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UTSA Design Students Receive National Recognition

Intertech Flooring Nominees Recognized for Excellence

(July 6, 2007 - AUSTIN, Texas) -Two University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) interior design students received national recognition for their flooring designs in the ninth annual StarNet Design Awards competition.

Nominated by Intertech Flooring, located in San Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley, UTSA junior interior design student Melissa Pakebusch of Corpus Christi won the StarNet Student Achievement Design Award for her project titled “Life as a DJ”. Another UTSA interior design junior, Joaquin Abrego of San Antonio, received honorable mention for his project, “Ocean Tide Hotel”. The awards were featured on the cover and in a special section of the most recent Floor Focus magazine.

Evaluated by a juried panel of industry design experts, the annual awards program recognizes creative use of floor covering, flooring design concept and how well designs meet client objectives and special challenges. “The innovation and design put forward is proof positive that StarNet has yet again set the bar higher for the entire commercial flooring industry,” said Jeanne Matson, StarNet president and CEO.

The student category was added to the competition this year at the encouragement of Intertech Flooring President Bill Imhoff, a founding StarNet member and recipient of numerous StarNet awards.

“Our company believes strongly in workforce development and lifelong training, and we thought adding a student component to the StarNet competition was a way to generate more interest in flooring design early in a designer’s career,” said Imhoff. “We’ve partnered with UTSA on scholarships and other initiatives, and approached Susan Lanford, the head of the interior design program there, with this idea.”

Lanford, who teaches an interiors materials course, opted to include the competition in her curriculum as a project assignment. “I asked students to select one of their studio projects and gave each student access to the StarNet website and competition application rules,” she said. “Of the dozen projects submitted, we chose six to submit to the competition. We were thrilled to learn that two of our students’ projects were selected as the winners.”

First-place winner Pakebusch received a cash prize and trophy.

For more information contact:
Intertech Flooring: , 512.385.4574
, 512/461-3159;

Intertech Flooring (www.intertechflooring.com) is one of the country’s leading providers of commercial flooring products, installation, maintenance and design consultation services to clients throughout Texas and the Southwest. The company was established in 1988 in Austin, and opened a San Antonio location in 1992. Intertech expanded again in 2007 with the opening of a third location, in Mission, Texas.

StarNet (www.starnetflooring.com) is a national network of independent commercial flooring dealers. Founded in 1992, StarNet encompasses 160 locations in 42 states.