View PDF of puzzle and solution
Article first published in Vol. 37, 2020.
By Rachel Murphree
In our 50-year history, we have had many people in all fields of human endeavor pass through our doors, whether students or teachers or community leaders. Here are descriptions of SOME of the things and people (well-known or unfamiliar) associated with EPCC that make us proud! We have selected some of them for you to find in the puzzle. The solutions run up and down, forward and backwards and diagonally with no spaces between first and last names. Find the puzzle and its solution here. Enjoy!!
Dr. Maria Alvarez is a nationally honored EPCC professor in biology and the founder/ director of RISE, Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement, whose innovative programs have transformed STEM education in collaboration with local sister institutions.
Architecture is a program that partners with the Texas Tech undergraduate program housed at the El Paso Union Depot. The new building on the Valle Verde Campus was designed by EPCC Architecture professor Ken Gorski and opened in 2017.
Leon Blevins is a longtime political science professor who brought the subject alive by dressing as historical figures in his classroom and appearing in many community activities, for example as Uncle Sam during Fourth of July celebrations and "The Bard" during performances of Shakespeare on the Rocks. Read more in Borderlands Volume 33.
Victoria di Benedetto is the founder of the Women in Technology Project Opportunity at EPCC in the 1990s established to recruit women into nontraditional occupations, offering technical education, services to help retain women and community outreach efforts to help change attitudes.
Margarita "Mago" Orona Gandara was one of very few women muralists in the El Paso/Juarez area. She was an early Chicano art teacher at EPCC. Her mural "Time and Sand" at the Valle Verde Campus was done with her students from 1975 to 1978. She was the only muralist at the time working with mosaics, including one she created at Douglass Elementary.
Gabriel Gaytan is a noted muralist and artist, EPCC staff member since 1981 and now adjunct faculty. He has painted murals for Cathedral High School and the McDonald Observatory, Lincoln Park and other locations.
Jennifer Han is an EPCC graduate who is the International Boxing Federation Female World Featherweight Champion. She was the 2018 leader of the El Paso delegation to the All-America City competition. The Transmountain Library has a long-term exhibit featuring Han and her accomplishments.
Juliet Hart is an African American leader, historian, longtime EPCC counselor and board member of the McCall Heritage and Cultural Center which preserves and celebrates African American history in El Paso. She was a 2019 Legacy Award recipient for Black History Month.
Felix Hinojosa is the EPCC Cross Country coach, for women and men, who has led his teams to multiple conference, regional and national championships since the program began in 2000. He was inducted into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012.
Cesar Inostroza graduated from EPCC in 1996 and in 2001 was selected to paint two ceiling murals in the Texas State Building on East Franklin St. He has painted murals for Centro De Salud Familiar La Fe, Inc., UTEP, Santa Teresa Schools, Bowie High School, Lincoln Park and the Valle Verde Campus of EPCC.
Kharisma James was a veteran and EPCC/ UTEP graduate and nurse who was killed in a car accident at Tippin Elementary putting herself in harm's way to protect children. In 2019, the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso announced the creation of the Kharisma James Legacy Scholarship Award to honor her memory.
Shoshana Johnson is a native El Pasoan and the first African American woman Prisoner of War, captured in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, for which she won the Bronze Star and Purple Heart Medals. She since graduated from EPCC and is the author of the bestselling memoir, I'm Still Standing.
LULAC is the acronym for the League of United Latin American Citizens which challenged a Texas law allowing only the votes of property owners to count in the effort to establish a junior college in El Paso. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court which decided that all votes would count, leading to the creation of EPCC. Read more in Borderlands Volume 25.
Ernesto Pedregon Martinez is one of the leading Mexican American artists in the United States and is known for his murals. A native El Pasoan, he is a WW II veteran and was an early EPCC professor of Chicano art and an illustrator and artist for the federal government.
Pat Mora is a prolific nationally known awardwinning poet, children's book author and educator. She taught English at EPCC in the 1970s. She founded El dia de las ninos in the 1990s, the national day of literacy which is celebrated annually nationwide.
Aaron Royal Mosley is a well-known sculptor whose work is installed at the Northwest, Valle Verde and Mission del Paso Campuses. He was an art professor at Valle Verde and Transmountain Campuses for more than two decades.
Joe Old was a revered longtime mass communication professor at the Valle Verde Campus and faculty advisor of the school newspaper, then known as El Conquistador, now Tejano Tribune. He also was city editor of the now defunct El Paso Herald-Post. He played a key role in the Unite El Paso movement.
Amado M. Pena Jr. is a nationally known artist of Mexican and Yaqui ancestry who has donated an art collection to EPCC which can be viewed at the Administrative Services Center (ASC) on Viscount Boulevard. His mural at the ASC in 2002 illustrates the College's mission and its impact on El Paso. His Art Has Heart Foundation offers scholarships to EPCC students.
Silvestre Reyes is a 1977 EPCC graduate who was El Paso's representative to Congress for many years. He was the first Hispanic sector chief in the Border Patrol and was nationally recognized for his "Operation Hold the Line." Read more in Borderlands Volume 14 (http://epcc.libguides.com/ borderlands).;
Belen Robles is a native El Pasoan, graduate of Bowie High School, and an EPCC Board of Trustee. She made history as the first woman national President of LULAC, the League of Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Read more in Borderlands Volume 28.
Lucy Scarbrough is the Musician in Residence at EPCC, where she has been a professor since the early 1970s. She is a celebrated pianist, director and conductor who founded the highly popular ongoing El Paso Chopin Music Festival. She has won many awards, including the distinguished Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award of Texas.
Hector Serrano was a drama professor for decades at the Valle Verde Campus and at UTEP and is the creator of Viva! El Paso. This long-running musical dance performance premiered at McKelligon Canyon in 1978 and was directed by Serrano for 25 years. He founded the Shakespeare on the Rocks Theater Festival in 1981 and continues as its artistic director.
Lynn Slater was an EPCC instructor and homeless advocate who cofounded the Opportunity Center in the 1990s. The Center was strongly supported by EPCC and later grew into the Opportunity Center for the Homeless that runs four homeless shelters and six residential centers.
Billy Townes is a renowned jazz pianist who is at work on his 17th album. He performs regularly at live music venues around the region and is an EPCC adjunct professor of music at the Valle Verde Campus. He received the 2019 Legacy Award in EPCC's celebration of Black History Month.
Estela Portillo Trambley was an internationally known Chicana playwright from El Paso whose works are considered Chicana literature classics. In the 1970s at EPCC, she created and organized the Chicano Theater which put on plays she wrote and directed. She later co-founded Los Pobres, El Paso's first Spanish language theater. Trambley won the Premio Quinto Sol Prize for literature in 1975 and held the Presidential Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis.
Mario Ulloa is an award-winning painter and muralist who graduated EPCC in 2018 after a very long time. He was a presenter at the 2018 "Peacing It Together" inspirational series at the Transmountain Campus speaking about his life and the obstacles he has overcome. "Being in prison was very hard, but breaking my mother's heart was much harder to live with," he said.
Diana Washington Valdez is an international award-winning journalist, author, poet and essayist. She is an expert on the murders of women in Juarez which she writes about in her book, The Killing Fields. She was an adjunct professor of political science at EPCC for more than a decade and received the UTEP Communication Department Hicks-Middagh Award for Excellence by an outstanding alumnus.
Rosemary Valledolid was a longtime nursing professor who won the prestigious Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award in 1983 for excellence in teaching in Texas colleges and universities. She was pivotal in bringing the Adelante Mujer Hispana Conference to El Paso in 1983, the first conference in Texas strictly for Hispanic women. The annual conference and program continued into the 1990s. She was inducted into the El Paso Women's Hall of Fame in 1986
Jenna Welch was the mother of Laura Bush and both are honored in the name of the unique Northwest Campus library, formed in 2003 by an inter-local agreement between EPCC and the City of El Paso. The community library provides academic, family, and youth and children's services, especially to the Canutillo area. Read more in Borderlands Volume 30.
Lawrence Welsh is an award winning poet and English professor at EPCC since 1997 and the founder of the Los Angeles punk rock band, The Alcoholics. His latest book is Cutting the Wire, written in collaboration with El Paso born poet and essayist Ray Gonzalez and photographer Bruce Berman.
Trish Winstead was the director of EPCC's Fashion Technology program at the Transmountain Campus from 1983 until her retirement in 2016. Students have consistently earned state and national recognition for their designs and prestigious scholarships to study in Paris.
Mary Aguilar Yanez has been the Director of the Senior Adult Program at EPCC since 1989 and the producer and host of "Mature Living," the EPCC TV show which first aired in 1991. She was inducted in 2019 to the El Paso Women's Hall of Fame.
Richard Yanez is an Ysleta High school graduate and author of Cross Over Water and El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border, a finalist for the Steven Turner First Book Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He has taught English at the Valle Verde Campus since 2004.
