Dr. Rick Dierenfeldt and Erica Holmes Trujillo are recipients of 2025 UT System President’s Awards
photo by Angela Foster/UTC. Awards photo courtesy of UT System
Dr. Rick Dierenfeldt and Erica Holmes Trujillo are recipients of 2025 UT System President’s Awards. Individual photos by Angela Foster/UTC. Awards photo courtesy of UT System.
Two members of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga family, UC Foundation Associate Professor Rick Dierenfeldt and College of Arts and Sciences Student Success Center Director Erica Holmes Trujillo, have been named recipients of the 2025 UT System President’s Awards—the highest honor a faculty or staff member can receive from the UT System.
UT System President Randy Boyd announced the award-winning faculty and staff selections from across the statewide UT System during the just-completed annual UT Board of Trustees meeting held on the UTC campus.
“These awards celebrate the dedication and remarkable work of our faculty and staff throughout the state,” Mr.
Boyd said in the UT System announcement. “Their contributions create a better University of Tennessee and also impact the state and far beyond. Each play an important role as we continue building the greatest decade in UT history.”
Dr. Dierenfeldt, head of UTC’s Department of Criminal Justice, won the President’s Award in the “Optimistic and Visionary” category.
A former law enforcement officer turned academic changemaker, Dr. Dierenfeldt is the founder and director of UTC’s Violence Reduction Initiative (VRI), a research and policy center focused on public safety, firearm violence prevention and community-centered crime intervention.
Since its founding, the VRI has earned major federal grants through collaborations with the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County Alternative Sentencing Programs. These include the nearly $2 million CURV project (Chattanooga United to Reduce Violence) and the $844,000 Recidivism Reduction Initiative. Both efforts aim to prevent future violence through community partnerships, after-school engagement, trauma-informed care and embedded student research support.
Dr. Dierenfeldt’s applied research model has led to more than 30 co-authored student publications and expanded UTC's visibility in regional and national criminal justice networks.
“The message from President Boyd was extremely humbling,” Dr. Dierenfeldt said. “It isn’t the sort of notification you expect to receive, especially when there are so many amazing innovations constantly being introduced across this campus. The caliber of work being performed is just so high. But that is also what makes this award so meaningful. It is a reminder that what we are doing in Criminal Justice—the partnerships we are building, the research we are producing, the effort to have a positive impact within the community—all of it is seen and valued.”
Ms. Holmes Trujillo was the recipient of the President’s Award in the “Nimble and Innovative” category.
As director of the College of Arts and Sciences Student Success Center, better known as The Hub, Ms. Holmes Trujillo has reshaped the way UTC supports transfer students—a vital student population.
She launched “Soar with the Mocs: Supporting Transfers from First through Final Flight,” a multifaceted initiative aimed at improving enrollment yield, persistence and graduation rates for transfer students. Through a blend of peer mentorship, direct communication and personalized outreach campaigns, she developed a proof of concept for a scalable, campuswide approach to supporting transfer student success by addressing an institutional gap with sustainable solutions.
Her broader mission, she said, has focused on establishing a central space where students from all majors and all backgrounds receive consistent, high-quality advising support.
“When I arrived at UTC in 2019, we had a small staff and a big idea—creating a centralized support system that ensured every Arts and Sciences student, no matter their major, had access to meaningful, professional guidance,” Ms. Holmes Trujillo said. “Over time, we have built a team of advisors whose role is not just answering questions but helping students navigate the institution with confidence. We want each student to feel supported and we’ve achieved that without losing the unique identity of our programs. That’s what makes this work so rewarding.”
The President’s Awards were established in 2016 to annually recognize the exceptional achievements of employees across the statewide UT System. Honorees are chosen from a system-wide pool of candidates nominated by campus and institute leaders.
In addition to UTC, this year’s recipients represent UT Knoxville, UT Southern, UT Martin, UT Health Science Center, UT Institute for Agriculture, UT Institute for Public Service and the UT Space Institute in Tullahoma, a part of UT Knoxville.