For the first time since 2005, two Business Honors Program (BHP) students have been awarded the presigious Texas Parents' Association Outstanding Student award. Seniors Erica Brody and Michael Daehne are the male and female recipients this year.

Daehne and Brody will each receive a plaque, lifetime membership in Texas Exes and a brick paver in the Student Services Building in their honor. The students, who both graduate in 2012, will be honored with a presentation ceremony on Nov. 4, and again at the home football game Nov. 5.

Brody is a marketing major, and is currently president of the Orange Jackets, a women's honorary organization on campus. She spent last summer interning at Deloitte, and hopes to one day use her business degree to open a bakery that employs individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Daehne is majoring in corporate finance and actuarial mathematics. He is the 2011-12 president of the Undergraduate Business Council and was previously president of the Honors Business Association. He has also interned at Delloitte, and he volunteers for an East Austin non-profit organization.

Susie Smith, director of Texas Parents, said that the selection process this year was incredibly difficult. She credits the challenge with impressive students from all majors and schools at the University of Texas. Texas Parents considered recipients who had demonstrated strength in scholarship, leadership, character and service.

While the the applicant pool was impressive, Smith said Daehne and Brody were chosen because they represent each of the qualities Texas Parents was looking for.

"They embodied what you think of when you take one student out of 50,000 and try to define the most outstanding male and female," she said. "They are leaders not for glory, but for the desire to do good and to serve.

"They are remarkable students, they represent truly the statement, 'What starts here changes the world,'" Smith said. "They will change the world and they have already started doing that on campus."