Features
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Meanwhile in Peru: Report from an Epicenter of Climate Change
In the Peruvian Andes, the future is now. In fact, people there are incredulous that lawmakers in the United States actually debate climate change, and baffled that many North Americans challenge the worldwide scientific consensus that Earth’s average temperature is steadily on the rise. South American climate observers (i.e., regular citizens as well as scientists)…
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Field of Dreams
Larry Carver’s Got a Marshall on First, a Truman on Second and a Rhodes on Third It’s been more than 20 years since Larry Carver began working with UT Austin students applying for the nation’s most prestigious graduate school fellowships, and he can still tell you the names of all the nominees from memory. It’s…
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Diagnosing Disease Faster: Q&A with Courtney Koepke
Courtney Koepke is a Plan II Honors and biomedical engineering junior from Austin, Texas. She works as an undergraduate research assistant at UT Austin’s Laboratory of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Bionanotechnology. What made you want to be a research assistant? As a freshman entering college, I didn’t know much about research or understand the important…
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Promoting National Security: Q&A With Mark Jbeily
Mark Jbeily is a Plan II Honors and Naval ROTC senior from Austin, Texas. He is a recipient of the 2015 British Marshall scholarship, which will fund his pursuit of a Master of Philosophy in international relations at the University of Oxford. Jbeily is also a Naval ROTC battalion commander, a Bill Archer fellow and…
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Bridge to Somewhere
Connecting STEM and the Humanities to Fix America’s Failing Infrastructure The next time you get behind the wheel, consider this: The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave our major urban highways a big, fat “D” on their infrastructure report card. A “D” on a report card usually means you’re getting grounded, and in a…
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Depression: Making Treatment Personal
For the estimated 350 million people worldwide who suffer from depression, the health consequences go far beyond “feeling down.” In fact, it is a leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people with symptoms of depression will never receive treatment, and for those diagnosed with major…
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Grand Victory
Liberal Arts alumnus Wes Anderson (Philosophy ’90) won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy in January and also received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director for “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014). The whimsical and complex comedy earned a total of nine Academy Award nominations and took home four…
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Borderline: The Politics, Law and Identity of Immigration
Temperatures hovered around the triple digits in deep South Texas when the children arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border. They traveled alone, without parents. They traveled from the faraway mountains of Guatemala and El Salvador and the depths of the world’s most violent city — San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Their numbers grew over months until…
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Undergraduate Research Week 2015: Liberal Arts Students Present the Evidence
The fields of study within the College of Liberal Arts are vast, and the number of topics that merit in-depth investigation are seemingly endless. Each year, liberal arts undergraduates at The University of Texas at Austin get first-hand experience in conducting academic research that can have an impact on themselves, the academic community and even…
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Honors Day 2015: Q&A with 3 Liberal Arts Honorees
More than 1,000 liberal arts students are being recognized this Saturday in a UT Austin tradition that began in 1948. The University of Texas at Austin holds Honors Day each year to recognize students who have achieved academic excellence. The Honors Day Convocation serves as a prelude to commencement and is attended by UT faculty…
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With Liberty and Justice for All: Liberal Arts Student Interns with Nonprofit Law Firm
Valentina Gudiño is an anthropology and international relations & global studies senior who was born in Cabimas, Venezuela and grew up in Houston, Texas. This semester, she’s working 10 hours per week as an intern at the Equal Justice Center. Monica Chartier, programs manager for Liberal Arts Career Services, says roughly one third of students who…
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Fighting the World’s Fight: Q&A with Sai Gourisankar
Sai Gourisankar is a Plan II Honors and chemical engineering senior from Fort Worth, Texas. He is a recipient of the 2015 Rhodes scholarship, as well as being a Dedman distinguished scholar, a Goldwater scholar and an Astronaut Foundation scholar. What does winning a Rhodes scholarship mean to you? It enables me to study at…
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Jewish Latin America Figures Prominently in Schusterman Center’s Activities
While the study of Jewish Latin America and Jewish Latinas/os might seem a small and specialized niche, the themes that emerge are often universal: cultural clashes, assimilation and blending in, loss, being part yet apart. Students and scholars of Latin American studies often ponder these very same questions. When these two disciplines meet or overlap,…
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Liberal Arts Backs Entrepreneurship
Major Ellis, an economics junior from San Angelo, Texas, says entrepreneurism runs in the family. “My father started his own company about 30 years ago,” Ellis says. “Growing up with that experience revealed to me not only the challenge but also the significance of leading and succeeding as an entrepreneur.” He chose to study liberal…
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Liberal Arts Refugee Alliance Introduces New Residents to Austin: Q&A with Founding Member Sarah Fischer
Sarah Fischer is an international relations & global studies and journalism sophomore from Mechanicsville, Maryland. She is a founding member of the Liberal Arts Refugee Alliance, which started last spring with grant from the Liberal Arts Honors program. How did the Liberal Arts Refugee Alliance come about? Last Spring, I attended a volunteer orientation at…
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Op-Ed Project Fellows Address Challenges African Americans Still Face Today
Turn to the op-ed pages of any major newspaper, and you’ll see how writers are wielding the power of the written word to keep people honest, to speak out about injustices, to shake readers out of apathy. You’re also likely to see the article was most likely written by a man. Only 10 to 20…
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2015 Pro Bene Meritis Winners Announced
The College of Liberal Arts is proud to announce the 2015 Pro Bene Meritis Award recipients. Peggy Beckham, Austin Gleeson and President Bill Powers were chosen for their outstanding service to the college. Peggy Beckham is an alumna of the Plan II Honors Program. A lifelong member of the Liberal Arts Advisory Council, she has…
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Judy Perkins on Finding Joy in Life and Learning
The Pro Bene Meritis Award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. First granted in 1984, it is given each spring to alumni, faculty and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic…
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Creating Your Own Noble Purpose
The Pro Bene Meritis Award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. First granted in 1984, it is given each spring to alumni, faculty and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic…
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Inspiring Lifetime Readers
The Pro Bene Meritis Award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. First granted in 1984, it is given each spring to alumni, faculty and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic…
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Budding Economists Launch Journal
The University of Texas at Austin is one of just four schools in the nation to publish its own economics undergraduate research journal. The Developing Economist was founded by students at UT Austin and published its inaugural issue in the spring of 2014, though the process of creating it began much earlier. Members of UT…
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Keeping A Pulse On Population Health
A few years ago, a Plan II Honors student in Marc Musick’s sociology lecture came to him with a question. Musick had been talking about the shortage of doctors in rural and inner city areas. The student had grown up in the Rio Grande Valley and hoped to go on to medical school. Why, he…
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The Road to Gender Equity: Still Under Construction
Christine Williams has heard her share of conflicting arguments about gender equality in the sociology course she’s taught for more than two decades at The University of Texas at Austin. But there is always one question that gives her pause: “Women have achieved equality, so why is feminism relevant?” “I’m always taken aback when students…
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Food for Thought
Government Professor Bartholomew “Bat” Sparrow first got the idea to teach a class about food from his wife, who had worked at Whole Foods for eight years. The result was an undergraduate course—“The Politics of Food in America”—that uses food as a lens through which to view the entire U.S. political system. “The idea was…
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From Bryan to Sicily: Public Scholars Join Academy to Community
In her most recent study, anthropologist Circe Sturm returned to her own backyard in East Texas. Sturm’s family hails from Sicilian roots, specifically a cluster of more than 1,000 Sicilians who settled in Bryan, Texas, around the turn of the 20th century. This enclave has managed to preserve many Sicilian traditions, including an annual ritual in which a single Sicilian-Texan family hosts 800 guests…
