With the 2020 Summer Olympics behind her, Hailey Hernandez’s focus is on making the Paris 2024 Olympic team — and being a dedicated student. Several times a week, she wakes up to dark skies for the first of two practices. As a student-athlete studying biology at The University of Texas at Austin, she attends a full week’s worth of biology and chemistry classes. And on most weekends, she competes as a diver on the Longhorn Women’s Diving team, flipping through the air from up to 18 meters above the water. Despite the challenges of being a student-athlete, Hernandez has always felt that the effort is worth it. “I enjoy diving so much. I love the feeling of flying, and I love to jump off from all the different heights and do all kinds of tricks, flips, and spins. Having the nerves and being able to compete in front of all the people is just where I always thrive,” she says.

The beginning of August represents the end of summer to most, but to a group of UT students, it marks the start of something special. That group is the Camp Texas counselors. For the uninitiated, Camp Texas is a three-day, two-night sleepaway camp put on by the Texas Exes in Burnet, Texas, for incoming freshmen and transfer students. Paired in groups led by counselors, campers participate in fun activities that promote UT spirit and community. They leave camp with new friends and mentors that will last not only through their UT journey, but a lifetime. I know because before I was a counselor, I was a camper.

I come from Donna, a town in the Rio Grande Valley. I was one of only two people from my high school who were going to attend UT Austin. When I found out about Camp Texas through an email, I instantly knew I had to attend. Now, more than two years later, amid complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, I was finally given the pleasure of being a counselor to my amazing campers. I remember back as a camper, I played sand volleyball for the first time, and I was horrible. I was still bad this time at camp, but we played for almost three hours one night until almost 1 a.m. Throughout the night, as people both joined and left the game, I got to hang out with counselors I had not seen in two years and meet new campers. I may have hit the net one too many times, but seeing people laughing, dancing to music, and just having fun reminded me of what Camp Texas and college are all about.

The photos I took this summer capture the magic of being back at camp, in person. They are a glimpse at Camp Texas, a program that has helped me find my home away from home.

Happy Campers was originally published in The Alcalde on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Within the collection of the Department of Design of the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin is a lesser-known, but remarkable, specimen collection of 19th-century wood type — wooden blocks used to mass produce artistic text. These varieties of popular wood type lent an aesthetic appeal to posters, newspapers, books, and other printed materials primarily in the 19th century.

Housed in the Department of Design’s Design Lab, The Rob Roy Kelly Wood Type Collection is a comprehensive assortment of wood type amassed by noted design educator and historian Rob Roy Kelly in the 1950s and 1960s. Comprising nearly 150 typefaces of various sizes and styles, including examples of the most popular printing types in use between 1828 and 1920, it remains, as Kelly intended, an active study collection for students and scholars.

A new book by David Shields, the former head of the design program at UT, updates and expands upon Kelly’s historical information about the types, clarifying the collection’s exact composition and providing a better understanding of the stylistic development of wood type forms during the 19th century. Featuring more than 300 color photographs and examples, The Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection: A History and Catalog, released in April from UT Press, provides a stunning visual context of wood type and its uniquely American design.

Photographs by Phil Kline

EVERY YEAR, the Alcalde gives alumni the opportunity to nominate the professors who made their time on the Forty Acres so memorable — the Longhorns who inspire, support, and teach way beyond the syllabus. This year’s Texas 10 list ranges from an expert on indoor air quality to an English professor exploring the uncanny with students through books, playlists, and films. We’re pleased to introduce these incredible professors.

John Sibley Butler

J. Marion West Chair for Constructive Capitalism, Faculty Director of Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs, Professor, McCombs School of Business, College of Liberal Arts | Years at UT: 48

THE TITLES JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER HAS HELD over his impressive tenure at The University of Texas could (and do) take up pages. He holds positions on several boards, has received dozens of awards, has authored multiple books and hundreds of articles, was selected for the election committee advisory board for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, and was the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan for 14 years. And he can tell you about every successful startup to come out of Austin over the past few decades.

Put simply, he’s a busy man.

At home on the Forty Acres, Butler teaches courses on entrepreneurship, blending his business expertise with his knowledge of sciences, sociology, and psychology to dive into some of the world’s most successful businesses and innovators — Southwest Airlines, Dell, Facebook, and more.

“I don’t believe that disciplines should have barriers between them,” Butler says.

One of his entrepreneurship courses is open to students outside of McCombs, where he guides them on how to turn their ideas into viable businesses. He starts class with some words of encouragement: “When I walk in, I say, ‘Somebody’s got to be in the top of the 1 percent. Why not you?’”

But he still finds time for his other passion in life: music. Butler, who plays guitar and piano, and sings, credits his time in the Louisiana State University marching band for helping him get where he is today.

“I tell all people, my discipline comes from the music side … from being in the LSU band for four years and preparing a halftime show and knowing I’m going to be on national television, and I can’t be out there by myself. It was a lot of planning,” he says.

Butler hopes his students embarking on journeys in the business world hold on to their own creative passions.

“I connect with my students by bringing out the creativity that they have,” Butler says. “As a matter of fact, what I say is this: ‘Don’t allow the university to take away your creativity.’”
 — Abigail Rosenthal

Eve Prilipko

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Management, McCombs School of Business | Years at UT: 3

IT’S NOT HARD FOR EVE PRILIPKO to empathize with her students, perhaps because she was a student for so long herself. Growing up in the former Soviet Union as the youngest child in her family, she would lecture her stuffed animals and dolls, tearing notepads in half for her inanimate scholars and marking their imaginary work with red pens.

“I couldn’t imagine myself in a different capacity,” she says. “My whole family is doctors, so they really wanted me to go to medical school, but I said, ‘No, I’m going to the pedagogical university.’” And thus, she earned her first of three master’s degrees at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University, focused on methods of teaching.

At McCombs, Prilipko has the task of teaching public speaking methods to young students, some of whom may be incredibly anxious about the idea of talking in front of 10 or hundreds of people. It’s a fear Prilipko understands — a self-described introvert, public speaking didn’t come naturally to her either.

She has developed her own teaching method, dubbed TEAMko, where she separates her students into smaller groups that form “one big family,” offering two different levels of support as they tackle a skill with which many struggle. All in all, it seems to have worked.

“You see so much confidence by the end of the semester,” she says. “They feel good about themselves. This is the most rewarding experience — discovering people within people by the end of each semester.” — A.R.

Elizabeth Richmond-Garza

Director of the Program in Comparative Literature, Associate Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts | Years at UT: 32

ELIZABETH RICHMOND-GARZA IS USED TO confronting the things that frighten us. It happens in almost every class she teaches, from her world literature course to “Modernity, Anxiety, and the Art of the Uncanny” to her upper-level honors course, “Vampires and Dandies.”

But the goal isn’t to scare students in an already frightening world. By reading about monsters, ghosts, murders, and mob-supported stonings, Richmond-Garza, who uses she/they pronouns, is giving her classes the tools to understand our culture — and themselves — even more.

“You find out a great deal about people based on what they’re frightened of and what matters to a community or to an individual,” she says.

Richmond-Garza likes to blend the old and the new, deftly using films, TV, and original Spotify playlists alongside literature to connect topics to today.

“Literary cultural objects allow people to talk about things,” Richmond-Garza says. “They create a safe space for talking about things that are difficult. If you can talk about a film, if you can talk about a book, if you can imagine, What would I do in the situation of this fictional character?, it gives you all kinds of tools and skills to negotiate real-world problems.”

Incorporating a class’s favorite bands into a playlist or bringing pop culture into the discussion allows students to interact with intense or anxiety-inducing ideas in a more comfortable way. And for some, it may even be therapeutic to confront these frightening things and label them.

Richmond-Garza hopes her students leave her courses knowing who they are more clearly. Perhaps, she says, “by having spent some time in the imaginary worlds of people who are probably very different from them.” — A.R.

Mia Markey

Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering | Years at UT: 20

MIA MARKEY WAS GETTING READY to host another session of her Maymester study abroad program in Portugal when the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020. As it became clear no one was going to make it on a plane that year, she had to adapt in a way she never has before.

“That was definitely a teaching adventure,” Markey laughs, walking on her home treadmill while chatting over Zoom. “We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. And I think for me, I realized that a weakness was mental flexibility. I often cope with uncertainty by planning things really carefully. Study abroad was a great experience of realizing that if I was going to be effective, I was going to have to be really flexible. And, oh, my goodness, was the 2020 offering one that just really took that to the extreme.”

Instead of canceling the program, which focused on international perspectives on health care design, Markey adjusted. She and her teaching assistant Mae Lewis worked hard to bring the cultural experiences students were missing to their homes, formerly in-person interviews with Portuguese experts became video calls, and she began sporting a “professor crown” while teaching virtually — the signal to her four children that “I am not your mother right now, I am a professor, and you need to let me profess.”

Things have changed since 2020. Markey is working on a semester-long design course with the Dell Medical School instead, and she’s since replaced her professor crown with a stuffed animal (the crown doesn’t stay on when she’s walking on her treadmill). But one thing Markey has always tried to focus on is being not just a teacher to her students, but being a mentor.

“When you think about yourself as just being a teacher, there’s more of a focus on ‘I have some knowledge or some skill that I’m trying to impart to this other person,’” Markey says. “Whereas [with] mentoring, there’s a lot more focus on, ‘What are this person’s goals, and how can you help them reach those goals more effectively?’ Being able to find places where you can move closer to a mentoring relationship can be very enriching.” — A.R.

Pawel Misztal

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering | Years at UT: 3

PAWEL MISZTAL WAS IN HIS second semester teaching at UT, leading a course on indoor air quality, when the pandemic forced a shutdown of in-person classes. Coincidentally, he had reached the section on airborne infectious disease and transmission. Knowing it would be an excellent opportunity for his students, he applied for and received a grant from the National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research Program to study exposure to disinfectants.

“We wanted to come to work and help the community,” he says. “We wanted to help understand the role of masks, what is happening if we disinfect, and so on.”

Misztal’s expertise centers around his work involving the unique mass spectrometer, an instrument that allows researchers to “see chemistry in real-time,” he explains.

Before coming to UT, Misztal studied chemistry in his hometown of Lublin, Poland, and received his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He moved to the United States to do his postdoctoral work at UC-Berkeley, where he was part of a pioneering team of researchers that used advanced mass spectrometric methods and “novel approaches to air quality measurements and understanding factors that affect human health,” he says. Now his research at UT Austin could potentially lead to detecting metabolic diseases, such as cancer, through changes in the chemical compounds in breath emission.

“What makes me excited is to see happy students and to see students that are successful,” Misztal says. Which is why, during the fall 2020 semester, Misztal worked to make sure his students still received hands-on lab experience. He split his class in half to have smaller labs in safe, well-ventilated environments.

“It was double the work for me,” he says, “but I was doing it because I knew it was the way to go.” A former student put his response to the pandemic this way: “The way he still made every effort to encourage us to do experiments, to further our knowledge, was exemplary.” — Sarah Thurmond

Chiu-Mi Lai

Professor of Instruction, Department of Asian Studies, College of Liberal Arts | Years at UT: 16

“WOULD YOU LIKE A CUP OF TEA?” asks Chiu-Mi Lai when she greets visitors at her office. As she explains it, sipping hot tea is about “mindfulness and taking time to do something — especially on cold days, it’s kind of warm and lovely.” The simple offering is just one example of how Lai connects with her students.

Born in Taiwan, Lai was about 4 years old when her family moved to Michigan for her father to return to graduate school for his PhD. After spending her formative years in Hawaii, she left for college to study English and Chinese literature. Lai has been teaching since she was in high school — first 5-year-olds learning to play the piano, then tutoring remedial algebra to junior high students in the summer. “I discovered I liked working problems out with people,” she says. “I had patience, I guess.”

At the college level, she has taught at universities such as Rice in Houston, and held research positions at MIT and Harvard. She and her husband later moved to Austin when he was recruited to teach at the Jackson School of Geosciences. She was offered a position in the Department of Asian Studies. After a few years on the east coast, they were happy to return to the Lone Star State. “Texas is really its own brand of something,” she says. “There’s a welcoming of outsiders.”

A trained sinologist, Lai is an expert on areas of medieval Chinese poetry, Chinese history and culture, and linguistics, and has taught a variety of subject matter. This year is no exception. Her five courses range from East Asian memoirs written by outsiders (such as Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana by Stephanie Elizondo Griest, BA, BJ ’97) to the history of food and healing in China and Taiwan. Each semester she invites students to participate in hands-on sensory experiences outside the classroom, like excursions to a North Austin teahouse to learn about medicinal teas, or to watch the full harvest moon rise at the UT Tower.

“There’s a lot that we learn outside of the classroom,” Lai explains. “The traditional, conventional classroom is really great for some things, but how we become citizens of the world, we have to see the world.” — S.T.

Rod Hart

Shivers Centennial Chair in Communication, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Professor of Government, Moody College of Communication, College of Liberal Arts | Years at UT: 43

“MOST GUYS MY AGE ARE RETIRED or playing golf or going on cruises, but I don’t have any interest in that,” says Rod Hart, 77, who’s been a professor at Moody for 43 years. Hart spent 11 of those years as dean of the college and was instrumental in the building of the Belo Center for New Media (now the G. B. Dealey Center for New Media) and soliciting the naming gift of $50 million by the Moody Foundation. Not bad for a kid from Fall River, Massachusetts, who originally wanted to be a lawyer.

Hart found his calling during his freshman year at the University of Massachusetts, when he became known around campus as the guy who could help you write your paper. One day while working with a business major on a paper about Napoleon, Hart had an epiphany: “The student said something, I said, ‘Bingo,’ and his eyes lit up. It was at that moment I decided I was going to be a teacher. I realized it was my questions that made him able to find that argument, and that was just magical.”

After teaching at Purdue University, Hart came to Austin to join the faculty at UT expecting sagebrush and horses. Instead, he found the Hill Country — and Mexican food — and fell in love with the area. “I was told I could eat a soft taco with my hands as I was trying to cut it with a knife,” he says, laughing.

After directing 33 dissertations, the grandfather of five no longer teaches at the graduate level. Instead, he focuses on his courses for undergraduates. “It makes me feel young,” he says. “That’s selfish I suppose, but I love questions and to be around young people when they’re asking questions and helping them formulate answers. It’s life-affirming.” — S.T.

Lauren Ehrlich

Lorene Morrow Kelley Fellow, Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Courtesy Associate Professor of Oncology, College of Natural Sciences, Dell Medical School | Years at UT: 12

LAUREN EHRLICH’S ZEAL for the immune system is something to behold. “She would literally get so excited about the topic that she would bob up and down during her lectures, unable to contain her enthusiasm,” one former student and nominator wrote.

Growing up in Austin, Ehrlich loved science and solving puzzles, which turned into working in the lab with her mother, who works as an immunologist for MD Anderson. Then she took an introductory biology course during her freshman year at Yale and was officially hooked.

“The professor taught a little section of immunology, and I was fascinated,” she says. “He was just an engaging lecturer, and he answered my naïve questions and took me seriously. That’s important.”

After graduate school at Stanford and postdoctoral fellowships at UCSF and Stanford, Ehrlich returned to her hometown to join the faculty at UT, where she teaches an upper-level introductory course on immunology. “Students ask great questions, and I really appreciate when they do, because sometimes it makes you stop and realize that you don’t understand something really fundamental,” she says. “They’re coming from a blank slate.”

When she’s not in the classroom, Ehrlich is in her lab studying how T cells develop and fight off pathogens without attacking our bodies, work she often brings into the classroom so students can see the science that’s impacting their lives. Ehrlich hopes they gain not only a better understanding of the immune system, but also critical thinking skills that can help them make good choices for their health.

“It’s rewarding to see them putting together the pieces of how an immune response works,” she says. “They’re getting the bigger picture of what’s actually going on — I think they understand the relevance of immunology now more than ever.” — S.T.

Rosalie Ambrosino

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Steve Hicks School of Social Work | Years at UT: 32

WHETHER TEACHING ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE, human behavior, or child welfare, Rosalie Ambrosino loves to create a sense of community in her classroom. “I think the best way for students to learn is to hear the voices of each other,” she says.

It’s a practice that has been especially helpful throughout the pandemic, as she’s noticed students sharing more about mental health issues, including their own, and discovering their resiliencies and strengths. They’re also recognizing how disparities can impact different groups, including within their own classroom community.

“It’s rewarding for me to see the students become more self-aware. As they get more self-aware of themselves and their own worldviews, they look at other groups and see them and are able to grow from that,” Ambrosino, PhD ’85, Life Member, says.

Prior to her teaching career, the Minnesota native worked as a social worker in several different environments, including a settlement house in St. Paul, a school in rural Minnesota, and at Native American reservations. She was hired by the Center of Social Work Research at UT to work on a federally funded project that dealt with child abuse and neglect. While in the PhD program, the dean asked her to teach. She initially dismissed the idea, thinking she could make more of a difference working in the field. But when she finally agreed to it, she found her passion. “There’s nothing I like doing better,” she says.

“When I teach, I hear the students and all their hopes and dreams,” she says. “They’re way ahead in their thinking. They’ve got lots of diversity in their thinking, but they’re willing to grapple with the issues, and they’re willing to talk about things that in the past we didn’t talk about. That’s what gives me hope. I think that’s why I teach.” — S.T.

Juan Dominguez

Professor of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts, College of Natural Sciences | Years at UT: 14

JUAN DOMINGUEZ KNOWS HOW MUCH a good professor can change a student’s life. As an undergraduate student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, his first biopsychology course changed the entire trajectory of his own.

“The class I teach now was the class I took as an undergraduate myself that opened my eyes up to what I’m doing today,” he says. In fact, almost every Sunday, Dominguez still calls the professor from that biopsychology class. “She’s like a second mother to me,” he says. “I am a product of my own professors.”

Decades later, Dominguez finds his former students calling him, too, for advice, or sometimes just to tell them what a difference he has made in their lives — like the recent student who told him he inspired her to pursue her PhD.

“Some of what I’m teaching them is not because they need to do well on an exam, or they need to learn this so that they can save someone’s life,” he says, “It’s just knowledge for the sake of knowledge. When you’re a student at a Tier One university like UT, you’re going to leave with a degree from our university. And as such, you should leave here with knowledge.”

“Knowledge for the sake of knowledge” is something Dominguez has taken into his own life as well — he’s a pilot, a devoted fan of classical music, and is so passionate about art, he takes his “Love, Mating, and the Brain” undergraduate signature course to the Blanton Museum, instructing them to write about a painting or sculpture that elicits an undeniable emotional response in them.

And even if he (admittedly) doesn’t always remember the life-changing things he’s told his students, Dominguez knows every day in the classroom, he’s making an impact.

“We are never the same person after we interact with somebody else, because that interaction has in some ways changed who we are, but also physically changed our brain,” he says. “I get to change people’s brains on a daily basis — well, twice a week, at least. And that’s the best thing in the world.” — A.R.

Each year, the Alcalde asks alumni to vote for their favorite professors: the teachers who inspired them and helped make their college experience unforgettable. This year’s Texas 10 represent a variety of academic areas, ranging from international security to theater arts, but all have left an
indelible mark on their students. After a challenging year, during which a global pandemic forced professors everywhere to reimagine their entire approach to teaching, we caught up with these talented instructors to learn more about their life’s work.

Michael Clement

KPMG Centennial Professor and Chair, Department of Accounting | Years at UT: 24

Side Gig: Clement has been UT’s Faculty Athletics Representative since 2013 and serves as an advocate for student-athletes for the Big 12 and NCAA.

“My grandfather passed away while I was in his class,” Michael Clement’s nominator wrote. “His funeral was on September 11, 2001. I emailed all my professors to tell them that I would be out. He is the only person who responded. He told me how close he had been to his own grandfather and to take care of my family. That human touch meant so much to me.”

“How does that make you feel?” I ask him over the phone. Clement composes himself and then responds quietly: “I don’t remember that” he says, “but I do believe I said it. It’s consistent with the way I think.”

His father, his most important role model, was also a professor of business, but for years Clement resisted academia, working at a public accounting firm and a big bank in New York City. When he met people in the industry who had been taught by his father, they always wanted to do nice things for him. “Because of what he had done for them,” he says. One day, he realized no one he knew was as fulfilled as his dad.

Clement says the core purpose of the university — to transform lives for the benefit of society — is what has kept him in Austin so long and made it easy to turn down offers from private schools. And his job at UT allows him autonomy in his research and to take full advantage of his intellectual curiosity. “There is always something new to learn,” he says.

When asked what this honor means to him, Clement is again choked up. “I’m trying to help people figure out who they are and what they can do,” he says. “An award like this makes me realize that, in some way, I am achieving that goal.” — Dorothy Guerrero

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones

Professor Emerita, Department of African & African Diaspora Studies | Years at UT: 28

A new name: Omi Osun was actually born Joni Lee Jones, the youngest of four growing up in the Chicago suburbs. It wasn’t until a spiritual trip to Nigeria in 1997 that she was initiated as Omi Osun (pronounced oh-me oh-SHoon). Omi translates to water in the Yoruba language while Osun refers
to “the energy of the river.”

A quick glance at her CV and one sees Omi Osun Jones’ academic path: Northwestern and New York University for postgraduate studies, teaching posts at the University of Maryland and Howard University. What is less evident, however, is the breadth of her work. Jones has founded theater companies and starred, directed, and produced performances from coast to coast. She’s published two books and a third, her first foray into fiction, is on the way. She’s had performance art installations in some of the biggest contemporary art museums in Texas. And she’s published hundreds of poems, essays, and articles, all while teaching and providing dissertation and thesis guidance to more than a hundred UT students.

When it comes to balancing the life of an artist and academic, Jones says, “There is deep continuity and deep challenge. What I studied as a scholar was what I was actually embodying as an artist,” she says, later adding: “I had to live it in order to understand it in any sort of way to share it with others.”

Though Jones is retired, she is continuing to work hard in her new home city of Los Angeles. After our interview in mid-March, she had to prepare for an arts workshop she was conducting later that day alongside her partner, Sharon.

“I’m continuing to build [community] in my own kind of way. It’s part of what I’m here to do, I mean that very seriously. But helping individuals be
their best selves so that families and communities and the world can be its best. That’s what I’m here to do.” — Katie Friel

Sara Stewart Stevens, MS ’12

Assistant Professor of Practice and Program Director (Academic), the Division of Textiles and Apparel | Years at UT: 9

Favorite Designer: “I’m not a high fashion person, but I love Christian Dior because of the shapes and silhouettes,” Stevens says.

In 2016, at the age of 39, Sara Stevens was diagnosed with cancer after doctors found a malignant tumor in the front portion of her tongue. What followed was an aggressive treatment protocol, with surgery to remove part of her tongue and reconstruct it with tissue from her forearm. After that, radiation. But there was a moment months later when she was meeting with her speech therapy team that still makes her laugh. She was re-learning to speak, and the letter S was a struggle. “What’s your name?” one of the therapists asked. “Sara Stewart Stevens,” she managed. The therapist smiled sympathetically.

“And what do you do?” they asked. “I’m a professor,” she said. And they all cracked up.

After a year away from work, Stevens was apprehensive to speak to a class again. But she remembers how welcoming the students were and happy to have her back. “I’m still learning and growing here,” she told them. “So please be patient with me.”

These days, her speech is almost like it was before the surgery and she is back to sharing her passion for “the democratization of fashion.”
Stevens says she is all about the quality and function of a garment and making good design accessible for all.

“She always kept topics interesting and fun,” her nominator wrote, “and put an emphasis on hands-on learning. She was an amazing support even through her battle with cancer and returned to UT stronger than even before.”

Whether she is speaking at a lectern or taking her students to New York City to learn directly from fashion icon Iris Apfel, Stevens feels she is doing the work she was meant to do. “The more I have taught,” she says, “the more I’ve realized this was my path all along.” — DG

Michael Mosser

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Department of Government | Years at UT: 9

Steelers’ country: Mosser has traversed the globe, but one only has to step inside his office to know where his roots are planted. “There is Pittsburgh stuff all over the place,” Mosser explains of his decor, which includes a Steelers Terrible Towel and mug branded with his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh. “Pittsburghians have a very strong sense of place,” he laughs.

When he was in high school, Michael Mosser brought home a flier advertising a six-week cultural exchange with a family in Madrid. His father and stepmother, who worked as a coal miner and an elementary school teacher, respectively, had both gone to college, and emphasized the importance of a well-rounded education.

“My folks, to their eternal credit, said, ‘If you want to do this, absolutely. We’ll make it work.’” And so, at just 15, Mosser left his family’s farm and flew to Europe armed with a few semesters of high school Spanish.

Mosser came back to his small southwestern Pennsylvania town changed. His time in Madrid sparked a curiosity that would shape both his professional and personal life. “I was just like, ‘Wow, this is really different, and I want to do it again and again and again.’”

After receiving his BA from Pitt, Mosser went to the University of Wisconsin — Madison, where he earned both a master’s and PhD in political science. Over the course of his 20-year career, Mosser has become one the nation’s foremost experts on European security and international relations. Despite his worldliness, in the classroom Mosser makes a point to connect with his students. “He’s not only one of the most intelligent professors I had,” wrote one nominator, “But also one of the most caring professors I have ever had.”

While he and his family have missed jet-setting over the past year, Mosser says being grounded has given them a chance to spend one final year with their daughter before she heads off to college in the fall. Naturally, she’s chosen to attend university in Europe. — KF

Alison Norman, MS ’06, PhD ’10

Associate Professor of Instruction, Department of Computer Science | Years at UT: 10

It takes a village: Norman has weathered the pandemic with a little help from her family — all her family. The associate professor, her husband, and their three kids all live within walking distance of Norman’s parents and her sister and brother-in-law.

Within minutes of meeting Alison Norman, it’s easy to see why her students adore her. Bright and bubbly with an infectious laugh, the principles of computer systems professor has been a fixture in the computer science department for more than a decade, receiving both her MS and PhD from the school.

Though she’s been teaching since her post- graduate days, redesigning her courses to be online (from home, with three children) has been a challenge. Norman says she’s worked hard to not just be “a crazy talking head” over Zoom, but instead create a thoughtful learning environment where students feel connected. That means using technology to keep her classes engaged and on track with their education.

Norman was predestined to be a computer sciences professor. Growing up in Georgia, both of her parents worked at IBM and her father became a computer science professor at the University of Georgia. Still, she didn’t jump into the family business right away, majoring in biology instead during her freshman year at Georgia Tech. “I was such a rule follower that my way of rebelling was majoring in another STEM field,” she says with a laugh.

Eventually though, the tech bug bit and Norman decided to pursue a career in computer systems. What she’s found along the way is a field where women and minorities are dramatically underrepresented, a trend she is working to reverse. In addition to creating an ethics course for freshmen, Norman pursues her own education, taking courses such as the history of the Black experience.

“I do think there’s tons of people at UT working to make it better for the students, working to fight injustice and inequity, and it’s just an amazing community to be a part of as people figure out what that looks like.” — KF

Betsy Berry, MA ’87, PhD ’94

Senior Lecturer, Department of English | Years at UT: 27

In Memory: Being recognized as a Texas 10 winner is an honor Berry now shares with her late husband, Don Graham, who won the award in 2014. “I wish he could be here to see this,” she says. “He would be so proud. He told me early on, when I first started teaching and I was so nervous, he would say, ‘You just don’t know it, but you’re a born teacher.’”

At the beginning of every semester, Betsy Berry asks her students to fill out a “biography card,” (the name a holdover from when she passed out actual index cards) with questions about their favorite animals and what they like to read. “Why should they be required to get to know more about me and they remain anonymous?” Berry says. “I try and connect with each and every student, and those students who prefer to be more anonymous in class, I respect that as well — I look at their work, and let their work speak for them.”

Berry says her biggest goal is to get her students to “not like, but love” reading and to become lifelong readers — not because it will give them the ability to use fancy words, but because she knows becoming a lifelong reader will help them move through the world more easily.

Before attending graduate school at UT’s department of English and being called to teach, Berry spent time working in the film industry in Los Angeles, and many years working in the business world — including as a staff writer for Tex Schramm, the original president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys. Berry has a Super Bowl ring thanks to that gig, and whenever people invariably ask what boyfriend gave it to her, she responds she earned it herself — with hard work and a good team. “That’s another reason I so value my students,” she says. “They’re on the team, and where would I be without them?” — Sofia Sokolove

Michael Marder

Professor, Department of Physics, Executive Director, UTeach | Years at UT: 33

Good surprise: Born in New York and raised in Illinois, Marder had never stepped foot in Texas until 1988, when he flew in for a job interview. “I had never visited Texas before,” he says, adding that he was surprised by how much he was taken with Austin. “It was the first of many surprises for me — and they’ve all been good surprises.”

One would think someone who researches chaos would not be keen on strapping on scuba gear and jumping into the oceanic abyss, but that’s exactly what Michael Marder does to relax. (But when your wife is a world-renowned underwater archaeologist and your daughter runs a Cretian dive shop, it counts as family bonding.)

On dry land, however, Marder has spent most of his academic life studying chaos theory, or the idea that though we think we can predict how things probably will turn out, it’s impossible to know for certain. “Take the weather,” Marder says, “despite all the satellites, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

It was by a seemingly random pattern that Marder ended up with a three-decade-long career in teaching. At UT, where he teaches students across a variety of majors, and was awarded the Texas Exes’ Elizabeth Shatto Massey Award for being a “teacher of teachers” in 2008, Marder says he tries to remember back to his days as an undergrad at Cornell or a doctoral student at UC Santa Barbara. “I’ve really tried to remember what it felt like to walk into someone’s office and be treated abruptly,” he explains. And so, as a professor, he approaches every semester as both an opportunity to teach and be taught.

“The master teachers [at UT], I continue to learn from them,” he says. “It comes more easily than others. It’s not humility to say that I have had to work very hard.” — KF

Jung Kwak

Associate Professor, School of Nursing | Years at UT: 4

For the future: Kwak says she grew up with a lot of older adults, and so it felt natural to gravitate toward topics around aging. “Some people think it’s morbid,” she laughs, “but it’s inevitable, right? It’s a universal experience. And our students are going to have to become amazing caregivers for all of us, so I feel that I have a personal stake in this topic.”

Jung Kwak’s “Ethics of Healthcare” course has always been one of her favorites to teach. “The ethics class is really about learning about ourselves, even though it is in the context of health care, it’s about helping students explore what they believe and why they believe what they believe,” she explains.

Even before COVID-19 had the world focused on vaccine rollouts, Kwak’s students were delving into rich discussions about the most equitable way to distribute valuable resources. But now, the course feels even more urgent. “The pandemic has given us a really realistic context,” she says, “And I think the students feel more engaged and invested in these topics because they are actually living through it.”

Despite the course’s obvious relevance to nursing, Kwak says it can be powerful for any student, because it’s about universal human experiences. Regardless of their major, she says, her students “can really think about these issues as a member of our larger communities.”

As both a social worker and gerontologist, Kwak embraces a multidisciplinary teaching style, looking at issues not only from a medical and biomedical ethics perspective, but infusing public health, philosophy, religion, arts, and literature into her syllabi.

Another thing she makes sure to bring into her classroom? Empathy. “It’s essential to create an effective learning environment,” she says. “It’s really not about me as a teacher at all. It’s all about students. Once you kind of set your mindset as such, it becomes much more liberating — and much more fun — to teach.” — SS

Fred Valdez, BA ’75

Professor, Department of Anthropology | Years at UT: 32

Anybody goin’ to San Antone? Though he’s lived in Austin for most of his adult life, Valdez has deep roots in his hometown of San Antonio. Pre-COVID, he would travel to the Alamo City at least twice a month to visit family, grade school friends, and his daughter and two grandsons.

Fred Valdez took his first archaeology course at the behest of a friend who didn’t want to take the class by himself. What started as a favor ended up sparking a lifelong curiosity for Valdez, and before long he was hooked.

“Every class that I took that was anthropology or archaeology, the professors that I had … they all seemed really happy about what they were doing. They really enjoyed what they were doing,” Valdez remembers.

And it was something Valdez enjoyed, too. As college came to a close, he continued taking more anthropology and archaeology classes, and began volunteering at the Balcones Research Center, now the Pickle Research Campus. “I volunteered out there looking through microscopes and sorting little bits of bone from rock and seeds and so forth,” he recalls with a fondness rarely attributed to microscopes.

Following college, he returned to his hometown to begin postgraduate studies at University of Texas at San Antonio before eventually transferring to Harvard College to complete his PhD in 1988. UT was able to lure him back as a professor later that year, and with exception of his year as a Fulbright Scholar researching in Guatemala, he’s remained on the Forty Acres ever since.

“I think [my story] shows there really isn’t a right way and a wrong way,” he says. “Things work out.” — KF

Natalie Czimskey, BS ’08, MA ’11, PhD ’19

Lecturer, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences | Years at UT: 9

A family affair: Czimskey; her husband, Justin; her father; and her mother-in-law are all UT alumni — and they’re already preparing the next generation, including her five-year-old son. “He told me the other day, ‘Mommy, you know what I love? I love you. But you know what I love more? The Tower.’”

In addition to her academic and professional pursuits, Czimskey met her husband at UT, got married, settled down in the Austin suburbs, and had two children while finishing her doctorate. “I grew up here.” Because of that, she says, campus feels like home.

It also gave her a unique perspective in spring 2020, when students were unable to return to the Forty Acres after spring break due to the pandemic. “I think we forget that campus is a safe place for a lot of people,” she says. “Some of them are healthier and safer on campus.” To stay connected to her students as the world around them shut down, Czimskey gave every single one of them her cell phone number. “They need to be able to get a hold of me, and they can’t just pop into my office hours,” she says.

As a newly minted Provost’s Teaching Fellow for 2021, Czimskey will spend the next two years researching this kind of “compassionate instruction,” an examination of how perceived professor compassion can positively impact students.

“My next direction is really going to be working toward compassionate and empathetic instruction at UT and talking about how to enact that and what it looks like and its impact on students,” she says. “And I think it’s an area where professors are probably going to be receptive.” — KF

“Beautification is far more than a matter of cosmetics,” former first lady Lady Bird Johnson, BA ’33, BJ ’34, BL ’64, Life Member, Distinguished Alumna, said in 1968. “For me, it describes the whole effort to bring the natural world and the man-made world into harmony; to bring order, usefulness — delight — to our whole environment, and that of course only begins with trees and flowers and landscaping.”

A little over a decade later, she, along with actress Helen Hayes, established a center in East Austin to help restore, preserve, and study native plants, or — as she might have put it — beautification, in every sense of the word. The original, 60-acre center was founded in 1982, and in 1995, opened its current botanic garden on 42 acres in southwest Austin. Today, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center sprawls over 284 lush acres covered in nearly 900 species of native plants.

In 2006, ownership of the Wildflower Center, the official state botanical garden of Texas, was transferred to UT. “I think we embody UT’s service to the state and to Texans,” interim executive director Lee Clippard says. “We have a very deep history of creating programs that have gone on to change the world.” Like Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) — an effort that began at the Wildflower Center, in collaboration with the U.S. Botanic Garden and the American Society of Landscape Architects, and is now the world’s most comprehensive sustainable landscape rating system.

Last spring, during the center’s most colorful season, COVID-19 forced an eight-week closure. This year, the garden is open for visitors — albeit by reservation, with limited capacity — and, despite Winter Storm Uri wreaking havoc on flora around Austin, the wildflowers are once again peeking their colorful heads out of the ground, ready to greet them.

“I hope people feel inspired,” Clippard says. “We want them to come here and feel better — whether that be happier … or calmer … or more connected. And we want to spread that from here to other parts of the world.”

We curated our favorite images of the Wildflower Center in full bloom over the years, in the hopes that every reader will feel as if they had a chance to visit this spring. — Sofia Sokolove

Johnson founded the Wildflower Center to inspire an appreciation for native plants. “For people to really see the environment around them for what it is, to connect with it, to help it, to foster it,” Clippard says.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wildflower Center was closed completely for eight weeks. Since then, it has slowly eased back into operations, offering an outdoor, distanced sanctuary for visitors. One guest commented that it has been both their “gym and their church” this past year.

There are around 5,000 species of native plants in Texas — of those, around 2,700 can be considered wildflowers.

“In some ways we are a preserve and a conservation space in and of itself,” Clippard says. “We are a laboratory for showing people how we can interact positively with our environment, but we are also managing this environment for the future.”

In 1971, the same year David Lake arrived on the Forty Acres, the very first Schlotzsky’s opened amid a row of small, shuttered storefronts on South Congress Avenue. The previous year, Armadillo World Headquarters opened at the corner of South Congress and Barton Springs. There were signs of new life on the run-down street (once known as the bustling “Avenue,” in the 1800s) but it was a sleepy kind of rebirth. Guero’s Taco Bar was still Central Feed and Seed.

Lake, BS ’76, says that as a kid growing up in the Mount Bonnell neighborhood of Austin in the ’50s and ’60s — or even as an undergrad — he never could have imagined how that same stretch of pavement would look in 2020. Except today, five full city blocks of what is now Austin’s most vibrant and iconic street look exactly the way Lake imagined. He designed them.

Music Lane is a 140,000-square-foot mixed-use development adjacent to the new Hotel Magdalena, also designed by Lake | Flato. It’s all just the latest example of the kind of work Lake and his firm, which he co-founded in 1984 with Ted Flato, have been doing for decades. Lake | Flato: Nature, Place, Craft & Restraint, out this November from UT Press, is an exploration — and celebration — of some of the firm’s most striking creations. —Sofia Sokolove

Lake initially struggled with what he wanted to study at UT. Until he stumbled into the architecture school, which was once an old church on Dean Keeton (then 26th Street), and found a group of professors who spoke his language. “We didn’t know what to call it at the time — now we call it sustainability, or green building — but then it was just an idea of being resource and energy efficient,” he says. Lake, a self-described outdoorsman, has canoed every river in Texas start to finish, from the Colorado to the Rio Grande through far West Texas. The idea of overlaying a manmade environment onto the natural environment with the least
possible impact resonated with him then — and has been a central theme of his work since.

Bob Harris, MArch ’92, a partner at Lake | Flato and leader of the firm’s Eco-Conservation Studio, co-designed Confluence Park in San Antonio as a living laboratory — a place for visitors to learn, through participation, about the San Antonio River watershed. Concrete petals form a geometric shape that collects and funnels rainwater into a water enrichment system. “We were able to do something we’d never done before,” he says. “It’s a great confluence of many things, but in particular, the confluence between Earth and sky, and what that means.”

Lake calls Austin Central Library the “living room” of Austin: “We wanted a place to reflect the community of Austin — a place where knowledge is shared and transferred. So, there are screen porches, and the roof deck, and different ways of getting outdoors … because that’s what Austin loves.”

Lake visits the library every six weeks or so. “I’m like a junkie,” he says. “That’s the joy of being an architect — being able to wander back through something you created and see how it’s changed, how people are engaging differently. When people say they love the building … that’s what I would consider an accolade.”

A new project aims to capture the Black student experience at UT.

Photographs by Adraint Bereal | By Danielle Lopez

Adraint Bereal, BFA ’20, grew up in a predominantly Black and Latino area in Waco. He dreamed about being a Longhorn for as long as he can remember. But when Bereal started at UT Austin in 2016, he says it felt like a week went by before he saw another Black student walking around campus. He felt disappointed. The campus community wasn’t quite what he had expected.

Then one day in the Student Activity Center he came upon a room full of Black students in a meeting and peeked his head through the doorway. He recognized a friend who motioned for him to join them. “I walked in and was like, ‘Where’s everybody been?’” he says. “I thought, This is what home feels like to me.”

As of fall 2019, Black students make up 4.9 percent of the UT Austin student population on campus. That’s a number that has fluctuated yearly only by one or two points since the school first integrated in 1956, and one the university has been working to raise through programs like Texas Advance Commitment, which provides financial support to students; by expanding outreach to underserved high schools; and by recruiting more Black faculty and staff.

Upon learning about the small Black student population, Bereal was inspired to create The Black Yearbook, a documentation of the lives of Black students at UT Austin. He has spent the last two years taking student portraits, photographing events, and conducting interviews. The book, which Bereal published in August, is made up of more than 300 pages of photos and student stories and has garnered national interest from The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and CNN.

“When people initially hear about the project, they think, ‘Oh, like a traditional yearbook,’” he says. “But that’s not what it is. It’s more of a fine art piece that people can take something away from. Traditional yearbooks aim to depict the good times and picture-perfect moments rooted in this normalized tradition of what life is supposed to be like on a college campus. This is a much more honest telling of our story.”

On Identity

“Dismantling this idea that being Black is a monolithic thing has been really important to me. Many of our peers who didn’t grow up around Black people think, ‘This is what a Black person is. This is how they’re supposed to be.’ Blackness is a spectrum of identities and unique cultures.”

On the Process

“I didn’t realize how big of a thing I was making until I finally stopped. One of the most stimulating parts is that a lot of my peers said that they’ve never been photographed in this way before, or never saw themselves in this way. It makes me happy knowing I could capture them in a way they never thought they would see.”

On What’s Next

“I had a gallery planned in May — but, coronavirus. So now I’m trying to find a place to host a show. I think a lot of people are going to be taken aback by the work because I don’t think [Black UT students] have ever been highlighted in such an unfiltered way before. And I don’t think so many students have ever gotten to tell their story on this large of a platform before. It’s really going to change the way students see themselves and the possibilities of what we can and can’t do.”

Check out The Black Yearbook online here.

This UT Alumnus’ New Book Depicts the Black Student Experience on Campus was originally published in The Alcalde on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ten UT Austin students share their thoughts on a college experience they never saw coming.

By Danielle Lopez

There’s no telling how we’re going to feel looking back at 2020 — or if we’ll even remember the day in, day out all that well in the distant future. In April, Vice ran a story that addressed how for people who’ve spent the pandemic isolating at home, with little to break up the monotony, most of this will be a blur. For health care workers and anyone else on the front lines, this pandemic might be a point of trauma.

But as much as it seems like the world as we knew it is standing still, and may even be unrecognizable by the time this is over, it has been a year saddled with emotion. As the pandemic claims more lives and the second civil rights movement comes knocking on every state’s door, it has been a time of grief, confusion, frustration, anger, and fear. Alongside it all, life — and the smaller moments within it that bring us joy — carries on. Families are celebrating graduations, engagements, and babies over their computer screens; strangers are finding ways to fall in love; neighbors, eager for new hobbies, are leaving freshly baked loaves of sourdough at each other’s doors.

For students, it has been a time of momentous unknowing. This year has been about adapting to online education, navigating being back home with families, and processing national political unrest. Many are wary of returning to campus while COVID-19 still looms and can’t fully envision what their fall semester will look like. All they can do is hope for the best.

To capture this feeling in time, the Alcalde asked 10 students what it feels like to be heading into the fall semester of 2020.

Jamie Turcios-Villalta

Senior; Health and Society Honors, Government

The uncertainty of this year is nothing new to Jamie Turcios-Villalta. She’s a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — her future and status in the U.S. is always up for debate. On June 18, Dreamers like Turcios-Villalta and their families let out a collective sigh of relief when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of DACA, preventing the program’s immediate end. It was a decision Turcios-Villalta had been waiting on since the Trump administration first proposed dismantling DACA in 2017. For just a moment, DACA recipients could feel sure that they would be able to stay home and Turcios-Villalta could revel in an instance of clarity.

“How do you plan after graduation or prepare for the rest of your life when you really don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few months? Everything shutting down and the anticipation of the DACA decision was a lot of stress. Being an undocumented student has been really difficult, just navigating policies that change throughout my whole entire four years. I’m taking the DACA decision as a win for now and just moving forward.”

Daniel Wrapp

PhD Student; Biochemistry

Despite spending months working toward a cure for COVID-19, life in the pandemic isn’t much different than usual for Daniel Wrapp. As a PhD student, his world was already just lab, eat, sleep, repeat. But now the stakes are higher. Wrapp is a researcher on UT professor Jason McLellan’s team, which has been working on coronaviruses for the last five years. Along with about eight other researchers, they’ve been working nonstop to find a treatment for COVID-19.

“I’ll be interested a few years from now to look back and reflect. For us in the lab, it’s pretty much been business as usual, but the whole world changed. If there wasn’t an active corona outbreak, we would still be doing this work. Now we’re just doing it with a really heightened sense of urgency. If we have the ability to develop a cure, we’re going to work our hardest to accomplish that.”

Caroline Graves

Senior; Government, Public Relations

Caroline Graves was supposed to be working as an intern at Google in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this summer — not working from her grandmother’s kitchen in Austin. But the pandemic altered everyone’s plans this year. She’s eager for some sense of normalcy to return this fall semester when she is back on campus in her single dorm.

“This has definitely been a time of upheaval. The only constant is change. I just hope other Longhorns in our community understand the risks that are posed to other students. I have a disability, and I’m a little immunocompromised, and I have reservations about returning. A virtual environment has been more equitable in many ways. It’s easier to contact your teachers if you’re feeling pretty tired because of a chronic illness or something. Now you can just log into Zoom and there’s your class, you know? There have definitely been some positives in a weird, twisted way. But obviously there have been drawbacks. Everybody wants to see their friends and do in-person activities. It’s been very hard for me, but I think that if we respect each other, we can all get through this together.”

Daija Esparza

Freshman; Business Honors

Daija Esparza is one of almost 9,000 incoming freshmen whose first year at UT Austin is going to be unlike any other. A recipient of the Madison Charitable Foundation Forty Acres Scholarship, the first-generation student from San Juan, Texas, was looking forward to moving north and living on her own for the first time. Now, one socially distant high school graduation and virtual UT orientation later, it looks like another year at home.

“I was definitely looking forward to leaving the Valley.
I love where I grew up, but I got so excited to move into a new environment — to meet new people and be exposed to things I’ve never been exposed to before. It’s just crazy to feel like I’m going to be a freshman twice. I’m being introduced to the curriculum, but then how will I be introduced to the school itself? Being a freshman is exciting. It’s finally time to take initiative of what we want to do with our lives. But at the same time, right now, it’s terrifying. We’re stepping into adulthood in the middle of a pandemic and a lot of things are uncertain. But we’ve just got to focus on right now, take it day by day, and hope for the best.”

Earl Potts Jr.

Junior; Computer Science, Black Studies

In a time when everyone is stuck inside their homes, Earl Potts Jr. has garnered much more public attention than he ever anticipated. As Black Lives Matter marches flooded
Austin streets, Potts wanted to do his part. He developed Keep Austin Black, an app that highlights Black-owned businesses in Austin. Currently, around 200 are listed across 15 different categories.

“Everything was crazy at first, but I guess I’m pretty quick to accept things. I couldn’t go out and protest how I wanted to but I’m pretty passionate about student activism. I wanted to find a way to contribute so I decided to pour my time and frustrations into making the app. It’s a whole other beast having to deal with politics right now and fighting for civil rights during the pandemic. Hopefully things will get right by the time we’re in spring.”

Kiswa Mahar

Sophomore; Economics

When campus shut down in March, Kiswa Mahar, an international student from Pakistan, was studying abroad in the United Kingdom. Instead of coming back to the U.S., she stayed with her family back home for a few months. But in anticipation of borders closing, she returned early to Austin.

Five days after she was back in her apartment, she was one of the nearly 5,000 Longhorns who ICE threatened to deport in July. Mahar and the Planet Longhorns, a UT Austin group of foreign students, created a petition that garnered more than 18,000 signatures calling for the university’s help in finding a way to keep them in the U.S. Just two days after speaking with Mahar, the Trump administration rescinded the policy after numerous universities and states filed lawsuits. For now, Mahar’s status is safe, but she’ll never forget the feeling of being unwanted by the country she resides in.

“I love it here. I love Austin. I love the campus and student life. I’d be so sad if I got deported. It felt nice to be international at UT. Everyone wanted to learn about where we were from and it felt special. We’ve always been welcome at UT but now it feels like we’re not welcome in America. I was happy but now it’s just stressful. I’m hoping that no more announcements like the one from ICE happen.”

Andrew Zhang

Sophomore; Plan II Honors, Business Honors

While the virus has brought many parts of life to a halt, for Andrew Zhang and his peers at The Daily Texan, their worlds have yet to slow down. Directly from his childhood bedroom in College Station, Zhang has been part of the team keeping the student body informed as a general news reporter — from publishing stories on the Cabo-49 students who contracted the virus at the start of the state’s shutdown to Black Lives Matter protests in Austin to Interim President Jay Hartzell’s plan for opening campus in the fall.

“Coming home for me wasn’t too difficult. I felt like I was pretty fortunate compared to some of my peers who may have not necessarily had a stable housing or economic situation. The word I’d use to describe how it feels to be a student right now is ‘confusing.’ I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. For a lot of us, we were finally figuring out how we fit in at UT and what organizations we wanted to be a part of and what we wanted to pursue academically. And then we were just abruptly separated from campus. It was definitely challenging.”

Austin Katz

Senior; Radio-Television-Film

It’s a strange time to be a student-athlete, especially for a swimmer like Austin Katz. He and his teammates on the Texas Men’s swimming and diving team are still training in Austin. But facilities on campus are closed, so the athletes have been displaced and are practicing in private recreational pools around the city. Still, Katz welcomes the semblance of routine keeping him tethered during this time. He is unsure of what comes after school ends next year, especially right now that Olympic trials, for which he was a contender, have been postponed indefinitely. But he says he’s ready to roll with the punches.

“This isn’t what I thought my senior year was going to look like. I had to re-center myself. I don’t really know what the future looks like, especially being interested in the film industry. It’s weird to be heading out into a landscape that’s changing rapidly. I’m looking forward to it, but there’s definitely some nerves.”

Amel Weaver

Junior; Sociology

As the director of operations for Afrikan American Affairs, a student agency within the Multicultural Engagement Center, Amel Weaver was one of the many students who helped develop the “8 Demands for Transformative Change” issued to the UT administration calling for a more equitable campus. Though the pandemic sent her back home to Dallas for a few months, her concerns rest more with how campus is going change for the betterment of its Black students.

“There’s so much uncertainty and different things that a person could be bothered by during this time. It’s just stressful to have to go to school and worry about, you know, ‘I could wake up sick tomorrow.’ And there’s a lot of trauma going on in the Black community right now. I want to see more support for Black students and make sure that UT is an inclusive environment.”

Anagha Kikkeri

Senior; Government

This wasn’t the student body presidency Anagha Kikkeri expected. Within a week of her being named SBP, the coronavirus shut down the state and sent her packing back to Dallas. She never thought she’d be spending her last year at UT stuck inside her home, or leading the Longhorn community through her computer screen. Her days have been consumed meeting with student organizations and administration, crafting a list of actions calling for the university to be a more equitable place, and getting through schoolwork.

“We ran on the platform of having diversity inclusion, equity infused into everything that we do. And corona is not going to stop us from doing anything. I have no plans to abandon any of our initiatives. We’re just going to alter them to be corona-friendly this year. This is one of the most critical periods I can think of since I’ve been alive. We truly have given so much weight to everything that is happening right now.
It’s all very heavy. It’s a historical time to be a student. And honestly, our student body is going to be really durable because we have been through so much. It’s hard to see this right now, but I really hope and feel like we’re going to come out of this stronger.”

UT Austin Students Share Their Thoughts on a College Experience They Never Saw Coming was originally published in The Alcalde on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world found ways to honor those who deserved celebration. For birthdays, friends and families tailgated outside their loved ones’ homes; universities hosted elaborate virtual commencement ceremonies for the Class of 2020; and people in cities across the country stepped outside on a nightly basis to clap for health care workers.

In April, the Texas Exes was set to host its second annual Texas Excellence Awards, recognizing outstanding members of the campus community. Though we couldn’t welcome these recipients onstage this year, we are celebrating them in the Alcalde with a portrait and kind words from faculty and students. We asked each recipient to take a break from their homes, get gussied up, and meet with our staff photographer Matt Wright-Steel at a safe distance on campus.

Texas Exes Tejas Club Campus Leadership Award

Adraint Bereal

BFA ’20, School of Design and Creative Technologies

In 2018, the Tejas Club Award was established to recognize an accomplished student leader at the university for their commitment to making an impact on student life. As a first-generation college student, Bereal didn’t feel like he belonged when he first arrived on campus. But over the last four years, Bereal found a passion for design and made it his mission to use it to benefit the Longhorn community. He co-founded UT’s first black honor society, the Onyx Honor Society; served as the associate director of advertising for UT Student Government; and created The Black Yearbook, combining visual and verbal storytelling to document and raise awareness of the black experience at UT.

“His selfless dedication to the UT Austin community is evident in everything that he does,” one nominator said.

James W. Vick Advising Award

For nearly 30 years, this award — its winner chosen from student nominations — has been granted to five academic advisors who have worked to help students stay on track and make the most of their UT education.

Jennifer Porras

Senior Academic Advisor, Moody College of Communication
Years at UT: 5

When students step into Porras’ office, they know they’re going to leave excited about their future. In nearly every nomination, her students said that she always exceeds their expectations. Students see her as an encouraging voice who gets them where they need to be.

“Each time I go in for advising, Jennifer is extremely patient with me, answers my multiple questions with such kindness, and can always put me at ease,” one student said. “I genuinely think that Jennifer is an angel and that I would not still be in school if it weren’t for her.”

Richard Hogeda

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, College of Education
Years at UT: 29

As the assistant dean for Student Affairs, Hogeda’s, BA ’93, MEd ’02, Life Member, life can get pretty busy — he is responsible for academic advising programs, new student orientation, degree evaluation, study abroad programs, and student organizations. But even so, his students note that he always makes time for them, whether they’re looking for a letter of recommendation or struggling in class. According to his nominations, students view him as more than an advisor — he’s a role model and a mentor.

“Most of all, he makes a personal effort,” one student said. “He makes students feel heard, remembered, and important. Any student that sees him leaves his office feeling positive.”

Theresa Thomas

Director of Advising, Moody College of Communication
Years at UT: 19

After nearly 20 years advising students on the Forty Acres, Thomas knows it all. Her students are confident that she will always come equipped with the answer they need to get set on the right path. She works tirelessly to make sure her students have what they need to succeed and she does it with a smile.

“Theresa is the brightest light in Moody,” one student said. “She is always there for everyone and goes out of her way to say hi to individuals. She makes students feel like they have a home and because of her I truly feel welcome.”

Josh Barham

Senior Academic Advisor, McCombs School of Business
Years at UT: 9

Barham, BS ’11, joined McCombs in 2015, following two years as a student development specialist at the School of Undergraduate Studies. Students who nominated Barham described him as supportive, understanding, compassionate, and even praised his humorous emails. One student went so far as to call him the “GOAT” — the greatest of all time.

“Josh is more than just an advisor for classes, he is also a mentor for all things about life,” one student said. “He made me comfortable to be on campus and he made me hopeful that my college career will only improve.”

Sawyer Tedder

Associate Academic Advisor, College of Education
Years at UT: 4

Tedder, MED ’18, is all about inclusivity and positivity. As a graduate assistant in the admissions office, he helped launch “Longhorn Pride,” a day for prospective students to explore the university’s LGBTQ resources and meet with current queer-identifying students and alumni. With Tedder as their advisor, his students feel seen, heard, and cared for, and describe him as empathetic and a guiding light.

“He truly cares about the College of Education and has already made massive strides to making it a better, more inclusive space for all,” one student said. “Sawyer truly leaves each space he’s in better than he found it.”

Edward S. Guleke Student Excellence Award

Brandon Chukwunyelu Okeke

BSA ’20, College of Natural Sciences

Each year, this award recognizes a student who has distinguished academic credentials, has made a significant contribution to the university through campus-wide activities, and displays the personal attributes of character and integrity that have earned the respect and admiration of their peers. In his time on the Forty Acres, Okeke demonstrated these traits through his academic achievements, making CNS honors every semester; tutoring his college peers and Austin ISD students through UTeach; and leading Afrikan American Affairs through the Multicultural Engagement Center on campus.

“Brandon has a great professional demeanor, is easy to work with, and is an outstanding team member,” one nominator said.

Jean Holloway Award for Excellence in Teaching

Stephanie Osbakken

Assistant Professor of Instruction, UT Health and Society Program
Years at UT: 6

Since 1970, the Jean Holloway Award has been given to a professor from the College of Liberal Arts or Natural Sciences. Nominated by students, the recipient is someone who demonstrates a warm spirit, concern for society and the individual, and imparts knowledge while challenging students. This year’s recipient, Stephanie Osbakken, BA ’94, is those things and more. Her sociology students describe her as a phenomenal professor who is engaging, tough, and relatable.

“Dr. Osbakken is the best communicator, the most caring professor, and also one of the most inspirational people I have ever met,” a former student said. “I can’t think of anyone on this campus who is more deserving of this award than her.”

Honoring the 2020 Texas Excellence Awards Winners was originally published in The Alcalde on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.