Holston honored with FVCC alumni award
Mark Holston, center, poses with FVCC Alumni and Friends Foundation Co-Chair Suzy Williams and FVCC President Jane Karas after being presented with the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award. (Courtesy photo)
Flathead Valley Community College presented Mark Holston with its 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award at the college’s Alumni and Friends Luncheon on March 21.
Now in its ninth year, the annual award honors an FVCC alumni who has continuously served both the school and the Flathead community through their careers and volunteer efforts in the years following their graduation.
“Mark has consistently been a champion for FVCC and our students,” FVCC President Jane Karas said. “As a trustee, he has focused on addressing the needs of our community.”
Holston graduated from FVCC in 1973 with an Associate of the Arts degree following his four years of service in the U.S. Air Force.
During the 1970s, he oversaw the Total Community Education television project at FVCC, a nationally recognized pilot program that utilized cable television to deliver “telecourses” to students in their homes.
Holston served as news director of KCFW-TV for 14 years and the public information officer for the Flathead Basin Commission for 16 years.
A scholar of Latin history and culture, Holston speaks Spanish fluently, has traveled throughout Latin America and has twice been invited to participate in the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Initiative program.
He is currently a contributing editor for Latino Magazine and the Miami-based Latin Business Chronicle, among other publications, and plays keyboard in the Latin jazz orchestra Cocinando, which he founded over 25 years ago.
He has repeatedly returned to FVCC to teach multiple courses and often served as a guest lecturer.
“I graduated in 1973, and it seems like I never left,” Holston said. “Thank you so much. This is a great honor. I’m very humbled by it and I’m very privileged to be an exponent of this great institution.”
For more information on FVCC’s Alumni & Friends program, call Heidi Hickethier at the FVCC Foundation at (406)756-4388 or visit www.fvcc.edu/alumni.
Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.