

In only its fifth year, this award is presented to HSU graduates under 45 years of age who have achieved a significant level of distinction or have brought extraordinary benefit to mankind, and symbolize the spirit and manner of today’s Hardin-Simmons University graduate.

Dickson Masindano is the director of Buckner Kenya, a division of Buckner Orphan Care International. Buckner Kenya is a Christian organization serving the orphan children and poor communities in Kenya and other African countries.

Masindano

Born in the northern rural village of Kiminini, Kenya, Dickson received his early education in the village primary school. He graduated from Cherangani High School in 1984 and from the University of Nairobi-Kenya in 1991.
Dickson taught at Menengai High School from for three years and was deputy school principal at Umoja High School for two years before joining the street children feeding program, Rescue Children Centre, where he served as a social worker and skills trainer from 1987 to 1999.

Upon hearing about HSU’s strong counseling and human development program, Dickson chose to pursue a graduate degree at Hardin-Simmons in 1999, and received a Master of Education degree in counseling and human development in 2001.

After graduation from Hardin-Simmons, Dickson began work as a social worker and program director at the Baptist Children’s Center in Kenya, which primarily cares for orphaned children with HIV/AIDS. Buckner International became affiliated with the center in 2001, choosing Dickson to serve as director of Buckner Kenya. Buckner focuses on program development, which Dickson leads, and also focuses on humanitarian aid, volunteer trips, and orphanage improvement.

Under Dickson’s direction, the orphanage has grown from a single building housing 26 orphans to a comprehensive center caring for 52 residential children with four stone buildings house 12 girls and boys in each with a resident care giver. The center now serves its community complete with a medical and dental clinic, a school offering one through six for both resident children and children from the surrounding slum neighborhood, and a vocational training program for young teenage girls who have fallen out of normal schooling due to pregnancies.

Dickson also introduced a pioneering foster care program at the center that has been duplicated by other centers across the country. The center now has 75 children living under foster care.
His degree in counseling enables him to offer counseling to people being tested for HIV. About 96 percent of the children who come through the residential program were orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. The remaining four percent are there because of economic reasons or abandonment.

Dickson is a member of the Children’s Council that has been instrumental in developing the Children’s Rights Bill of 2003 in Kenya. His policy development helped pass the law in Kenyan parliament, which was endorsed by the United Nations. He is also a member of the committee to develop policies and early childhood curriculum for children of war in southern Sudan.

He and his wife, Josephine Natembeya, and their children Miriam, Jescinta, and foster son, Oscar, attend the Munyan Memorial Baptist Chapel which is a part of the Children’s Center.

McMaude

Mike McMaude is currently president and CEO for Voyager Hospice Care, an organization with a unique vision to broaden the knowledge and acceptance of hospice services among all groups—physicians, continuing care facilities, hospitals, and individuals, families, and loved ones facing life-limiting illness.

In 2000, Mike founded AccuMed Home Health, a leading regional provider of home nursing with a focus on serving Medicare beneficiaries. From 2005 to 2006, Mike served as chief operating officer for AccuMed’s new partner, TLC Health Care Services, a national leader in home health care specializing in care for the elderly.

Under Mike’s direction, AccuMed grew from the start-up phase to 42 locations in seven states and more than 1,500 patient admissions per month. Mike’s vision for the home healthcare company included the mission statement, “Treat all of our patients the way we would want to be treated ourselves.�

Prior to founding AccuMed, Mike was the president of Amedisys’ Home Health division, which he grew from approximately $25 million to over $100 million in annual revenues, and engineered a dramatic turnaround in profitability. He also completed acquisitions of more than $80 million in revenue and grew the organization from 20 to over 70 locations.

Previously, Mike held various positions with Columbia HCA, including division vice president and senior vice president, overseeing home health and hospice operations in the central and western United States. He was responsible for over 200 locations and $200 million in annual revenues.

Mike has traveled to Kenya and Tanzania to recruit medical personnel back to the US.
Mike’s impressive leadership track record is based on setting aggressive goals and initiating team action to achieve goal-oriented results. He has been described as an accomplished industry executive, a dynamic leader, and someone with extremely high integrity.

Mike received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing from HSU in 1990. As a student at Hardin-Simmons, Mike was a member of Student Congress and Tau Alpha Phi.

Mike continues to serve Hardin-Simmons as a member of the Board of Development and supports the university financially.He and his wife, Melinda (Lancaster ’91) live in Austin and actively support the local Presbyterian Girls’ Home.

Pogue

Dr. Laura Pogue currently holds numerous prominent positions at Hardin-Simmons University. She is dean of general education studies, chair of the department of literature and languages, associate professor of English, and director of the graduate program in English. Previously an adjunct instructor at other local colleges and branch manager for a Texas personnel company, Laura joined the HSU English faculty in 1993.

Laura is a 1983 graduate of Irving High School, Irving, Texas. From Hardin-Simmons, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and mass communication in 1987 and a Master of Arts degree with a focus in creative writing in 1991, receiving the Hemphill Honor Graduate Award. Laura completed a Doctorate in literature at Baylor University in 2000, successfully defending her dissertation in American literature titled, “Devouring Words: Eating and Feeding in Selected Fiction of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Willa Cather.�

As an undergraduate student at HSU, Laura worked as student assistant to the director of news and information, distributing news stories about HSU students to local and hometown newspapers. She was also literary editor of the HSU literary and arts magazine, Corral. As a graduate student, Laura served as a graduate assistant in the English department and the Writing Center, and was a part of the intense workshop experience at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Middlebury, Vermont.

Early in her academic career, she published various poems in small literary journals and has read her poetry in a number of Texas venues. Laura has been session organizer and chair for the Texas Teachers of College English Association’s Special Session and other organizations, helped direct HSU’s former Mosaic Texas Culture conference, is a member of the University Women’s Organization, and has recently completed a three-year term on the executive board of the Conference of College Teachers of English. She is faculty sponsor for the HSU chapter of the English honor society Sigma Tau Delta and sits on eight HSU committees.

Most recently, Laura has focused on HSU’s general education program. Structuring the
program into the newly labeled “Foundational Curriculum,� Laura led the faculty in creating a detailed assessment plan for all courses tied into the first two years of HSU’s undergraduate degrees and continues to help guide them through the yearly process of reviewing each Foundational Curriculum course. Her office now proctors assessment testing to most of HSU’s graduating seniors and will use data from this testing to help HSU faculty make informed decisions regarding curricular changes in the future.

Provost Dr. Bill Ellis says of her, “Laura is one of the University’s most talented faculty members. She is an unusually gifted teacher and administrator. She performs every responsibility with remarkable skill, insight, and efficiency. Laura’s humor and charm make her a favorite colleague, dinner guest, and public speaker. Her work as dean of general education has been tremendously valuable to Hardin-Simmons, and we will owe her a debt of gratitude for years to come for her diligent and thoughtful leadership in shaping the education of our students.�

Laura and her husband, Jimmy ’85/’91, have two children, Jamie (9) and Kathryn (6). An active member of Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene since 1986, she is currently serving as co-chair with Jimmy on the Arise and Build Campaign, and teaching second-grade Sunday school.