Matt Bambrough has worked as a graphic design specialist in University Marketing & Communications for more than seven years, including more than three in his current role as creative director. He has also taught graphic design classes as an adjunct faculty member in UVU’s Art & Visual Communications department.

Bambrough has been instrumental in developing UVU’s recruitment marketing campaign, which is a key tool in helping the institution’s recruiters convey its unique value to prospective students and their parents. Bambrough also leads a team of designers and photographers who manage the visual aesthetic for UVU’s marketing campaigns. Bambrough’s proficiency as a visual artist is all the more impressive given the fact that he suffers from quadriplegia that affects not only his legs but also his hands, which are critical tools for an artist.

Bambrough and his wife, Krista, have been married for 13 years and have three children. His hobbies include boating, public speaking, biking and playing wheelchair rugby.

Kate McPherson has taught at UVU since 2000 and is currently a professor of English literature. She is a renowned scholar on Shakespeare and has authored or co-authored more than a dozen articles, books and reviews. She will become director of the UVU Honors Program in July.

In addition to being a wellrespected teacher in the classroom, McPherson has used en-gaged learning projects to demonstrate the broad and timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s works. She serves as resident scholar for the Grassroots Shakespeare Company, an original practices performance group created by two of her students, and she is a judge for the Utah High School Shakespeare Competition. Under her direction, students in an upperdivision Shakespeare class mentored incarcerated young men at the Slate Canyon Youth Center in the study and performance of a Shakespeare play.

McPherson and her husband of 17 years, UVU alumnus Michael Nagro, have one daughter, Miranda. The family is excited to travel to Spain this summer following a study abroad program McPherson is directing in London.

D.J. Smith has spent more than 27 years at UVU and has served in his current role as associate director of athletics since 2003. Prior to joining UVU, Smith earned bachelor and master degrees in recreational education from BYU and a Doctor of Education degree in the same field from the University of Utah.

Over the course of nearly three decades, Smith has held nearly every responsibility in UVU’s athletics department, including fundraising, sports information and game management — he has even driven the team bus in a pinch. He won national awards for the media guides he created and has been active in working with other programs in the conference to develop Web content and build out their individual athletics operations. Smith was instrumental when UVU athletics made the leap from junior college status to full NCAA Division I com-petition in 2009.

Smith and his wife, Roberta, have six children and 20 grandchildren. His hobbies include singing, dancing and painting.

Richard Tolman joined UVU in 2003 as a professor of biology after spending more than two decades in the same role at BYU. Prior to that, he led research and curriculum development at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study between 1969 and 1982. He earned bachelor and master degrees from the University of Utah before completing a Ph.D. in science education at Oregon State University.

Tolman came to UVU to build the institution’s baccalaureate program in science education, which was a collaborative project between the College of Science & Health and School of Education. In addition to developing and refining curriculum, Tolman has cultured excellent relationships with local school districts to provide opportunities for UVU students and graduates. Tolman is regarded as one of the top science educators in Utah and has a national reputation for excellence in teaching and curriculum development.

Tolman and his wife of 47 years, Bonnie, have four children: Alicia, Brett, David and Matthew. They also have six grandchildren, with whom Tolman enjoys fishing and other outdoor activities.

During more than two decades at UVU, Ian Wilson has served in leadership positions rang-ing from dean to vice president of multiple campus divisions. An expert in the area of organizational behavior, Wilson served as chair of the business administration department at Mount Royal University in his native Alberta, Canada.

Since coming to UVU in 1989, Wilson has had his repeated attempts at settling into a teaching role thwarted by calls for him to assume the leadership mantle. He was dean of the Woodbury School of Business from 1989 to 2001 and was interim dean from 2008 to 2010. He also worked as associate vice president of Institutional Advancement from 2001-2002 before being named vice president of Institutional Advancement & Marketing, a capacity he served in from 2002-2006. In spite of his intention to return to the classroom in 2010, he accepted President Holland’s request for him to lead UVU’s Office of Academic Affairs as vice president.

Wilson and his wife, Jeanne, have been married for 39 years and have four children. He enjoys reading, running and rooting for his favorite hockey teams, the Calgary Flames and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Janet Colvin won a number of distinctions for her excellent teaching during this academic year, including the Distance Education Teacher of the Year Award and the Top Paper Award at the international conference for the National Communication Association. An assistant professor of communication at UVU, Colvin is named in more than a dozen academic papers and has given scholarly presentations around the world.

As the Presidential Award winner for teaching and scholarship, Colvin represents the high level of commitment to teaching and learning among UVU faculty. She credits the UVU administration with enabling her to make constructive suggestions in the spirit of constantly improving the learning environment at UVU. She finds satisfaction in participating in scholarly projects, developing new academic programs and interacting with her colleagues across campus.

Colvin and her husband have four children and six grandchildren. She taught piano for many years before returning to graduate school to prepare to teach in higher education, and she enjoys reading, traveling and doing crossword puzzles.

Michelle Kearns began her career at UVU in 1992 and spent 17 years in the Office of Financial Aid & Scholarships. Prior to taking her current position as director of student success and retention, Kearns served as assistant dean in University College at UVU. She won UVU’s Distinguished Employee Award in 2003 and the Staff Excellence Award in 2005.

The Presidential Award winner for student success, Kearns is a tireless advocate for the importance of getting students committed to their success in higher education from the time they first set foot on campus. Her work in this area was acknowledged during the 2011-2012 academic year with a nomination for the National First Year Student Advocate Award. Kearns has presented on student success and retention concepts nationally and internationally and is well respected in these important areas of university support.

Kearns’ greatest joy comes from raising her three children, Cody, Shelby and Shalyse, who are all actively involved in activities ranging from dance to piano to baseball. She also enjoys playing the piano, reading, traveling and spending time in her parents’ cabin in Scofield, Utah.

A native of Scotland, Jane Loftus came to the U.S. in 1996 to pursue a master’s degree and Ph.D. from BYU. She came to UVU in 2005 to teach developmental math and received tenure in 2011.

The Presidential Award winner for inclusion and service, Loftus is an example of UVU’s ef-forts to extend opportunities to underserved and disadvantaged populations. In 2007, Lof-tus and a few colleagues visited Legacy High School, a secondary school in Springville, Utah, for young single mothers. Impressed by the school’s efforts to serve teens under difficult circumstances, Loftus lead out on developing a tutoring program to supplement Legacy’s classroom instruction. The tutoring program utilizes UVU developmental math faculty and students who serve as mentors. In addition to tutoring, the program has brought Legacy students to the UVU campus to connect them to the university environment. So far, Loftus’ efforts have helped 23 girls attend UVU or the Mountainland Applied Technology Center after finishing at Legacy.

Loftus has two sons — Jason, 23, and Michael, 21 — and she enjoys hiking, traveling and meeting new people.

Brett McKeachnie started managing UVU’s email system in 1993 and has spent his career building and maintaining the institution’s information technology infrastructure. A UVU alumnus, McKeachnie has had a hand in developing many of UVU’s key technologies, including the campus’s first Web server.

The Presidential Award winner for excellence, McKeachnie was instrumental in the campuswide “Great Migration” from Novell GroupWise to Exchange and other Microsoft technologies during the 2011-2012 academic year. The UVU IT team leaned heavily on McKeachnie’s two decades of technical expertise and institutional knowledge when making the landmark leap away from the institution’s legacy email system — a complex process on an unprecedented scale for UVU.

McKeachnie and his wife of 22 years have six children, and so far, five members of his family have attended UVU. He stays busy juggling his fulltime IT responsibilities with adjunct teaching at UVU.

J. Bonner Ritchie is an institution in the field of international organizational behavior and an important figure in the growth of UVU’s Woodbury School of Business, which is now the largest business school in the Utah System of Higher Education. Prior to joining UVU in 2001, Ritchie was on the faculty at BYU for 27 years and the faculty at the University of Michigan for six years before that.

The Presidential Award winner for lifetime service, Ritchie boasts an impressive academic record, personally mediated peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine and has served as a management consultant to some of the world’s largest organizations. In 2001, Ritchie came out of retirement to help build UVU’s business school in the run-up to university status. Many of UVU’s faculty and administrators can trace their academic history through Ritchie’s teachings in leadership, conflict resolution, organizational philosophy and many other topics.

Ritchie and his wife, Lois, have been married for nearly 30 years and together have four children and eight grandchildren. He enjoys reading, travel and caring for the hundreds of plants he keeps at home.

Jonathan Westover is a widely respected expert in the fields of business management and organizational leadership, having been published in 28 academic publications and given more than 70 scholarly presentations around the world. Westover taught at BYU and the University of Utah prior to moving into his current roles as an assistant professor of management and director of academic service learning at UVU.

The Presidential Award winner for engagement, Westover was given a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach MBA students in Minsk, Belarus. His Fulbright appointment helped UVU receive the Fulbright program’s distinction as a “top producer” in 2011 and further bolstered the University’s growing connection with the prestigious international scholar program. In addition to his work with Fulbright, Westover is a regular visiting faculty member at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, China, and is on the board of directors for the National Association of Academies of Science.

Westover and his wife of 10 years, Jacque, have five children: Sara, Amber, Lia, Kaylie and David.