Professor Menendez holds several prestigious teaching awards from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and two Charles Vanda awards for excellence in the arts. He has won first place for two juried screening awards from the University Film & Video Association, and as Department Chair received over a million dollars in production grants for the film program. Aside from filmmaking, his areas of research are: virtual reality, stereoscopy, and emerging technologies. In 2016, as President of the University Film & Video Association, Menendez hosted, and developed the theme "Content Creation in the 21st Century", for the 70th annual conference of UFVA in Las Vegas. The keynote speaker was Jane McGonigal, author of "Reality is Broken.