Construction science student voted top Corps of Cadets senior

Benjamin Ramos, commanding officer of Company A-2 in Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets and a senior construction science major, has received the corps’ James Earl Rudder Outstanding Senior Award.

Voters from the corps’ senior class selected Ramos as the cadet they felt had the utmost integrity and character and was the best role model for underclassmen and peers.

Ramos received the award at Senior Dining In, a traditional military dinner hosted by the corps April 14, 2011 in Duncan Dining Center. The dinner honored the corps’ senior class and gave them an opportunity to remember their past four years in the storied Texas A&M organization.

Company A-2, formed in the fall 2007 semester, consists of students enrolled in degree programs offered at the Texas A&M College of Architecture.

Jose Fernandez Solis, associate professor of construction science, is the company’s mentor.

The James Earl Rudder Outstanding Senior Award is named after a former president of Texas A&M who, as a younger man, led elements of the U.S. Army’s Second Ranger Battalion to victory in one of the greatest feats of World War II’s Normandy invasion, the perilous assault on German gun emplacements at Pointe du Hoc’s sheer promontory towering more than 100 feet above a narrow, pebble-strewn shore between Omaha and Utah beaches.

As president, Rudder is credited for transforming the Texas A&M from a small, all-male military land-grant college to internationally renowned university it is today. He made membership in the Corps of Cadets optional and opened the university to women.