TCU staff and faculty were recognized for their service at the 40th Annual Service and Retirement Awards program Thursday in the BLUU Ballroom.

Long time personnel at TCU were announced in order of years of service, including 45-year professor, Dr. Robert Doran. A 1989 National CASE-Carnegie gold medalist winner, Doran said he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but Texas Christian University.

“Even though different opportunities have developed for me to leave, I’ve only stayed,” Doran said. “I love this place.”

After holding visiting appointments in the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (1980), Oxford University in England (1988) and the Institute for Advanced Study (1981), Doran said that he doesn’t like to use his long, upstanding career at TCU in a boastful way.

“It’s just part of the record,” Doran said. “There are happy times, and there are bad times. My family loves Fort Worth, and that’s really key, so we’ve stayed ever since.”

Dr. Arnold Barkman of the accounting department was another recipient at the Annual Service and Retirement Awards program. Receiving his 40-year mark award, Barkman said this was very humbling experience for him.

“When I think of the number of students with whom I have interacted together with other faculty and staff, I am humbled by considering the impact that we have had on each other’s lives,” Barkman said.

Barkman said he loves his job and that the students are his reason for being at TCU.

For incoming and new professors in the field, he shared this advice.

“Just as you want students to be receptive to what you have to say, you need to be receptive to their concerns and priorities which likely are going to be different from yours,” Barkman said.

He added, “Realize that many students come from backgrounds and social settings which may be different from what you with your graduate degrees have experienced, and don’t let those differences become barriers to communicating and trying to understand your students.”

Another professor at the event had been at TCU for 15 years. Religion professor Dr. Janis Quesada said time has flown while she’s been at TCU.

“It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here 15 years,” Quesada said. “It’s fun to mark this milestone and to celebrate with other long-time TCU people.”