Michaela Lavelle is a psychology and humanities junior from Arlington, Texas. She is president of the 2018–19 Liberal Arts Council, an organization nearing its 40th year as the official student voice and governing body for the college. The LAC gives students a voice in the academic affairs of the university by voting in the Senate […]
Features
A Shoemaker’s Dilemma: Q&A with English Alum and Author Spencer Wise
Set in contemporary South China, The Emperor of Shoes is about a young Jewish Bostonian preparing to take over his family’s shoe business. But he ends up falling in love with a factory worker who may or may not be using him as a pawn to start a pro-democratic revolution in the factory. For author […]
Pursuing a Passion for Service and Justice
Milla Lubis, a psychology and social work double major from Allen, Texas, has been awarded the 2018 Randy Diehl Prize in Liberal Arts. Now in its third year, the $15,000 award was established by donors to support a graduating liberal arts senior who is committing the year after graduation to service for the greater good, […]
The Future is Female: Young Women Inspired to take on NEW Leadership™ Roles
With more running for political office than ever before, women have moved beyond breaking ceilings and on to breaking records. But there’s still more work to be done. This year, more than 2,500 women filed for national- or state-level candidacy in a bi-partisan effort to increase female representation in politics nationwide, where women currently hold […]
Fight Like a Girl: How Women’s Activism Shapes History
Alice Embree doesn’t know what came over her the first time she stood up against injustice. She just knew it was the right thing to do. Along with her friends Karen and Glodine and the rest of the Austin High School drill squad, Embree had just sat down to order at a restaurant in Corpus […]
A Right to the City
Just south of Manor Road on Airport Boulevard, there’s a dimly lighted blues club where new and old East Austin meet. There, at the Skylark Lounge, local African American piano icon Margaret Wright plays happy hour on Thursday and Friday nights, giving city newcomers a taste of the bygone culture that once engulfed Austin’s eastern […]
Watch Your Step
Walking on natural terrain takes precise coordination between vision and body movements to efficiently and stably traverse any given path. But until now, vision and locomotion have been studied separately within controlled lab environments. To better understand how gaze and gait work together to help us navigate the natural world, UT Austin researchers combined new […]
Be Your Authentic Self
Dr. Travis Cosban is a Dedman scholar alumnus from New Orleans by way of Katy, Texas. He graduated from UT Austin with a Plan II Honors degree in 2009 before becoming a part of the inaugural class at the Texas Tech University Health Science Center’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine. Cosban is an emergency […]
Intern Supreme
Bahar Sahami is a Dedman Distinguished scholar from Plano, Texas. She is a senior double majoring in government and international relations and global studies, while minoring in Middle Eastern studies and completing a certificate in global management from the McCombs School of Business. She is a 2018 Bill Archer fellow, an Intellectual Entrepreneurship Citizen scholar, […]
Make Life Extraordinary
In 1986, Robert and Nancy Dedman invested $10 million in the College of Liberal Arts to help recruit and educate the nation’s top students. Since its creation in 1989, the Dedman Distinguished Scholars (DDS) program has funded the education of nearly 200 students. Dedman scholarships cover tuition, housing, books and all other education-related expenses. In […]
Defending Humanities
Legend has it that Alexander the Great fell asleep with an annotated copy of The Iliad tucked under his pillow, dreaming of Achilles. And when he led his armies into Persia, the Homeric epic and the notes of his tutor, Aristotle, were thrumming in his mind, shaping his vision of great leadership. A story, not […]
Forged in the Fires of My Liberal Arts Classes: Dean’s Distinguished Graduates Q&As
Every spring, the College of Liberal Arts recognizes 12 outstanding seniors as Dean’s Distinguished Graduates; students who have dedicated themselves to scholarship, leadership and service to the college and university community. Each 2018 recipient will be honored at the College of Liberal Arts joint commencement ceremony on May 18. The award, established in 1980, is […]
Information Quest: Undergraduate Research Week 2018
On April 19, a group of hand-picked liberal arts students who have conducted exceptional research projects presented them at the Dean’s Research Reception. College faculty and staff members, college administrators and Dean Randy Diehl all gathered to learn about the outstanding work that liberal arts students have conducted. The annual event is a part of […]
Psychology Junior Interns with Renowned Mental Illness Advocacy Organization
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 […]
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. […]