After graduating from the RTIP in 2002, Eric spent 9 years working his way to the top at Canterbury Park where he served in a number of positions including vice president of racing and simulcasting operations. He’s been at the Fair Grounds Race Course and Casino since 2008 where he’s currently the vice president and general manager of racing.
The Clay Puett Award is bestowed on a person or organization for their outstanding contributions to the racing industry.
The Race For Education is a scholarship organization that enables young people of equine industry families as well as those who want to pursue an equine-related or agricultural career, with significant financial need, to obtain a college degree by providing tuition support; financial literacy training to help students minimize their debt load; mentoring services to provide students with emotional support; and permanent jobs upon graduation.
But that’s not all; they are expanding their good work with a new program. The Starting Gate is a college readiness program is designed to engage families and youth in middle school --preparing more students for college by making sure they succeed early in their academic career. A month doesn’t go by when there’s not an event going on that’s sponsored or supported by the RFE. Their reach is growing exponentially supporting a wide variety of racing families. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars of support to students across the country every year.
We are pleased to add The Race for Education to our list of Clay Puett awards winners for their outstanding contributions to the racing industry.
This year’s recipient has shepherded the program through a tremendous amount of growth and change as the Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Although we are well known in racing’s circles, we are a very small piece of the very large puzzle that makes up not only the College of Ag but the University of Arizona on a whole.
There are tremendous newsmakers in our University, from $50 million dollar National Science Foundation grants being awarded to research teams led by professors in our own college to the lunar and planetary lab overseeing the Phoenix Mars Mission – just to name a few When you are in this kind of company, you need someone “in high places” on your side and we had Dean Sander who understood and supported our program. Every year at this time, Dean Sander would take time out of his busy schedule to meet with the RTIP advisory council to address any concerns or question they had while at the same time keeping up-to-date with changes and issues facing racing.
We knew we’d be losing a true “friend of the program” upon his retirement from the University. Although scheduled to retire on July 1 of 2011, the Board of Regents had other ideas and on Aug. 1, 2011 our “Dean” Sander became “President” Sander -- the 20th President of the University of Arizona.
The Race Track Industry Program is very pleased and honored to present the distinguished service award to President Eugene Sander with our sincerest thanks for all the support that he have given the Race Track Program throughout his tenure at the University of Arizona.
This year’s winner is a student who always goes above and beyond as far as academics is concerned- her work is second to none, and is always setting a new bar for others to reach.
She has always taken advantage of the opportunities that have come her way, even when they aren’t a traditional path for an RTIP student – she’s participated in internships with Reid Park Zoo as well as with the national parks service at Saguaro National Park.
Heather has been offered opportunities in both racing and the parks service upon her graduation.