The College of Education and Health Professions will honor four alumni at commencement exercises on May 13 at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

Award recipients Fred A. Bonner II, John Buckwalter, Debbie Faubus-Kendrick and Yuri Hosokawa will also be recognized at a reception on May 12.

The college's Outstanding Alumni Awards honor alumni with exceptional professional and personal achievements and extraordinary distinction in their fields.

"These four awardees are incredibly impressive," said Dean Kate Mamiseishvili. "Each is making a significant impact in their professional fields and communities. They represent our college's highest values."

Outstanding Alumni in Education Awards

Fred A. Bonner II, Ph.D., is a professor and Endowed Chair in Educational Leadership and Counseling and founding executive director and chief scientist of the Minority Achievement, Creativity and High-Ability Center at Prairie View A&M University.

He is formerly the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University and an esteemed expert in the field of diversity in education. Prior to joining Rutgers, he was professor of higher education administration and dean of faculties at Texas A&M University-College Station. He earned a B.A. in chemistry from the University of North Texas, an M.S.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Baylor University and an Ed.D. in higher education administration and college teaching from the U of A College of Education and Health Professions. 

Bonner has received numerous awards, including the American Association for Higher Education Black Caucus Dissertation Award and the Educational Leadership, Counseling and Foundation's Dissertation of the Year Award from the U of A College of Education and Health Professions. In 2020, Bonner was selected for the prestigious Regents Professor Award by the Texas A&M University System. His work has been featured nationally and internationally. He is the author of the book Square Pegs and Round Holes: Alternative Approaches to Diverse College Student Development Theory (2021).

Debbie Faubus-Kendrick, Ed.D., has been an educator for 42 years and director of the Crawford County Adult Education Center for 16 years. She earned her Ed.D. from the U of A College of Education and Health Professions. She served as president and vice president of the Arkansas Association of Continuing and Adult Education, president of the Arkansas Association of Adult Education Administrators and secretary of the Arkansas Adult Education Advisory Council. She is the legislative chairperson for Arkansas Adult Education, adult education representative for the local workforce board and northwest representative for the Arkansas Adult Education Advisory Council.

In 2014, Faubus-Kendrick was named Outstanding Administrator of the Year by Arkansas Adult Education. In 2017, she received the Iverson Riggs Memorial Citizen of the Year Award for her service to Van Buren, Arkansas. Her community activities include DWI Court Team, Salvation Army Board, Comprehensive Juvenile Services Board and Head Start Policy Council and Board. Faubus-Kendrick was selected as the 2022 Workforce Development Hero by the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals.

She was an adjunct professor at Vincennes University for five years.

Faubus-Kendrick has been a Coalition of Adult Basic Education (COABE) member for 14 years. She served as COABE secretary, Region 6 representative and vice president in charge of membership. Her Alternative Sentencing Program at CCAEC is nationally recognized as Advancing Innovation in Adult Education by the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE). She and her husband raise dogs, including one that's certified through the Alliance of Therapy Dogs. 

Outstanding Alumni in Health and Human Services Award

John Buckwalter, Ph.D., is the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Boise State University, a metropolitan doctoral institution that serves about 25,000 students. In 2021, U.S. News and World Report named Boise State one of the top 50 national universities for innovation.

Before joining the university in 2021, Buckwalter, originally from Jacksonville, Arkansas, served for eight years as the Betty L. Tointon Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Kansas State University. The college comprises six departments, multiple centers and institutes and has an enrollment of around 2,800 students. The academic programs are aligned with business, design, teacher education, human behavior and health sciences. 

Before taking the role at Kansas State University in 2013, Buckwalter spent six years at the University of Texas at Arlington as chair of the Department of Kinesiology and then as the associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Education and Health Professions.

Prior to moving to Texas, Buckwalter spent 12 years at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he began as a post-doctoral fellow and eventually rose to the rank of associate professor of anesthesiology. During his time in Wisconsin, Buckwalter developed a primary research agenda related to the neural control of blood flow during exercise. Buckwalter's research has been supported by several sources, including grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. Originally from Arkansas, Buckwalter earned a B.A. in Spanish and a B.S. in health and physical education at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. He also holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in kinesiology from the U of A College of Education and Health Professions. He is a fellow of both the American Physiological Society and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Outstanding Young Alumni Award

Yuri Hosokawa, Ph.D., is a certified athletic trainer and American College of Sports Medicine fellow. She's an associate professor in the Faculty of Sport Sciences at Waseda University in Japan. Her research interests include prevention and education of sudden death in sport, establishing best practices in road race medicine, developing regional-specific heat guidelines for exertional heat illness prevention and developing heat acclimatization guidelines for tactical athletes.

Hosokawa is also involved in research projects in biometeorology to promote interdisciplinary research across physiologists, climatologists and public health researchers. She served as a member of the International Olympic Committee Adverse Weather Impact Expert Working Group for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and led the effort to implement best practices for prehospital care of exertional heat stroke in Japan. She established and coordinated pre-hospital exertional heat stroke management plans for 17 disciplines during the Olympics and five disciplines during the Paralympics that were deemed high risk for exertional heat stroke. Tokyo Games marked Japan's first mass-sporting event to implement evidence-based exertional heat stroke pre-hospital care. Hosokawa's effort set the standard for future athlete medical service and showcased the expertise of athletic trainers in Japan.

Hosokawa currently serves as a heat adviser for the Japan Coast Guard, Fifth Regional Coast Guard, to optimize the resilience of the special rescue team. She is also a member of the Expert and Advisory Board of the World Athletics' World Academy for Endurance Medicine and the World Lacrosse Medical Commission.

Hosokawa received her bachelor's degree in Sport Sciences from Waseda University in 2011, her master's degree in athletic training from the U of A College of Education and Health Professions in 2013 and her doctoral degree from the University of Connecticut in 2016. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Korey Stringer Institute (2016-2017) and worked at the Ritsumeikan University as an assistant professor in the College of Health and Sport Science (2018-2019).

About the College of Education and Health Professions: The College of Education and Health Professions offers advanced academic degrees, professional development opportunities, and learning communities in service to the education and health systems of Arkansas and beyond. The college provides the education and experiences for various professional roles, ranging from community mental health counselors to school teachers and leaders. Programs in adult and higher education, along with educational technology and sport management, offer a broad range of options. In addition to education-related opportunities, the college prepares nurses, speech-language pathologists, health educators and administrators, recreation professionals, rehabilitation counselors and human performance researchers.