Bettye Craddock
Stephen F. Austin
Kilgore College
Bettye Herrington Craddock believes teaching is the spirit of her soul. Bettye earned a Bachelor’s and Master of Arts from Stephen F. Austin State University. She was editor of SFA’s student newspaper, The Pine Log, and later a graduate teaching assistant in the Communication Department.
She worked as an intern for the Texas Daily Newspaper Association at the Lufkin Daily News the summer of 1970. She began her career teaching English at Foster Junior High in 1971 and then four years at Judson Junior High where she sponsored the school newspaper.
In 1980 Bettye joined the Kilgore College faculty and taught English part time for four years and then served as a communications and journalism instructor and newspaper adviser at Kilgore College for 29 years, retiring in 2013. During her tenure, she was also department chair for five years and many years co-adviser of the college magazine and yearbook.
She is best known for her work as adviser to The Flare, Kilgore College’s weekly student newspaper. Under her leadership along with photography instructor O. Rufus Lovett, The Flare won sweepstakes 47 times in TIPA and TCCJA contests, and the staff earned more than 1,000 individual awards in writing, design, photography and overall excellence at state and national levels.
She was named TIPA Adviser of the Year in 1994. In 1998 she was one of five named a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor, an honor for college-level teaching in Texas, and was named the Kilgore College Outstanding Employee. In 2010 she received the Texas Alpha Delta Kappa Excellence In Education Award, and in 2014 she was inducted into the TCCJA Distinguished Hall of Honor.
Judy Walgren
UT Austin
Judy Walgren is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, photo editor, curator, writer, and educator based in the Bay Area, where she chairs the photography program at Foothill College. Her distinguished career spans groundbreaking field reporting, editorial leadership, and academic innovation, establishing her as a transformative figure in visual journalism.
Before pivoting to academia, Walgren built an impressive editorial career on visual teams at the Daily Texan (UT Austin), the Odessa American, the Dallas Morning News, The Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle, as well as ViewFind, a visual media start-up. After earning an MFA in Visual Art, she taught part-time before joining the faculty at Michigan State University School of Journalism, where she served as associate director prior to returning to the Bay Area.
While on staff at the Dallas Morning News, Walgren was part of a team of journalists that received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their groundbreaking series on violent human rights abuses against women worldwide. Her work for the series highlighted the treatment of women in Egypt and female genital cutting (FGC) in sub-Saharan Africa.
As director of photography for the San Francisco Chronicle, Walgren’s team earned multiple regional Emmys for their documentary work and achieved finalist status for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography.
She curates six exhibitions and hosts up to twelve artist talks per academic year, while regularly speaking and leading workshops on photojournalism, visual storytelling, and portfolio building. Through her teaching, mentorship, and curatorial work, Walgren continues to shape the next generation of visual storytellers.