Outstanding students gear up for next chapter
Jason Wollam has always loved reading and touching up on his history. Later this year, Wollam will continue to do the thing he loves, as he readies to start a new chapter on his way to law school.
Wollam was named as the Spring 2024 Outstanding Undergraduate Student in the UHV College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences and is set to graduate this May with a Bachelor of Arts in History. Along with Wollam, Heather Crow was named as the Outstanding Graduate Student for the college.
“Honestly, it felt amazing when I got the news,” Wollam said. “I’ve worked so hard to make my grades, and the day I got the email, it was unbelievable.”
Each semester, faculty from UHV’s four colleges select outstanding graduates to be honored during commencement. The university will hold four commencement ceremonies on May 11 at Faith Family Church in Victoria. The College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences and the College of Natural & Applied Science ceremony will be held at 9 a.m. The College of Business and College of Education & Health Professions ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. A live stream will begin a few minutes before the start of each ceremony and can be watched on the commencement home page at: https://www.uhv.edu/commencement/
"Heather and Jason shine as an example in their passion for learning and their commitment to excellence," said Kyoko Amano, dean of the UHV College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences. "We are thrilled to congratulate them on this well-deserved honor and look forward to seeing their continued success.
After graduation, Wollam is heading to the University of Houston Law Center, where he will spend the next three years embarking on a Juris Doctor program with a goal to become an attorney.
“The internships I have been through in the past exposed me to how the system worked,” Wollam said. “My friend’s father is a defense attorney, and he talked to me about the kinds of things he did for people, and it really inspired me to pursue the same path.”
Originally, Wollam said he decided to attend UHV under the influence of his brother who also attended the university. After talking to his brother and seeing how local the school was and weighing out all of his options, Wollam continued in his brother’s footsteps and became a Jaguar.
“While in school, I always made it a priority to get good grades,” Wollam said. “But the most important thing is consistency, whether it be a set amount of time studying or a certain day dedicated to a project, consistency is the most important thing.”
He received his official law school acceptance letter through email in early March and said the first thing he thought about was all of the hours he poured into studying for his LSAT exam, and how the letter was a symbol of all the hard work has paid off.
“It’s one thing to think about going to law school,” Wollam said. “But seeing that, I was thinking, ‘All right, now is definitely the time to go forth and do it.’”
This coming August, Wollam will begin his new life in Houston right before the start of his first classes. Originally from Tivoli, Wollam said he is excited to explore a bigger city to gain new perspectives and experiences. Eventually, Wollam said he plans to go into criminal law to represent people who are going through a tough time and make sure those people receive a fair trial when they go through the justice system.
“Everybody deserves to be in an equitable system,” Wollam said. “That’s the system I want to be a part of.”
Heather Crow, of College Station, will be graduating this spring with a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology. Previously, she also earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from UHV as well.
After graduation, Heather said she plans to finish all of her licensures and to look into teaching, preferably at the college level. Her desire to teach stems from her work as a tutor in the past when she tutored math in college.
“I’ve done tutoring before, and I loved it; and I love psychology, so I figured, ‘Why not combine the two?’” Crow said.
While going through her undergraduate years, she also minored in criminal justice, and one of her teachers introduced her to the notion about how criminal justice can be intertwined with psychology. That led her to ultimately combine the two as well, Crow said.
“For my practicum, I was doing work at a juvenile detention center, and I found it all fascinating,” Crow said. “I was able to use some of the things I learned, and it allowed me to help some of the people who were there.”
During her time at UHV, one of the main aspects that stood out to her was all of the help she received, from her professors to the students, advisors and all the way up to the IT professionals whenever she needed help with her technology, she said.
“Everyone was really good, always trying to help me out and get me to the right places,” Crow said. “I really appreciated that about UHV.”
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 50 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.