
This is your weekly news roundup, which takes a quick look at some developments in government, politics, education, environment and other topics across El Paso.
El Paso’s Adair Margo Selected for Texas Women’s Hall of Fame
Adair Margo of El Paso, a promoter of the arts and humanities, is among five people selected for induction this year to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week.

Margo is being recognized for more than four decades of leadership in the arts and humanities.
She was the longtime owner of the Adair Margo Gallery and has worked to preserve the legacy of El Paso artist Tom Lea through the Tom Lea Institute.
A close friend of former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, Margo served as chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities during Bush’s presidency, and has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University.
She was first lady of El Paso from 2017 to 2020 while her husband, Dee Margo, served as mayor.
The 2025 Texas Women’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held Nov. 6 at Texas Woman’s University in Denton.
Other inductees are former astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar; former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman; Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, an international energy company headquartered in Houston and one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States; and Christine A. Nix, a law enforcement officer and university professor who was the first African American woman promoted into the Texas Rangers Division of the Department of Public Safety.
Clint ISD Employees to Receive Pay Raises – At Least for Two Years
Employees across the Clint Independent School District will get a pay raise when school starts this fall.
The Clint ISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved its compensation plan Tuesday for the district’s roughly 1,500 employees, including nearly 570 teachers.

Under the plan, teachers with three to four years of experience will get a $2,500 raise and those with five or more years will get a $5,000 raise. Both raises are required and funded under House Bill 2, a public school funding bill recently approved by the Texas Legislature.
Teachers with less than three years of experience and other staff who don’t qualify for raises under HB 2 will get a 3.5% midpoint pay increase, or about $2,300.
These raises may not be permanent if the state does not continue to provide a teacher incentive allotment, used to give employees raised under HB 2, said Rene Chavez, Clint ISD chief human resources officer.
“These increases that we’re proposing are contingent on the state continuing the funding two years from now, because otherwise we would have to come back and say we need to go back to the original compensation package prior to this one,” Chavez said.
UTEP to Honor 2025 Distinguished Alumni, Gold Nuggets
The University of Texas at El Paso released this week its 2025 Distinguished Alumni and Gold Nugget awardees. Recipients, selected for their service, excellence and professionalism, will be honored during UTEP’s Homecoming festivities Sept. 21-27.
The Distinguished Alumni award is the highest honor the institution gives to alumni. The two recipients this year are geologist James Cearley III and businessman Paul Dipp.
Cearley earned his bachelor’s degree in geological engineering in 1978, and retired from Chevron in 2013 after 35 years in the industry. He sought out sustainable oil and gas projects on land and via deepwater facilities. He received the College of Science’s Gold Nugget Award in 2015.
Dipp is a commercial real estate specialist who has been in business for more than 50 years. He is a co-founder of Plaza Properties and played a role in the preservation of the Plaza Hotel and the Plaza Theatre. Today, the businessman is president of Economy Wholesale Grocers. He earned the Gold Nugget Award from the Hunt College of Business in 2019.
The university’s colleges award Gold Nuggets. They are Miriam Baca Kotkowski, president of TECMA Transportation, Woody L. Hunt College of Business; Ruben Chavez, founding member and principal of the CEA Group of El Paso, and Bernadino Olague, president and CEO of LOI Engineers, College of Engineering; John Corcoran, founder and president of a self-named foundation that seeks to prevent and eradicate illiteracy, College of Education; Brandy L. Maddox, a former leader within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, College of Health Sciences; Joe H. Smith, president of Petrophysics Inc., College of Science; Wayne Thornton, retired broadcaster and marketer, College of Liberal Arts; and Mimi El Veloso, an anesthetist, registered nurse and Army veteran, College of Nursing.

City’s Long-Time Internal Auditor to Retire After Tumultuous Past Years
Edmundo Calderon, the city of El Paso’s longtime chief internal auditor, will retire after 20 years with the city – including the last three tumultuous years over his role, authority and oversight. Calderon has served as chief internal auditor since 2005. He submitted his retirement letter to the city July 18 and his last day at City Hall will be Aug. 1, followed by vacation leave until Oct. 10.
“The last three years have been very difficult for me,” Calderon said in an emailed statement to the news media. “I have experienced negative treatment in various forms during these three years.”
The city will appoint an interim chief internal auditor within the next few weeks until a permanent replacement is hired.
The auditor’s role is to review city programs, operations and financial expenditures to make sure employees are following policies and laws and regulations.
The auditor reports directly to the chair of the Financial Audit and Oversight Committee – currently city Rep. Josh Acevedo. The FOAC is made up of four City Council members and the city manager. That structure was put in place following a 2023 City Charter election that removed hiring, firing and oversight from the city manager and put hiring authority under the City Council.
The City Council did not give Calderon an employment contract after the change, although the council is responsible for hiring three key executives: the city manager, city attorney and chief internal auditor. Both the city manager and city attorney have employment agreements.
Calderon was seeking an employment agreement as part of a whistleblower lawsuit he filed in December 2023. In the lawsuit, he alleged harassment by city officials after his office conducted an audit of fuel cards that found two elected officials were using their cards excessively.
The lawsuit was settled in September 2024 and resulted in a pay raise of about $20,000 for Calderon. Calderon was set to have an annual employment evaluation by the City Council this month, but it had not been conducted prior to him submitting his retirement notice, he said.
TTHEP to Launch Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences in Spring 2026
Texas Tech Health El Paso will offer a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences – the first in the campus’ history and the only one of its kind along the U.S./Mexico border – starting in spring or fall 2026.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved the request Thursday.
The degree will work to address the region’s unique health issues such as cancer, diabetes and metabolism, infectious diseases and neurosciences, and will be housed in the L. Frederick Francis Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
Rajkumar Lakshmanaswamy, dean of the Francis school, was in Austin for the vote. He said that he has been working towards this goal since he took the job in 2016.
“Our population seems to be impacted by diseases in these areas and their outcomes are not the best, so we would like to understand that and improve the quality of life,” Lakshmanaswamy said during a phone interview.
Program graduates would compete for biomedical sciences jobs in public health, academia, research and development, medical patent law offices, and translational medicine where researchers connect scientific discovery with clinical practice.
The Texas Workforce Commission reported that health care and social assistance jobs are among the top fields for growth through 2030. Health care is expected to grow by 23% in the state, and by 31% in the El Paso region.
While the initial 12 faculty members for this interdisciplinary program would come from throughout the various departments, the institution plans to hire six more instructors in the next five years, and they would work specifically on the new degree plan.
Lakshmanaswamy was not sure of the initial program costs such as student recruitment and research and teaching assistantships, but said they would be covered in part by the $10 million endowment from Rick and Ginger Francis in February 2022. He expects to launch with about five to six students and ramp up to 30 to 35 in five years.
The dean called the start date “a moving target” because of such things as the application and screening processes.
“If we can do it in spring, it’ll be great,” Lakshmanaswamy said. “If not, it’ll be the next semester.”
The nearest institution that offers this degree is the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque about 260 miles north of El Paso. The closest institution with this degree is at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, almost 350 miles northeast of the city.
While the Ph.D. program would be new, TTHEP has offered its Doctor of Medicine degree through the Paul L Foster School of Medicine since 2009. The institution awarded its first M.D. degrees in 2013.
The post Adair Margo honored, Clint ISD raises approved, TTHEP to launch Ph.D. program appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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