One in 5 Americans lives with a mental health condition, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Joanne Sanchez, a UT Austin psychology junior, is interning with the Texas chapter of NAMI, the largest grassroots organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with mental illness in the country. Since January, Sanchez has worked […]
Features
Women’s Magic Hour: A Q&A Starring Donna Kornhaber
Since its humble beginnings at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929, when a seat cost a mere $5 (equivalent to roughly $72 today), the Academy Awards have celebrated the creative pursuits of some of history’s most notable characters. But in a year marked by controversy surrounding a disturbing number of sexual assault accusations and increasing […]
Small But Powerful Moments: An IRG Senior’s Experience Abroad
Experiential learning is an essential part of a liberal arts education, and Austin native Megan Nater’s time studying abroad has served her well. Nater is an International Relations & Global Studies senior whose studies focus on security and Latin America. For her undergraduate honors thesis, Nater is examining women’s rights mobilization in Colombia. As a […]
Smile, You’re on Camera: Behind the Lens of 24/7 Surveillance
“Even a strutting exhibitionist has something to hide: certain diary entries, genetic predispositions, financial mistakes, medical crises, teenage embarrassments, antisocial compulsions, sexual fantasies, radical dreams,” writes Randolph Lewis. “We all have something that we want to shield from public view. The real question is: Who gets to pull the curtains? And increasingly: How will we […]
Sick: The Poetics of Modern Health Care
…And all the while, I kept thinking about that great old Whitman poem… ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.’I…I don’t know it.Anyway…Well, can you recite it?Pathetically enough, I could. With some encouragement from Walt, Gale continues:When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts […]
Where India Goes
UT Austin economist Dean Spears and sociologist Diane Coffey founded the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) in 2011 with the goal of improving health and well-being in India. They focus on an important driver of economic development: the health of children. Despite rapid economic growth, India’s infant and under-five mortality rate continues to be […]
The Journey Continues: Rapoport Scholars Fulfill a Commitment to Community and Civic Life
It began with a daring escape from Siberia that involved walking more than 600 miles. After five years of exile, a Russian revolutionary named David Rapoport found refuge in Belgium, and in 1913 he immigrated to a new life in San Antonio. It was from this man, his father, that Bernard “B” Rapoport drew his inspiration. […]
Damning the Amazon?
Hundreds of built and proposed hydroelectric dams may significantly harm life in and around the Amazon, according to research led by UT Austin scientists recently published in Nature. To meet energy needs, economic developers in South America have proposed 428 hydroelectric dams, with 140 currently built or under construction, in the Amazon basin — the largest and most […]
Fashion Meets Function
Though an avid cyclist, Gloria Hwang was never a fan of helmets, referring to them as “sci-fi” nuisances. But after losing a friend through a cycling accident, her perspective changed. Hwang, a psychology alumna, says her mission in founding and launching Thousand, a new brand of cycling helmets, was to save lives, noting that there are […]
Reckoning the Haint
Drea Brown made UT Austin history during the spring as the first doctoral candidate to defend a dissertation in the Department of African & African Diaspora Studies. The department, founded in 2010 under the direction of associate professor and chair Edmund Gordon, was the first doctoral program in black studies in the southern U.S. Brown’s dissertation, “Hush […]
Doing the Right Thing
The Pro Bene Meritis award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts. Since 1984, the annual award has been given to alumni, faculty members and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic pursuits or have participated in service related to the college. […]
Telling a Good Story
The Pro Bene Meritis award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts. Since 1984, the annual award has been given to alumni, faculty members and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic pursuits or have participated in service related to the college. […]
An Educated Decision
Voter turnout in the U.S. is below turnout in most other advanced democracies, with only about 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the past four presidential elections and about 40 percent participating in midterm elections. While prior research indicates that those with higher levels of education are more likely to vote, new research shows […]
The “C” that Changed the Constitution
It took two centuries and one mediocre grade to ratify the 27th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In 1982, Gregory Watson stumbled upon a 200-year-old proposed amendment, written by James Madison, while researching a paper for his sophomore government class. It read: “No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives […]
Funding the Future
A $1.5 million gift will fund seven scholarships and contribute to the Marilyn Ann White Endowed Discretionary Fund, or “the tutoring fund,” for students in all three branches of the UT Austin Reserve Officers Training Program. The gift provides additional funding for the Lt. Col. Herbert C. White Jr. Leadership and Scholarship Fund, awarded to […]
Life is Learning; Learning is Living
Terry Orr jokes that pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in classical archeology in his late 70’s was all a ploy to avoid retirement. “A lot of people retire because they are tired of driving to the same office and dealing with the same people; but when you work for yourself, it’s different. You aren’t trying […]
Barton Creek, Compromise and a Whole Lot of Elephants
Inside the Education of a Sustainability Studies Major After more than a decade of germination, the Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability Studies in UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts has its first graduates. The major was born out of several sustainability-focused initiatives on campus. The first was the 2007 establishment of the President’s Sustainability Steering […]
This Fool’s No Ghoul
On Halloween night, 13-year-old Rik Gern grabbed his wooden cane before setting off to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood as Charlie Chaplin. Delighted at the sight of a child festooned in a black bowler and matching mustache, families welcomed him inside to show off his foolproof impression to granny. “Look, Nana! Look who’s here to visit […]
Economics Junior’s Snapchat Geofilter Business Takes Off
In the spring of 2015, Andrew Lee attended a UT Austin lecture by Evan Spiegel, the founder and CEO of Snapchat, sponsored by the campus organization and professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi. The experience made a major impression on the then-college freshman, and in a few short years, Lee’s own company would be collaborating […]
UT Austin MAPATHON Helps with Disaster Relief
Following the recent hurricanes and earthquake, LILLAS Benson joined the University of Texas Libraries and people around the world in using the OpenStreetMap platform to donate their time to hurricane relief efforts through open-source mapping. Videography and photography by Todd Bogin
Longhorn Lightens the Load for Incoming Students
Filling a 100-square-foot space with the essentials you’ll need to be successful for the next academic year is no small task, especially when you add it to the endless shopping list of books and school supplies. This year, families of college students expect to spend an average of $969.88 on back-to-school expenses, according to a […]
Predators Turned Prey
Shark Week brings all sorts of shocking—and horrifying — spectacles to viewers. This year, audiences were promised the first-ever man versus shark swim off, where 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps will face off against “one of the fastest and most efficient predators on the planet,” a great white. But, perhaps, what’s more shocking is the […]
Putting People First
Jordan Metoyer is an economics and liberal arts honors/urban studies alumna from Inglewood, California, by way of Sugar Land, Texas. She is the recipient of a 2017 Schwarzman scholarship, which will send her to pursue a master’s degree in global affairs with a concentration in public policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing this fall. As […]
The Open Rhodes
Mikaila Smith is a Plan II senior with concentrations in international affairs and Chinese from Sydney, Australia, by way of Austin, Texas. She has been named a 2017 Rhodes scholar, which will provide for her to pursue a Master of Science degree in refugee and forced migration studies, followed by a Master of Science degree in […]
Can We Talk?: Why Discourse is Dying in America
I’ll have to admit that I was a bit perplexed when I heard linguistic anthropologist Elizabeth Keating say, “There is a very strong preference for agreement in conversation in the U.S.” I couldn’t believe my ears — even the Pew Research Center pegged political polarization as the defining feature of modern U.S. politics. And it’s […]