Distinguished Alumni Achievement Awards

Dr. Sandra Harley Carey is an author, consultant, professor, and retired U.S. Navy captain. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Trinity University and a doctoral degree in Social Psychology. Dr. Carey has taught at UT-Austin, Texas Lutheran University, Loyola University, and Texas State University. She has also lectured at the Southeast China Institute of Science and Technology and at the Australian Institute of Management. Dr. Carey has been a consultant, with her husband, for the U.S. Department of State, for Arthur Young & Co., and for McDonald Systems, Inc., in the latter case conducting research that led to the development of the “Happy Meal.”

Dr. Carey received a direct commission into the U.S. Navy. She was advisor to the Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy. She was one of the first women to deploy on a Navy ship, and she served in the Persian Gulf, in Saudi Arabia, and in Kuwait during Desert Storm. As a captain, she commanded units in London and at the Pentagon. She directed a major Coast Guard research project which was presented to NATO. She testified before a Presidential Commission on behalf of the U.S. Coast Guard. She also served as White House Liaison between the military and the Reagan White House.

Dr. Carey's publications include a handbook used by naval officers to integrate women into life aboard U.S. Navy vessels. She wrote one of the first papers on sexual harassment and a textbook on deviant behavior, now in its eighth edition. She recently retired as book review editor of the journal Armed Forces and Society. Dr. Carey has been Rotary Assistant District Governor; a board member of the San Antonio area Crisis Line; historian of the Texas Breakfast Club of Washington, D.C.; founder of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Trinity Alumni Association and she served on the board of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Comal County. She has been a judge for National History Day at the regional, state, and national level. At Texas State University she established a Charitable Remainder Trust and is currently a sustaining member of the Liberal Arts Advisory Board.

Dr. Geoffrey S. Connor attended Texas State University 1981 - 1985. He was an International Studies major with a concentration in European Affairs. He was active in College Republicans, serving as Chairman 1982 -1984, and in Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity where he was the Outstanding Pledge of his class and later Chapter President.

Dr. Connor was selected in 1984 as one of the first two American students to serve as interns in the British House of Lords. He worked for the Earl of Kimberley as a research assistant and also assisted Baron Chalfont with his book on the US Strategic Defense Initiative. His time in London was the exhilarating era of President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, President Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II.

Dr. Connor graduated from the University of Texas Law School and was admitted to the Bar in 1988. He was an appointee of three Texas Govenors including a term as Texas Secretary of State. He has been an administrative and regulatory attorney for two international law firms. He completed a graduate program in Intelligence Studies at Texas A&M University and a PhD in US History at the University of Texas.

Dr. Connor served as a JAG officer with the Texas Guard at Camp Mabry attaining the rank of Colonel. He is the honorary consul of the Kingdom of Belgium and a National Security Fellow with the Clements Center at UT. Geoff’s book, The Rise of Houston as a Global City, was published in 2025 by A&M University Press. Dr. Connor is a member of the Texas Philosophical Society, the Explorers Club of New York, Safari Club International, an officer of the Order of St. John, and a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem. In 2025, the Vatican created him a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

He lives in Bastrop at the Allen-Fowler House, a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark home, with his Jack Russell Terrier, Capstick.

Mr. Chance Sparks has made generational impacts on communities across the Southeast U.S. through state and national award-winning community planning, urban design and resilience efforts preparing small towns and cities for growth by connecting fast-action plans, codes and placemaking to capital improvement and operational implementation. As an innovator in comprehensive planning, downtown planning, resilience planning and development codes, he has successfully eliminated regulatory barriers and improved service delivery for historically-excluded communities throughout Texas, spurring reinvestment in downtowns, historic corridors, and neighborhoods across Texas and positioned communities to weather natural and man-made hazard risks.

Mr. Sparks is pioneering integrated planning approaches and data-driven planning from far West Texas and New Mexico to Florida, the Carolinas and the Great Plains. He led the Texas Disaster Recovery Program planning following Hurricanes Ike and Dolly, creating equity planning tools prioritizing disaster recovery for lower income neighborhoods, injected long-range resilience planning, and adapting complex Federal program requirements to the unique needs of post-disaster scenarios.

In 2024, Mr. Sparks was inducted into the American Institute of Certified Planners College of Fellows, becoming one of the two youngest to do so at that time. Today he is a Principal and Vice President of Freese and Nichols, Inc., a 132 year old, 1,400+ person engineering, planning and design firm specializing in public sector clients, where he leads a 55-person national Urban Planning+Design group of urban planners, resilience planners, higher education campus planners, landscape architects and site civil engineers. Holding a B.S. in Geography-Urban and Regional Planning (2004) and a Master of Public Administration (2007) degrees from Texas State University, Mr. Sparks lives in the historic San Marcos Dunbar Neighborhood with his spouse, Ashley (Texas State University alum ‘05) and 6-year-old daughter Dylan. A frequent guest lecturer, Mr. Sparks will take on an adjunct faculty position at Texas State University this fall teaching Urban Infrastructure Management in the Geography Department.