Alumni Association Awards Recipients

The following Hendrix alumni were honored on Saturday, April 20, 2024 during the Inauguration. They will receive their awards during the Alumni Awards Association Brunch at Alumni Weekend 2025.

Graduating from Washington University’s School of Law in St. Louis, Glenn Dalton had a rewarding career advising large corporations from both legal and management perspectives. His first two decades were at Ralston Purina leading the Employment Law section and as an executive in the Pet Food and Cereal business unit. The last three decades have been in management consulting, first as a partner with Sibson & Company (250 consultants), then founding his own firm, RKD Group, in 2001 (“RKD” stands for my three sons, Rod/Ken/Doug).

Serving on numerous not-for-profit and corporate boards, Dalton served as a Trustee of Hendrix College, President of the Washington University Law School’s Executive Committee, and was honored with the School’s Distinguished Law Alumni Award in 2013.

After 40 years in St. Louis, Dalton and his wife, Brenda Cass, moved to Florida in 2018. They share four children, 10 grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Brian Koss, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS, Little Rock, Arkansas. The primary focus of his research program is to develop therapies that leverage the patients’ immune system to control cancer progression.

A Mountain Home, AR native, Koss completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology at Hendrix, where he got his first exposure to undergraduate research working Dr. Rick Murray. Cancer became real to Koss when he worked as a research technician at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis after college. He returned to Arkansas in 2016 to begin graduate studies under the mentorship of Dr. Alan Tackett (‘98) at UAMS and earned a Ph.D. in 2020 supported by a prestigious fellowship from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Shortly after earning his PhD, Dr. Koss was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Early Independence Award. Part of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, the Early Independence Award supports outstanding junior scientists with the intellect, scientific creativity, drive and maturity to bypass the traditional postdoctoral training period to launch independent research careers. In addition to being the first Arkansan to receive the award, Koss is only the second recipient from an NIH-designated Institutional Development Award (IDeA) state, a group of 23 states plus Puerto Rico that have historically received lower research funding. He received a five-year, nearly $2 million grant to fund his highly specialized cancer research program at UAMS.

With more than 20 publications, Koss’ work has been published in many highly respectable scientific journals such as, Cancer Research, Blood, Nature Cell Biology, and Immunity. In addition to cutting edge research Koss is currently mentoring two MD/PhD students, one PhD student, and a postdoctoral fellow.