The Oklahoma legislature's two highest ranking members were named recipients of Distinguished Service Awards from the Oklahoma Association of Career and Technology Education during the recent 2005 State CareerTech Summer Conference in Tulsa . House Speaker Todd Hiett, R-Kellyville, and Senate President Pro Tem Mike Morgan, D-Stillwater, were honored by the nearly 4,000 CareerTech educators attending their annual conference August 2-4th .

Sen. Morgan served as Senate Appropriations Chair before being elected Sen. President Pro Tempore in March. Prior to his service in the legislature, Sen. Morgan was municipal judge for the city of Stillwater and has also served as an adjunct professor of business law at Oklahoma State University .

Rep. Hiett, a Creek County rancher, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1994 and served as the House Republican Leader in 2003-04. He became Speaker of the House in 2005. Hiett and his wife and three children live on a ranch only a mile from the original farm that his great-grandfather owned nearly a century before him and where his parents till farm today.

Both legislators have been strong supporters of the CareerTech system in Oklahoma while in office, as well as before. Each has voiced his belief that the state's Technology Centers are a vital link to expanding the state's industrial base and overall economy.