Posted on October 2, 2026 by Giselle Villalpando
$25,000 endowment establishes university awards recognizing excellence in graduate mentoring and service.
Oct. 2, 2026 —Longtime UT San Antonio faculty and leaders John Kaulfus, EdD ’17, associate vice president and vice provost for Health, Academic and Student Affairs at the UT San Antonio Health Science Center, and Janis Bush, BS ’81, MS ’83, professor emeritus in the UT San Antonio College of Sciences, are furthering their commitment to graduate education at UT San Antonio through a $25,000 endowment. This establishes the first University Excellence Award dedicated to graduate student-serving faculty and staff. The Bush-Kaulfus Endowment for Graduate Mentoring and Service Excellence will be awarded in spring 2027 to two faculty members as the Bush-Kaulfus Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award and to two staff members as the Kaulfus-Bush Excellence in Graduate Service Award.
The endowment builds on the couple’s long history of supporting UT San Antonio. In 2025, they established a scholarship for aspiring environmental scientists, ecologists and conservationists to fund students in the College of Sciences, where Bush taught for 41 years. When considering another gift to the university, they recognized an unmet need: while university-level awards existed for faculty and staff contributions to undergraduate education, no award specifically recognized faculty and staff who serve graduate students.
Kaulfus began his higher education journey at UT San Antonio in 2001 as the director of housing and later served as executive director of the Student Union and Student Activities and as the inaugural associate dean of students before pursuing teaching. Since 2019, he has taught graduate students in the Master of Education in Higher Education Administration program and continues to work daily with graduate and professional students at the university’s academic health center, where he’s worked for more than 11 years.
Bush taught graduate-level science courses, supervised master’s and doctoral students, served as associate dean for graduate studies for the College of Sciences and worked closely with Graduate School leadership on faculty mentoring initiatives to benefit graduate students.
The couple met while serving on the university’s Fall Convocation Committee in 2010. Their careers represented two different but complementary sides of higher education, Bush in academic affairs and Kaulfus in student affairs. When discussing the endowment, they realized they wanted the awards to reflect their partnership.
“We wanted to endow staff awards and faculty awards, because that has been an integral component of our marriage. I'm staff, she's faculty,” Kaulfus said. “Over the years, we have learned from each other. Students are at the heart of everything we do.”
Their commitment to recognizing excellence also stems from Kaulfus’ experience receiving one of the university’s highest honors, the Richard S. Howe Award, which reinforced the importance of recognizing higher education professionals.
“Receiving the Howe Award in 2010 was really a watershed moment for me as a professional,” Kaulfus said. “It meant a lot to me then, and I’m so gratified that I now have the opportunity to provide the same type of inspiration to a future generation of higher education professionals.”
That experience reinforced the couple’s belief that recognizing excellence can encourage continued dedication to students and inspire others to follow.
Bush noted that graduate education requires a different level of mentorship and engagement than undergraduate education.
“Mentoring graduate students is fundamentally different from working with undergraduates,” Bush said. “Doing it well takes a real investment of time and a willingness to keep learning. Not everyone excels at it.”
Graduate student-serving faculty and staff often spend significant time providing career guidance, professional development and mentoring in addition to academic instruction.
“We want to honor the people who make the time for graduate students, and who do it exceptionally well, preparing them to succeed as researchers and professionals,” Bush said.
As UT San Antonio continues to expand its graduate and research enterprise, the new awards will help elevate the contributions of faculty and staff whose work is essential to graduate student success.
“With establishing these awards, Drs. Bush and Kaulfus have created a lasting legacy that honors excellence while elevating support for graduate education across our Roadrunner community,” said Heather Trepal, PhD, vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral studies and dean of the Graduate School. “This is such a meaningful way to recognize faculty and staff who serve our graduate students.”
Bush and Kaulfus also hope their gift will inspire fellow alumni to give back to UT San Antonio.
“We thought it would be a great way to give back to the institution that has been so good to us, but also a way to do something jointly,” Kaulfus said. “Anything we can do to highlight those faculty and staff who are dedicating their time and energy to our graduate students, we hope will encourage others to do the same thing.”
— Giselle Villalpando
