TRINITY THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY UNIVERSITY | JANUARY 2013
Out of Africa: Students intern in Botswana and Swaziland
Curriculum Reform: Less—but strategically focused—is More
P R E S I D E N T ’ S
President Dennis Ahlburg and his family welcome the crowd to the annual Christmas concert in Laurie Auditorium.
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t is my sincere hope that all of you enjoyed a holiday season filled with warmth, family, and friends, just as Penelope, Benjamin, and I have done. At Trinity, we anticipate a New Year full of promise and possibilities: faculty continue to develop innovative programs, the curriculum is undergoing a philosophical shift compatible with the times, and new opportunities at home and abroad are greatly enriching students’ academic experiences. You’ll read about some of them in this issue. However, that is not to say that institutions of higher learning are not facing challenges, and Trinity is no exception. Competition for the best and brightest students is fiercer than ever, and the economic need of students continues to grow. Add to this the growing popularity of alternative education options, e.g. massive open on-line courses (MOOCs) from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, and it’s easy to understand why some are questioning the viability of private, liberal arts and sciences education. While MOOCs undoubtedly provide access to brilliant lectures and offer valid and valuable information, I would argue that there is more—a lot more, in fact—to education. MOOCs and other forms of online delivery provide information, not an education. Trinity offers an intensive, hands-on, highly personal approach that teaches students to apply their academic knowledge in completely new situations. Small, residential liberal arts colleges and universities excel at teaching students how to reason carefully, solve complex problems,
M E S S A G E
be creative and entrepreneurial, work in teams, and communicate clearly and effectively in writing and speaking. Recent research reported by the Council of Independent Colleges has shown that students from colleges and universities like Trinity are more likely to take on leadership roles on campus and in the community and experience larger gains in personal and social development than other students. First generation, low-income, at risk students, and students of color, are also more likely to graduate if they attend small liberal arts colleges and universities. Of course, the reality is that education of this quality is not cheap. Trinity has been fortunate in that it has been able to draw on its endowment to subsidize the actual cost of this type of education by holding tuition to a level significantly below its peers. Beyond that, Trinity awards an additional $38 million in scholarships and financial aid to 90 percent of the student body—a substantially higher percentage than found at other selective institutions. Recent increases in financial aid are unsustainable. For me this is a very personal issue. As students who benefitted tremendously from scholarships, both Penelope and I believe passionately in “paying it forward,” and we have done so at our respective institutions in Australia and the UK and at Trinity by establishing scholarships. Going forward, I am deeply grateful for the many of you who feel the same way and who respond generously. I recognize that there are many demands on your resources, but I want to assure you that every gift in support of scholarships or in supporting outstanding academic or athletic programs is a gift that can make a significant impact on thousands of lives for years to come. Think of scholarship recipients, entrepreneurs Dirk Elmendorff, Pat Condon, and Richard Yoo, who co-founded Rackspace, now a publically traded company that employs more than 4,700 people. Think of Dr. Mark Kline, whose work with pediatric AIDS patients has saved thousands of lives in 13 countries around the globe, or think of Dr. Ana Unruh, Trinity’s first Rhodes Scholar, who is now Deputy Staff Director at the U.S. House of Representatives. And there are many more like them. Could there be a more rewarding or positive return on investment than alumni like that? Thank you for your continued loyalty and support. May your New Year be filled with the joy and sense of accomplishment that come with paying it forward. Together, we will make the world a better place. Sincerely,
Dennis Ahlburg
TRINITY THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY UNIVERSITY | JANUARY 2013
Katie Ogawa, right, interned at the Baylor Children’s Clinic in Botswana last summer. page 24
FEATURES 24
Out of Africa
28
Less is More
Expert animal tracker Casey MacFarlane showed students the ropes at High Lonesome. page 12
DEPARTMENTS 4
George Burmeister tackles energy issues. Profiles start on page 32.
Before the Henry Moore sculpture, the reflection pool was the focal point on the Esplanade. (inside back cover)
Trinity Today
16
Faculty/Staff Focus
32
Profiles
40
Advancement
47
Alumnews
58
Class Acts
64
A Christmas Vision
TRINITY January 2013 EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Sharon Jones Schweitzer ’75 EDITOR
Mary Denny ART DIRECTOR
Michelle Wilby Friesenhahn ’77 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Mike Agresta, Rend Altai ’15 R. Douglas Brackenridge, Julie Catalano, Nancy Cook-Monroe, Andrea Davis ’12, Andrew Faught, Susie Gonzalez, Russell Guerrero ’83, James Hill ’76, Mary Lance, Michael Lawrence, PROOFREADER
Beth Hoffman ’67 PHOTOGRAPHER
David Smith PRESIDENT
Dennis A. Ahlburg BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Sharon J. Bell, Ted Beneski, Walter F. Brown Jr., Phyllis Browning, Richard W. Calvert, Miles Cortez, James F. Dicke II, Douglas D. Hawthorne, George C. Hixon, Walter R. Huntley Jr., John R. Hurd, E. Carey Joullian IV, The Rev. Richard R. Kannwischer, Richard M. Kleberg III, Katherine W. Klinger, John C. Korbell, Oliver T. Lee, Gregory Love, Steven P. Mach, Robert S. McClane, Melody Boone Meyer, Forrest E. Miller, Marshall B. Miller Jr., Michael F. Neidorff, Barbara W. Pierce, Thomas R. Semmes, Paul H. Smith, L. Herbert Stumberg Jr., Lissa Walls Vahldiek Trinity is published two times a year by the Office of University Communications and is sent to alumni, faculty, staff, graduate students, parents of undergraduates, and friends of the University.
From the Editor
RECALLING SARAH BURKE
It’s an exciting time at Trinity. A number of new summer research and study options are being developed, all of which reflect the emphasis on global engagement and interdisciplinary teaching that are becoming hallmarks of a Trinity education. Our cover story highlights the summer internships that saw four students travel to Botswana and Swaziland to intern at two Baylor Pediatric AIDS Clinics established by alumnus Dr. Mark Kline. (Dr. Kline was profiled in Trinity several years ago when he established the first pediatric AIDS clinic in Romania.) The inaugural summer in Shanghai program, modeled on the very successful summer in Madrid program, was also a stellar international experience. Closer to home, another initiative took students and professors to the Colorado Rockies for an interdisciplinary course that combined the sciences and the liberal arts. As always, Trinity alumni continue to make us proud. Our profile subjects this issue include an energy entrepreneur, a Broadway fight choreographer, a business woman who designs and manufactures “hot, racy” mobility devices, and a recent alumna who spent two years designing labs for a university in Saudi Arabia. For nostalgia, read the wonderful Doug Brackenridge, who recalls the reflection pond that once was a focal point on the esplanade. Alumni from the early 60s may recognize the student about to be tossed in, a birthday tradition that continues today, albeit in Miller fountain. And, for inspiration— thanks to Thomas Willbanks ’57 for bringing it to our attention—we are reprinting a piece written by late President James W. Laurie on what, at first, seemed a very bleak Christmas. Happy New Year.
Reading about Russian professor Sarah Burke’s retirement in the January 2012 magazine brought back a fond memory. I was an arts writer for the Trinitonian, and when I was assigned to cover the opening of an exhibition of 20th-century Russian paintings at the McNay Art Museum, I was pleased at the prospect of applying what I had learned in Dr. Burke’s course on Russian avant-garde art. At the opening reception, I tracked down the curator and plied him with questions about the works on display by Natalia Goncharova, Lyubov Popova, and other artists I had studied in Dr. Burke’s class. At one point the curator remarked, “It’s nice to find somebody who’s actually interested in talking about the art.The other reporters here are interested in writing only about who’s attending the reception.” Thank you, Dr. Burke—you made my night (and the curator’s, too).
EDITORIAL OFFICES
Trinity University Office of University Communications One Trinity Place San Antonio, TX 78212-7200 E-mail: mdenny@ trinity.edu Phone: 210-999-8406 Fax: 210-999-8449 www.trinity.edu
Mary Denny Send comments, ideas, or suggestions to mdenny@trinity.edu or Mary Denny, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas 78212.
Lisa Morin Carcia ’90 Seattle
ENERGY REACTION The July 2012 issue of Trinity features an article about Scott Tinker ’82. “Alternative Fuels of the Future: Energy Expert Explores Options in New Documentary” is, we can safely assume, a prominent expression of what are the “establishment” views on world energy futures. Tinker’s work is discussed by Andrew Faught, who writes: “In 98 minutes that span eleven countries, Tinker takes viewers on a hunt for solutions. What he discovers is that the planet’s 21st century energy needs will best be served with a balanced energy “portfolio” that includes coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, biofuels, hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal sources. Getting there will be a decades long process but the transition, as the film demonstrates, is already underway.” Thank you Scott and [writer] Andrew for a nicely put way of saying that the process of
TO THE EDITOR
free-market capitalism is sorting things out, no solar energy activism, please. But the real truth is this: our energy Masters want more oil pumped and more nukes built. Solar can be talked about, but only in passing. Capitalism does not like solar energy produced because it can’t really be “capitalized.” And as Walter Cronkite used to say, “that’s the way it is.” That is, unless we raise Hell. Newtrey Ellison ’62 Austin
SHELTER FROM THE STORM We got back from summer in New England just in time for Hurricane Isaac. While sequestered in our house riding out the bands of wind and rain we thoroughly enjoyed the latest edition of your beautiful magazine. We were also pleasantly surprised to see the very kind mentions of both of our professional endeavors in the class notes section. Thank you for updating our friends and classmates!
TRINITY THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY UNIVERSITY | JULY 2012
Crystal Bridges: Alumna’s vision integrates art, architecture, and nature Energy Expert Explores Options Is the Tea Party History?
Lori ’89 and Bill Thompson ’88 St. Thomas, Virgin Islands LIKED CRYSTAL BRIDGES I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the July issue of Trinity, especially the nice article about Crystal Bridges along with pictures. By the way, I happened to run across this article by Dr. James W. Laurie and found it quite interesting in the way he could see “structures in a manner that would transcend sight.” Thomas G. Willbanks ’57 Pastor First Presbyterian Church Mesquite, Texas Editor’s note: The essay mentioned above is reprinted as a Commentary on page 64.
KUDOS Trinity has been one of the greatest influences on our lives, and we love getting the magazine. Keep up the great work! Bobby McKinney ’07 Houston
Your July issue of Trinity was one of the best in every way— Red McCombs San Antonio
POSITIVE FEEDBACK Thank you for highlighting the Broach Foundation for Brain Cancer Research in the most recent edition of the Trinity magazine. We have received a lot of positive feedback from the article and are so glad for the awareness the article brings to this particular cancer. Jamie Broach ’01 Houston
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome and encouraged. Send them to Mary Denny, editor, Trinity University, Office of University Communications, One Trinity Place,
OLD FRIENDS Many thanks for the copy of Trinity that arrived here today. What a great line-up of pieces, many of them about old friends and colleagues. I’ll have dinner with Arun Venugopal in the city next week. I’m especially grateful for the contact info on Moya Ball and Dick Gentry. I had not heard that Moya and Alan moved back to the UK. Harry Haines Professor, Montclair State University Montclair, N.J.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200, or mdenny@trinity.edu
BEYOND TRINITY Just a note to let you know I have gotten a lot of positive feedback on the article, both from classmates and, surprisingly, from people in San Antonio who somehow saw it, although they have no connection with Trinity! Thanks for doing such a great job! Jim Peyton ’65 San Antonio
January 2013 3
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES ELECTS NEW OFFICERS
San Antonio investment manager named chairman
John C. Korbell
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Douglas D. Hawthorne
an Antonio investment manager John C. Korbell has been elected chairman of the Trinity University Board of Trustees. He succeeds Walter R. Huntley Jr. ’71, ’73, an Atlanta businessman. Other officers of the Board of Trustees are Douglas D. Hawthorne ’69, ’72, vice chairman; Sharon J. Bell, honorary vice chair; Thomas R. Semmes, treasurer; and E. Carey Joullian IV ’82, secretary. A Trinity Trustee since 1978, Korbell is a managing director of wealth management and senior investment management consultant at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in San Antonio. He has been frequently recognized as one of the Top 100 Financial Advisers in the wealth management industry by Barron’s magazine. An active leader in the San Antonio community, Korbell currently serves as chairman of the board of Southwest Research Institute. He is past chairman and current member of the board of governors of the Cancer Therapy and Research Center. A Texas A&M graduate, Korbell earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering and a bachelor of arts in English. Hawthorne is president and chief executive officer of Texas Health Resources, where
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Sharon J. Bell
E. Carey Joullian IV
he oversees 24 acute care and short-stay hospitals affiliated with the Texas Health Presbyterian, Texas Health Arlington Memorial, and Texas Health Harris Methodist hospitals. Under his leadership, Texas Health has received numerous awards, and he has been included six times (2003-2009) on Modern Healthcare magazine’s list of 100 Most Powerful People in Health Care. He currently chairs the Health Leadership Council Executive Task Force on the Uninsured and is a member of the American Hospital Association’s President’s Forum. At Trinity, he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969 and a master’s in Health Care Administration in 1972 and was named Distinguished Alumnus in 1995. An attorney and board member since 1988, Bell is managing partner with Rogers and Bell of Tulsa, Okla., and Trustee for the Chapman Trusts. Prior to earning her law degree, she was an urban planner. She was named Woman of the Year in 2011 by The Journal Record of Oklahoma City, received an Outstanding Service Award from the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, and the Humanitarian Award from the Oklahoma Conference for Community & Justice. Bell serves on various boards, including the
Thomas R. Semmes
Children’s Medical Center, the University of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma Investment Forum. Semmes is a San Antonio businessman and president of the Semmes Foundation, a charitable foundation established by his father D. R. Semmes. Semmes and his family have taken an active role in the development of Trinity University for more than 50 years. The Semmes Foundation established the D. R. Semmes Distinguished Professorship of Chemistry and supports a scholarship program for students with interests in the science professions. Semmes has been a board member since 1994. Joullian, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and history from Trinity in 1982, is president and chief operating officer of Mustang Fuel Corp. in Oklahoma City. He also is a principal of The Joullian Foundation and member of the board of directors of the Bank of Oklahoma Financial Corp. He serves as chairman of Mustang Ventures Company, parent of Mustang Gas Products, LLC, and previously worked at The First National Bank in Oklahoma City, as a lending associate. He was elected to the Trinity board in 2005.
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Trinity Tomorrow initiative nearing completion Michael Fischer Vice President, Faculty and Student Affairs
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s vice president for Faculty and Student Affairs, I interact with many of the groups that make up the Trinity community: members of the faculty and staff, current students, board members, and alumni. Over the past two years, as a cochair for the Trinity Tomorrow strategic planning initiative, I have had conversations with these groups that have taken on a new character as we collectively consider the priorities and goals that will guide our decision making for the next decade. I have been continually impressed by the Trinity community’s engagement with this ambitious challenge. All of these groups care about the future of Trinity and have been willing to invest considerable time, energy, and thought in designing a road map to lead us there. Last September, we circulated the first draft of the Trinity Tomorrow strategic plan. The Trinity Tomorrow Committee is currently in the process of revising this draft to reflect the feedback we have received. We are also finalizing a budget and assessment plan. The final plan will be presented for approval to the Board of Trustees in Spring 2013. As we approach the end of this planning process, I want to share some broad themes that have emerged. These themes affirm Trinity’s enduring strengths and values, while indicating new ways to strengthen the University in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape. • A Trinity education educates the whole student and involves the whole campus
working in a coordinated way, from professors to coaches and staff. We want all students to benefit from attending a residential college and experiencing the many co-curricular as well as academic opportunities Trinity provides. • A Trinity education starts in the classroom but doesn’t stay there. It includes work in the community and even the world as well as experiences outside the classroom on campus. Trinity will continue to be a leader in San Antonio and beyond through volunteerism, partnerships with other organizations, and course work that takes students outside the classroom, including new study abroad opportunities. • A Trinity education starts when you are an undergraduate but doesn’t stop there. We want to inspire in our students a lifetime love of learning, and we want to stay engaged with them as alumni. We believe that alumni represent our greatest underutilized resource at a time when their support has never been more critical.
• A Trinity education gives students opportunities to apply, test, and use what they learn. At Trinity, we practice what we teach. We want to create new opportunities for all students to extend their academic learning in new contexts, including internships and research with faculty members. Although the challenges facing all universities today are daunting, we are confident that we can meet them by building on the considerable resources that have made a Trinity education so strong: our location and facilities, our excellent faculty representing a broad range of disciplines, our dedicated staff, our talented alumni, our dedicated board, and our remarkable students. I want to thank the many people who have contributed to our planning. Speaking on behalf of the Trinity Tomorrow committee, we are all indebted to you for your work. Please read the full draft and follow our progress at trinity.edu/trinitytomorrow
New to Administration Lisa Baronio joined the Trinity administration last August as vice president for alumni relations and development. She is responsible for providing leadership and strategic vision to all aspects of the University’s fundraising activities and constituent relationships and will oversee staff in annual, major, and planned giving; corporate and foundation relations; advancement services; and alumni relations. Baronio, formerly vice president for advancement and director of development at the University of North Texas Foundation in Denton, has 19 years experience as a successful higher education fundraiser, many of those years in executive leadership positions. She has a strong
Lisa Baronio
track record of strengthening fundraising programs, as well as comprehensive fundraising, volunteer management, and campaign and major gift experience. She holds a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Iowa in management sciences, a bachelor of arts in computer science from the University of Iowa, and an executive M.B.A. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
January 2013 5
T R I N I T Y T O D AY
MOVING FORWARD
Illustration by Michelle Wilby Friesenhahn ’77
Coalition seeks to strengthen, sustain fraternities, sororities
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“blueprint” for Trinity’s social fraternities and sororities meant to ensure their long-term success on campus is nearing completion. Greek alumni, Trustees, and administrators have worked diligently throughout the summer and fall to develop a plan aimed at strengthening the relationship between fraternities and sororities, the University’s Office of Campus and Community Involvement (CCI), and Trinity alumni. On a parallel front, University staff is working with the two fraternities and two
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sororities that were suspended last spring on reinstatement plans that could reduce their two- to three-year suspensions. CCI director Jamie Thompson says the suspended groups are working from a template that addresses scholarship, leadership, service, and comradery. “In developing their reinstatement plans, we’re asking the groups to look beyond the sanctions imposed and consider their values and how their actions and activities will reflect those values.” The news of the suspensions last spring brought an outcry from Greek alumni, many
of whom viewed the University’s actions as the beginning of the end of Greek life on the Trinity campus. A selected group of alumni and Trustees have been meeting separately to develop a framework of recommendations that could enhance the sustainability of these campus organizations, increase alumni involvement in the clubs, and improve communication between the University, Greek alumni, and Trinity’s fraternities and sororities. Dave Mansen, president of the Trinity University Alumni Association and chair of the National Alumni Board, has been the chair of a Greek alumni task force. He says as a result of this team’s process, alumni will likely be more involved in new member orientation and other activities. “We expect an increased role for our Greek Alumni Advisory Council as it works with both students and the CCI team.” One of the administration’s recommendations that came up during this process includes moving away from calling Trinity’s fraternities and sororities “Greeks.” “Greek has a very negative connotation in the higher education marketplace, and some of our active groups do not have Greek names,” Mansen explains. The draft blueprint includes input from students, CCI staff, Trustees, and top administrators, including Michael Fischer, vice president for Faculty and Student Affairs, who has served as coordinator for all the groups exploring Trinity’s current fraternity and sorority environment. “We’ve strengthened communication with alumni, and this has allowed us to demonstrate the University’s commitment to the long term viability of Trinity’s fraternities and sororities,” Fischer says. A final draft, tentatively titled “Blueprint for Trinity University’s Fraternities and Sororities,” is expected to be approved by the Board of Trustees in early spring. Sharon Jones Schweitzer ’75
T R I N I T Y T O D AY
UNCOVERING JEWISH HISTORY
Professor, student unearth ancient tiles in Israel
Photo by Jim Haberman
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fter many false starts, pressure from Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel, and long days under a burning sun, Trinity religion professor Chad Spigel, senior Joshua Pedrick ‘13, and other archaeologists uncovered a magnificent mosaic tile in the synagogue within Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud and dating to the Late Roman/Byzantine period (4th to 6th centuries). The excavated tile depicts the biblical story of Samson burning grain in fields and olive orchards with torches tied between the tails of foxes (Judges 15:5). “Although we know that mosaic floors existed in ancient synagogues, it is always exciting when you are there when one is excavated,” says Spigel. “The fact that there was also an inscription and a clearly identifiable biblical scene made the find even more meaningful.“ Coupled with another Samson mosaic discovery in a nearby synagogue, the tiles suggest that stories about Samson might have been a popular motif in ancient Jewish communities of the region. As such, they hint toward answers about Jewish interpretations and artistic culture. “While we expected to find a floor for the synagogue building, we had no idea that we were going to find such a beautiful mosaic floor,” says Spigel. “So in many ways our goals for the season were both reached and exceeded.” Even as the dig exceeded their goals, the excavation was not without challenges. One dealt with some sites yielding nothing, a common occurrence on digs. Another, more serious hurdle came from the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel who believed the archaeologists might disturb ancient Jewish graves. They protested, and, in extreme cases such as at Huqoq, vandalized the sites to discourage further excavation. Although Spigel convinced them that the team was not excavating graves, there remained constant concern that the objectors might attempt to either shut down the excavations or vandalize the finds. For Pedrick, a religion major from Houston,
Trinity University religion professor Chad Spigel, left, works with Trinity student Joshua Pedrick of Houston to unearth ancient artifacts.
neither the heat, the long tedious hours, nor the pressure from the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community dampened his enthusiasm or the overall experience. “Working in the village with Dr. Spigel was more fun than a barrel of monkeys coated in Silly Putty,” he says. “Not many people get to experience the exciting discovery of such a significant archaeological find, let alone as an
undergraduate. It was incredible to watch the staff discuss the finds and instruct us in how to excavate. Being taught by highly trained and experienced archaeologists was the best imaginable way to learn field research.” Excavations at the site—and the opportunity for Trinity undergraduates to participate—will continue in summer 2013. Andrea Davis ’12
July 2012 7
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Hear us R
Fall Sports round up CROSS COUNTRY
WOMEN’S SOCCER
The Tiger men’s and women’s teams competed in the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships at Terre Haute, Ind. Trinity’s women finished in 12th place, the second-best performance in school history. Trinity’s men, competing as a team at nationals for the first time, recorded a 32nd-place finish. In his first season as the Tiger head cross-country coach, Derick Lawrence was elected the South/Southeast Regional Coach of the Year. He guided the Tiger women to the South/Southeast Regional title, and the men to a runner-up finish in Atlanta. The Tiger teams won the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships for the first time in Trinity annals. Trinity’s women earned a perfect score of 15, the first SCAC team to accomplish that feat, and nine women and eight men runners turned in times for All-SCAC honors. Junior Vanessa Moreno won the conference women’s race, and was named SCAC Women’s Cross Country Runner of the Year. Taylor Piske was selected as SCAC Men’s Freshman of the Year. Coach Lawrence was named the SCAC Men’s and Women’s Coach of the Year.
Trinity (15-1-3 for the season) hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, beating Puget Sound in the opener but losing to Hardin-Simmons in the second round. It was the Tigers’ 18th trip to the NCAA event. The Tigers won their 17th SCAC conference title. Emily Jorgens became Trinity’s fourth consecutive player to win the SCAC Offensive Player of the Year Award. Katie Garrett was just the third goalkeeper in SCAC history to be named the Defensive Player of the Year. A total of 11 Tiger players were named to the All-SCAC Team. Trinity is led by head coach Lance Key.
MEN’S SOCCER Trinity captured its 15th SCAC Championship in front of the Tiger fans, completing the regular season with an 18-0-3 record. Tom Carwile was named SCAC Newcomer of the Year, the third consecutive Trinity player to earn the honor. Six Trinity players were selected for the All-SCAC Team. The team advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the 16th time in their history, losing to Montclair State in the third round. Trinity’s head coach is Paul McGinlay.
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VOLLEYBALL The Tigers, led by head coach Julie Jenkins, earned an at-large bid to the NCAA playoffs, after finishing as runners-up at the SCAC Tournament in Colorado. Playing in their 19th NCAA postseason tournament, Trinity fell to Juniata in the opening round. Senior Meredith Erwin and sophomore Layne Hubbard were named American Volleyball Coaches Association Honorable Mention All-Americans. Junior Maryn Swierc joined her two teammates on the All-South Region Team. Erwin was elected as SCAC Backrow Player of the Year, while Hubbard and Swierc were also selected for the All-SCAC Team. Coach Jenkins was named SCAC Coach of the Year for the 10th time.
FOOTBALL Trinity completed the campaign with a 7-3 overall record, and a 16th SCAC Championship. The Tigers produced 14 All-SCAC players, led by three top award winners. Senior Mason Lytal was named Offensive Player of the Year, junior Thom-
For the 21st straight year, the U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” guide awarded Trinity University a No.1 ranking in the category of institutions that offer a full range of undergraduate programs as well as select master’s programs in the Western part of the United States. Trinity also received a No. 1 ranking in the publication’s best value category, “Great Schools, Great Prices.” In addition, U.S. News & World Report ranked the University’s engineering science program No. 32 among the nation’s best schools where the highest degree offered is a bachelor’s or master’s. In the 2013 Fiske Guide to Colleges, Trinity was recognized as a Best Buy, one of only 41 schools to receive that designation. Trinity was included in the 2013 edition of The Best 377 Colleges, an annual guide published by The Princeton Review, which highlights only 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has included Trinity University on its list of the country’s best values in private colleges, ranking it at No. 29. Kiplinger’s annual list identifies 100 private universities and 100 liberal arts colleges that combine outstanding education with economic value.
as Puskarich earned Defensive Player of the Year honors, and sophomore Matthew Kennemer was voted Special Teams Player of the Year. Steve Mohr was selected as SCAC Coach of the Year for the 12th time, tying him for the most accolades in conference history. Coach Mohr stands in the top-10 among active coaches in career wins (181), and the top-25 in winning percentage.
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s Roar A pre-election article in the Christian Science Monitor titled “23 Books I Wish Obama and Romney Would Read,” included professor David Lesch’s recent Fall of the House of Assad. The Trinity athletics program was ranked seventh in the December 6, 2012 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup release. The Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup is administered by the National Association of College Directors of Athletics. The Tigers were ranked 7th in the prestigious Learfield Director’s Cup following their successful fall season. The standings are based on how the more than 400 NCAA Division III schools finish nationally in the postseason. Teams that scored points in the rankings included men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, and volleyball. Trinity was ranked 34th at the end of last season. This year’s seventh-place ranking is the best for Trinity since the 2007-08 season, which saw the Tigers finish the school year in 13th place overall.
Sophomore Brings Home the Gold Sophomore tennis player Aaron Skinner from Columbia, Mo., captured the 10th Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Small College Championship in Mobile, Alabama, in a match that included two 7-6 nerve-racking tiebreakers. Having endured several surgeries and numerous injuries, he won a “play-in match” just to get into the main draw of the prestigious event, then bested the top seed of the tournament to become a national champion. Skinner’s accomplishment is the second ITA men’s singles crown for Trinity, with the first coming from Jamie Broach in 1997. Since that time, the Tiger men have won three doubles championships, including a 2010 title by Bobby Cocanougher and Cory Kowal. Trinity’s women have brought home two national singles championships, and three in doubles.
Aaron Skinner
“I am definitely proud I can put that up on the wall for Trinity,” the modest Skinner says. “It is obviously a unique feeling to win a national title for Trinity. I try to take everything point by point. It lets me keep my head in the match, instead of getting overwhelmed.” James Hill ’76
Junior Katie Ogawa, left, displays a T-shirt designed for residents of Hope Hall, a new residential community she organized. H.O.P.E. (Homelessness Outreach Pursuing Education) residents will serve together weekly with community partners that serve individuals experiencing homelessness.
January 2013 9
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McNair Scholar Program is path to success for first generation student
Senior Samantha Gonzalez studied public health programs during her semester in Brazil. Gonzalez credits the support and mentoring she received from Upward Bound and the McNair Scholars programs with helping her achieve her college degree.
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tudying in Salvador, Brazil, last spring was a long way from San Antonio’s Lee High School, but Trinity senior Samantha Gonzalez, the first in her family to attend college, felt right at home. A product of Trinity’s Upward Bound program in high school and a McNair Scholar, Gonzalez is a sociology major who spent the semester abroad learning about a public health program in Brazil. She worked alongside students from such institutions as Johns Hopkins, Tulane, Brandeis, and Smith College, all of whom competed for the intensive program and wrapped up the international experience by writing a 40-page research paper. Gonzalez’s first exposure to public health issues took place during a McNair-sponsored summer research program in the health promotion and disease prevention department at
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the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. There, she learned that health is more than a medical profile; it is also influenced by education, language, and other social factors. “I fell in love with this type of work and hope to further my education in this field,” she says. After she graduates in May, Gonzalez plans to pursue a master’s in public health, which will represent a “personal best” for her and a joyous moment for her family. “They are very proud of me and not only because I’m the first to graduate from college, but because I will be graduating from such a prestigious institution as Trinity. They always tell my younger cousins and my nieces to follow my lead because if I could do it, then they can, too!” Gonzalez acknowledges the help she got along the way. Upward Bound staffers
provided guidance on her college applications and admissions essays, and the program required Saturday classes, which instilled a work ethic that prepared her for Trinity’s rigorous courses. She even got a “sneak peak” at a typical Trinity class by taking a writing workshop the summer before her first year. McNair staffers have continued to nurture Gonzalez and her McNair cohort by offering academic and emotional support. Once, Teresa Morrison, the program’s assistant director, personally drove Gonzalez and two other Scholars to Fort Worth to visit graduate schools when scheduling conflicts arose. When asked to advise other first-generation students, Gonzalez says the path to college isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible, either. She urges talented high school students to take the initiative to find resources to help with the process. She said Upward Bound director Simone Carnegie-Diaz was vital in making sure she didn’t miss any of Trinity’s application deadlines. Without the McNair program, Gonzalez says she “would have been so lost at Trinity. I wouldn’t have felt as assertive with what I wanted to do with my life, and I wouldn’t have met the amazing life-long friends or mentors. I am so thankful for both of the programs because they have helped mold me into the woman I am today.” In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education renewed funding for both the Upward Bound program and a $220,000 five-year grant for the McNair Scholars program, which prepares first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students for substantive research in order to pursue a doctorate. Since its inception at Trinity in 2007, the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program has assisted and mentored 69 Scholars. Upward Bound is now in its 34th year at Trinity, while the McNair program is entering its sixth year. Susie P. Gonzalez
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SUMMER IN SHANGHAI
Inaugural program Focuses on Chinese Policies, Politics
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ast May, eleven Trinity students crossed the Pacific to learn about contemporary politics and policy in a country where nearly a fifth of humanity or 1.3 billion people live. They found Shanghai—population 25 million—alive with international flavor and bristling with commerce and construction, and had what professor Dante Suarez, associate chair of Trinity’s department of business administration, described as “hands down, the best educational experience that I have ever been part of in any capacity.” The students were the inaugural cohort for Trinity’s new Shanghai Summer Program. Co-developed by Stephen Field, director of Trinity’s Chinese Program and co-chair of the East Asia Studies at Trinity (EAST) and Suarez, the six-week long program is unique in that American and Chinese students, many at graduate level, study together in the same classroom, learning about each other as individuals and about their respective countries. “I know of no other like it,” says an enthusiastic Suarez. The study abroad program combined visits to cultural and historic sites and classes held at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one of the top three universities in China and often compared to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. The two three-hour, for-credit courses included “Governance and Public Policy in Contemporary China” taught by SJTU professor Bo Peng, a world-renowned scholar in Chinese policies and politics, and “Comparative Views of Modern China” taught by Suarez. Most of the students took advantage of the optional opportunity to take twice-weekly Mandarin Chinese language classes organized by Trinity’s modern languages and literatures professor Jie Zhang, who arranged for the classes to be adapted to each student’s pre-trip language skill. Field and Zhang both made visits during the program and accompanied the groups on
several excursions. Weekends included field trips to Beijing, Hangzhou, and San Antonio’s newest sister city, Wuxi, among others, and students had the opportunity to meet with local officials and dignitaries as well as tour cultural sites. On the last day of class, students were asked which country—China or the United States of America—has the best system of governance. As students self-divided into teams to debate the question, Suarez was astounded that each team was one-half Chinese, one-half American. “It was astonishing to see Chinese students arguing for American governance and American students arguing for Chinese. “ One of the participants, Oklahoma City sophomore Lila Ritger, an international
business and Chinese languages double major, says the experience “pushed me to know what I want to do in life and that is to do business in some way with China. But more important, the program taught us the need to learn more about the world around us, plus the courses gave us a more balanced view of China and its people, its policies and politics.” Speaking for the group, Ritger adds, “We all had our lives changed by the experience in Shanghai Jiao Tong, which is what study abroad really is all about.” Mary Lance For more information about the Summer 2013 Shanghai Program, please contact professor Dante Suarez: esuarez@trinity.edu.
Professor Dante Suarez, far left, and the first cohort of students to participate in the Summer in Shanghai program visited cultural and historic sites in China during their stay.
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LEARNING AT HIGH LONESOME
Colorado ranch ideal setting for interdisciplinary study For two action-packed weeks last July, 10 Trinity University students and five faculty camped on a ranch at the western slope of the Rocky Mountains near Grand Junction, Colo., where they studied nature from multiple perspectives. Drawing stratigraphy deepened understanding of geological landscapes.
Sophomore Katelyn Underbrink hikes the Gobbling area on the ranch, while studying geologic formations and animal habitats.
he camp was at the high end of a long valley called the Book Cliff geological formation on the High Lonesome ranch owned by Paul Vahldiek and Trinity Trustee Lissa Walls Vahldiek ’80. The class, an environmental studies course titled “Landscape in Space and Time,” was taught by faculty members from different disciplines: Richard Reed, sociology and anthropology; Elizabeth Ward, art and art history; Kathleen Surpless, geosciences; Kelly Lyons, biology; and Greg Hazelton, an environmental fellow from the Associated Colleges of the South, who teaches at Trinity. “The goal of the course was to give students a well-rounded introduction to environmental studies,” says Reed, who helped organize the class. The course combined the usual elements found in an environmental science class, such as biology, chemistry, and geosciences, but also added issues found in the social sciences such as water policy and environmental justice. Plus, students and faculty used art and
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writing to examine their relationship to the land. “When an interdisciplinary course works, students come to a richer understanding about how the world works. This helps to enhance the development of their personal perspectives and has the potential to make them better thinkers overall,” explains Surpless. “In this course, students who were more oriented toward the sciences, political science, or anthropology gained a better understanding of the power of personal expression, and the more creative-driven students gained an appreciation for the power of understanding natural systems and what this can bring to the creative process.” Classes began early in the mornings and included field trips around the ranch and visits to particular geological formations, plant formations, and ecosystems. Lessons featured research on animal habitats along river systems as well as information on the cultural history and history of land use of the area.
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Afternoons were reserved for reflection, and participants spent the time reading, writing, and creating artwork. Dinner preparation was a shared activity followed by discussions on environmental literature. Katie Banick, a senior from Houston, was drawn to the class for the stunning location and the line-up of professors. Among her most memorable occurrences: exploring the ranch with professor Lyons and encountering a large herd of elk, and birding several times with professor Ward. Banick also enjoyed the unique interdisciplinary nature of the course. “The various perspectives became very cohesive to me as the weeks progressed,” she says. A highlight of the course was time spent with an animal tracker from the High Lonesome ranch. “He wanted to teach us about his work and made us very aware that he was working with living creatures,” says Carina Hiscock, a sophomore from Abilene. “He told us to minimize our footprints and try not to disturb the area. There was an element of danger as we were tracking the path a mountain lion had made only hours before.” The group followed the tracker all the way to the site of a recent kill by the lion.
At the end of the two-week stay, faculty members say they had learned as much from the experience as the students. “We also made artwork and developed written pieces,” says Surpless. “I think that this was a critical part of the course that helped to break down barriers between teachers and students as well as across disciplines. I personally wrote some really terrible poetry, but I had a terrific time doing it!” Russell Guerrero ’83
Professor of Anthropology Richard Reed and student Carina Hiscock explore a long-deserted log cabin from the turn of the 20th Century. Students learning proper use of a compass; Tayler Miller, Nathan Tweedy, Nicola Hill, Katelyn Underbrink, Katherine Banick, Hudson Batista (left to right).
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NEW ERA, NEW FOCUS
Trinity launches leadership program for school principals palls
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any remember their school principals as nice people who patted heads as the children walked in each morning, or who gave them a talkingto if they popped gum in class. Nowadays, gum isn’t the problem and principals need a different kind of preparation. “The job of principal is just bigger than it used to be,” says Shari Albright, Trinity’s nationally recognized Norine R. Murchison Professor of Practice and chairman of the education department. “There are so many competing demands on schools these days with the accountability system, the economic downturn, and with the greater needs that students and their families bring to our school settings. Technology and social media are changing the nature of learning, so principals sit in the very important position of guiding the design of the teaching and learning to fit the evolving context and culture in which schools will live.” To equip principals as schools and learning evolve, Albright will use a $2.5 million grant from The Ewing Halsell Foundation (see page 15), administered over five years, to provide scholarships for Trinity’s new principal preparation program, which focuses on transformational school leadership for this changing world. “The Ewing Halsell Foundation understands that the pipeline of leadership is absolutely essential in order to turn struggling schools around and to move good schools to great,” Albright says. “The grant will allow Trinity to launch our new program and provide the scholarship support needed to attract top notch educators from across the region into school leadership.” Building on the community outreach Murchison Professor and department chair John Moore began in the 1970s, which Paul Kelleher continued during his tenure in those positions, Albright and her team are gearing the program to San Antonio. “I think people
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Shari Albright
(in San Antonio) look to Trinity frequently as a home of intellectual development and opportunities and as an institution that cares deeply about education and being part of solutions for the city,” she says. The timing couldn’t be better: Mayor Julían Castro has set a goal of achieving the greatest educational turnaround in the nation as part of SA2020, a process of citywide input designed to improve San Antonio’s quality of life and appeal to employers. Albright serves on the Mayor’s Brainpower Commission, an outgrowth of SA2020 that is developing an aggressive plan. The City’s Education Policy Adviser, Jeanne
Russell, shares Albright’s beliefs about the critical role of principals. “There is a clear need to invest in programs that will give principals new tools, new ways to think, and new ways to approach education as we seek to make our city among the most educated in not just our country, but the world. “A new breed of principals can take the lead in setting a more aspirational tone for San Antonio students, one that is focused on developing multi-faceted thinkers for a global economy,” Russell adds. Richard Middleton, retired superintendent of Northeast ISD, agrees the new program will make a difference where it ultimately
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matters most--in the classroom. He explains, “The principals can harness the energy of excellent teachers; they can emphasize what they need to change, they can guide their practice. For example, how the principal sees the school’s belief system about children is very important to how parents and teachers believe their kids can succeed.” Reiterating Albright’s claim that the role of principal requires a different skill set in the 21st century, Middleton – who has worked in education for 39 years – says in “the old days,” everything “perked along” without much bother. Today, the principal’s expertise must cover not just classroom instruction but also analysis of student achievement and performance measures, management or building of multi-million dollar facilities, and oversight of renovation and fundraising, especially in low-income communities that need after-school opportunities.
“There are so many things on a principal’s plate,” he concludes. “We need them (principals) to look at how they are as leaders, how they work with stakeholders, and how they move the whole program forward.” Improving education in the seventh largest city in the country seems an out-sized ambition for a department of eight full-time faculty at one of San Antonio’s smallest institutions of higher learning. But Albright has no doubts about its success, nor do other community players. “Trinity is a small program, but our local educational institutions are becoming more and more collaborative,” Russell says, “and this is an opportunity for Trinity to pilot an approach that may have applications to other schools as well. I hope that Trinity will emerge as a thought leader as all of our institutions seek to give principals the best possible opportunity to succeed.” Nancy Cook-Monroe
KRTU JAZZ CONCERT ENDS 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION Ron Nirenberg, associate general manager of KRTU, left, former San Antonio mayor Lila Cockrill, and professor Bill Christ, were on hand for the final concert in the year-long celebration of KRTU’s tenth anniversary.
Halse Halsell F oun nd Foundation S Supports New w Principal Preparation Program
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he Ewing Halsell Foundation of San Antonio awarded a generous $2.5 million leadership grant to a visionary Trinity program to strengthen school principals in K-12 San Antonio public and charter schools. The grant will be administered over a five-year period in the form of forgivable loans to outstanding teacher leaders who are selected by their districts to become innovative and transformational school leaders. In exchange for the scholarship, candidates will commit to serve in a school leadership capacity in a school of need in the Greater San Antonio area for four years. This cadre of high-performing, entrepreneurial, transformative, Master’sprepared leaders will be able to dramatically improve the levels of student achievement and aspiration in the San Antonio region. The Ewing Halsell Foundation has strategically partnered with Trinity University for nearly 50 years, funding important programs including a distinguished professorship, a scholarship endowment, The Trinity University Press, and other initiatives. Trinity’s education department is recognized as one of the top seven educator preparation programs nationally and has a long and sustained commitment to promoting educational excellence within the greater San Antonio community. The department is responsible for three nationally certified master’s level educator preparation programs. Michael Lawrence
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Global Health Symposium Lays Groundwork for Broadening International Studies Major “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
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n an effort to address the global dimensions of that issue, Trinity held a global health symposium on September 14 and 15, 2012. Professors Nanette Le Coat (modern languages and literatures) and Robert Blystone (biology) organized and moderated the event, which was intended to illustrate ways of being involved in global health that don’t necessarily mean becoming a physician, such as serving as a public policy adviser or working in non-governmental organizations. They also wanted to gauge student interest in the subject and showcase the various ways Trinity alumni were making an impact on global health. The symposium drew more than 50 students, who heard presentations from 12 guest speakers, including four alumni, three Trinity faculty, and five Trinity students who have become involved in global health, plus other distinguished professionals in the field. Alumni participants included Alyson Rose-Wood ’03, an international public health specialist in the U.S. department of health and human services; Dr. Mark Kline ’79, physician-in-chief of Texas Children’s Hospital; Chris Helfrich ’03, “Nothing But Nets” director; and Jin In ’95, founder of 4Girls Glocal Leadership. In her presentation, Rose-Wood detailed the many problems that arose following the earthquake in Haiti, such as deciding which part of the Haitian population would receive a cholera vaccine and if all the vaccines should be dedicated to Haiti or be evenly distributed among the different countries that
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were reporting cholera outbreaks. Dr. Kline discussed his “addicting experience” with lowering the pediatric HIV/ AIDS death rate by providing life-saving care and treatment through his clinics and program, Baylor College of Medicine International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI). Based on the success of his initial program in Constanta, Romania, which lowered the death rate from 13 percent in 1998-2001 to 1 percent in 2004-2008, he opened similar pediatric HIV/AIDS clinics in Botswana and other African countries. (See feature pages 24-27). Also working in Africa, Helfrich is helping stop the spread of malaria, a treatable and preventable disease, by selling and distributing $10 nets to malaria-ridden communities in Africa, through his “Nothing but Nets” initiative. He reported that malaria deaths dropped 40 percent and insisted “we can be the generation to end this disease.” In’s presentation, “Inspiring Future Women
Leaders to Accelerate Global Health,” noted that one reason girls are so valuable is that, for every $1 given to them, they give back 80-90 percent to their community. She also discussed the eight millennium goals: to reduce child mortality rates; reduce poverty and hunger; improve environmental sustainability and maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality; and develop a global partnership. With a successful symposium behind them and inspired by the high degree of student interest, Blystone says the next step is to form an advisory board to determine the feasibility of creating a concentration in global health within the international studies major. The next hurdle will be to fund the project which will require not only money but time and staff. Rend Altai ’15
Dr. Mark Kline ’79, Jin In ’95, Alyson Rose-Wood ’03, and Chris Helfrich ’03, left to right, shared their unique insights and observations during the Global Health symposium last fall. All are involved with significant global health care initiatives.
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HIGH TECH GET HIGHER
Program gives students competitive edge SAP® University Alliances (SAP) which Trinity joined last fall, is a global endeavor that provides faculty members with tools and resources necessary to teach students how technology can enable integrated business processes and strategic thinking and gives students skills that add immediate value in the marketplace. Information systems professor Ruben Mancha, SAP faculty coordinator, incorporated SAP technologies into two business courses this fall. Students in the program gain hands-on experience with state-of-the-art software and grow skills relevant to their careers and chosen fields, say officials with the global initiative that has more than 1,000 member
campuses in 60+ countries. SAP resources feature an advanced, interactive Web portal designed for the academic population worldwide that connects faculty, students, SAP customers and partners, and SAP internal experts. Trinity gains access to SAP Business Suite software via hosting from an SAP-licensed, non-profit University Competence Center, which obviates investment in a costly data center infrastructure in order to participate. Curriculum support comes from SAP’s growing collection of ready-to-use, faculty-
developed course materials that can be shared among member campuses. Trinity professors also may take advantage of free SAP-sponsored curriculum workshops offered during semester breaks and annual academic conferences for members. The world’s leading provider of business software, SAP offers enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI) and related applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. Global demand for certified SAP professionals increases every year, and SAP is dedicated to helping universities enable students to hit the ground running at companies using SAP software.
EARLY DETECTION
Microwave technology advances fight against breast cancer
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he outlook is promising for women who dread mammograms and doctors who are always looking for better ways to detect breast cancer. An international team of researchers from Spain, Canada, and Trinity is developing a bra prototype equipped with 16 small antennas that would transmit microwaves and receive electromagnetic pulses that read the density of a woman’s breast tissue, establishing a baseline image and helping to detect a malignancy. Joshua Schwartz, assistant professor of engineering science at Trinity, says the method would not completely rule out mammograms but could replace a self-exam and serve as an early-warning system. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal—Schwartz’s alma mater— called him in to shape electromagnetic pulses for what is called a “randome,” a phantom breast containing a mass
similar to a tumor. Schwartz was able to improve the image to provide a pinpoint picture of the tissue rather than a broad slice lacking detail. If, over time, successive images showed a larger and larger tissue mass in a patient, a medical professional would be alerted. “With this method, there’s no compression, and the microwaves are harmless,” Schwartz explains, adding that the radiation in the microwave is much less than in a cell phone. Details are spelled out in a journal paper titled “Experimental Demonstration of Pulse Shaping for Time-Domain Microwave Breast Imaging” that was published in October in Progress in Electromagnetics Research. The next step is clinical trials of the “randome” and a search for equipment that is compact, convenient, and affordable, Schwartz said. Susie P. Gonzalez
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UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
8 . Keck Foundation grant elevates nanotechnology study
edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street; intro by Robert Hass In The Ecopoetry Anthology, editors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street present hundreds of poems —80 historical from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and more than 300 contemporary— that add to our reality about the natural world, its beauties and its degradations. This groundbreaking collection has the capacity to transform people’s lives aesthetically and politically. Poetry’s eloquent and ineffable power can work to enhance our understanding of the world beyond the human and lead us to act with more respect, humility, and stewardship toward the environment.
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rinity science professors and students are eagerly awaiting the arrival of three new microscopes that will incorporate nanotechnology across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curricula. Obtained through a grant titled “Seeing at the Nanoscale: Exploring the Relationship Between Function and Structure,� the $280,000 project is funded by a $250,000 gift from the W. M. Keck Foundation and a $30,000 contribution from the University. Physics and astronomy professor Jennifer Steele, principal investigator on the project, says the grant includes a new scanning electron microscope, which takes pictures using electrons instead of light, plus an upgrade to an existing atomic force microscope(AFM), and the addition of a second AFM. Professors and students from Trinity’s departments of physics and astronomy, chemistry, biology, and geosciences will conduct initial research. In time, scientists from other San Antonio institutions of higher learning may be able to send research questions and log on to a computer network with research data for course work or web conferences. Images from the scanning electron microscope will be streamed to a television monitor in the lobby of the new Center for the Sciences and Innovation (CSI) on the Trinity campus, reinforcing the concept of “opening up science� to the entire campus community and promoting interactions that spark interdepartmental collaborations. According to Steele, the scanning electron microscope will provide images with significantly higher resolutions than those from other available microscopes, adding that such close-up images will foster elemental analysis that relates structure to the function of material and help uncover a material’s composition or properties. For
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The Ecopoetry Anthology
Jennifer Steele example, geoscience students will be able to determine the elements present in rocks, which can better explain how rocks were formed, and thus support existing theories or inspire new ones. In anticipation of the microscopes’ arrival, Steele is developing a new course on nanotechnology fabrication methods. “Students will have to reproduce someone else’s work—read a paper, figure out what the (first) scientists did, go through as many of the details of the paper as possible—and publish it with images and graphics. It will be a more realistic picture of what it’s like to do grad school research,� she says. The equipment, which must be built specifically for Trinity, is expected to arrive this spring. It will be housed initially in the geosciences department in the Marrs McLean Science Center and moved to the CSI when construction is completed in 2014.
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New Releases from Trinity University Press 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared by Kim Stafford Bret and Kim, the oldest sons of the celebrated poet and pacifist William Stafford, were inseparable. Kim was the itinerant wanderer; Bret the obedient servant. As childhood ebbed, though, this reticence took its toll, and Bret took his life, leaving the family — and Kim — to endure the loss. Stafford shares his brother’s life and what it teaches about the nature of depression, the tender ancestry of violence, the quest for harmonious relations, and, finally, the trick of joy.
www.tupress.trinity.edu
The Ranch That Was Us by Becky Crouch Patterson; foreword by Willie Nelson Braiding strands of earthen insight with uproarious storytelling, legendary Texas Hill Country author Becky Patterson recreates the history of the Stieler Hill Ranch in twenty-four anecdotal chapters interspersed with original artwork. The result is a mixture of memoir and montage, treasure chest and tableau vivant of a world that’s beautiful, brash, and wonderfully heartbreaking. Patterson, the daughter of Texas folk hero and self-proclaimed mayor of Luckenbach, Hondo Crouch, has big shoes to fill, and she does so successfully in this colorful collection of Hill Country and Texas ranch vignettes.
Literary Washington, D.C. edited by Patrick Allen; foreword by Alan Cheuse The public face of Washington—the gridiron of L’Enfant’s avenues, the buttoneddown demeanor of Sloan Wilson’s archetypal Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the monumental buildings of the Triangle--rarely gives up the secrets of this city’s rich life. But beneath the surface there are countless stories to be told. From the early swamp days to the Civil War, the Gilded Age to the New Deal and McCarthy eras, as the center of world power to its underlying multicultural social fabric, Washington is a writer’s town. Literary Washington, D.C. collects the rich writings about our nation’s capital spanning several hundred years.
The Power of Trees by Gretchen C. Daily and Charles J. Katz Jr. Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically charged scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Charles Katz’s twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks are formed, what tree rings tell us about human societies, and how trees define the future of humanity.
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Two Faculty Named to Endowed Professorships
Faculty | Staff Focus Administration Steven Bachrach, the D. R. Semmes
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, was named to a three-year appointment as assistant vice president for special projects in the office of Faculty and Student Affairs. Art and Art History
David W. Lesch
David W. Lesch, professor of Middle East history, has been named the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of History effective in 2015. He will assume the post when current holder John McCusker, retires. Sussan Siavoshi, professor and chair of the political science department, has become the Una Chapman Cox Professor of International Relations. She fills the position previously held by Mary Ann Tetrault, who retired last May. Lesch is the author or editor of 12 books focusing on the Middle East, most recently Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (Yale University Press, 2012). Anew edited volume, The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East came out in November. Lesch consistently advises officials in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the United Nations on diplomatic issues, and worked directly with former U.S. presidents engaged in Middle East negotiations. His articles on Middle East affairs have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other print media. He has been quoted in more than 400 newspapers worldwide, featured in magazine articles in 20 countries, and made guest appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, AlJazeera, NPR, and the BBC. Currently, he is a producer, screenwriter, and consultant on a feature film on the Middle East. Lesch received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1991 and has been at Trinity since 1992. At Trinity, he has served on numerous committees, led Trinity’s Model Arab League program for nine years, and was chair or co-chair of the history department
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Sussan Siavoshi
from 2008 to 2012. He received the Trinity University award for outstanding research in 2008. Although he opted for an academic career, Lesch was also the No. 1 draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1980. The Ewing Halsell Foundation established the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professorship in History in 1989. A native of Iran, Siavoshi earned her undergraduate degree in political science from Pahlavi University in Iran and both her master’s and Ph.D. in political science at Ohio State University, where she began her teaching career. Since coming to Trinity in 1986, Siavoshi has published numerous scholarly articles, chapters, and book reviews, and presented papers at 27 conferences around the world. Her book, Liberal Nationalism in Iran: the Failure of a Movement, was published in 1990 and translated into a Persian edition in 2001. She is a faculty mentor and has served on numerous University committees, including the Promotion and Tenure committee, the Standing Committee for Assessing the Common Curriculum, and an ad hoc committee on diversity. A knowledgeable and sought-after speaker, Siavoshi has given generously of her time addressing groups throughout the broader community and shared her expertise and perspective during campus events such as Difficult Dialogues, Women’s History Month, and A Trinity Summer. Una Chapman Cox, who had a keen interest in enhancing the Foreign Service, established the Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professorship in International Relations in 1981.
Liz Ward had a solo show at the Moody Gallery in Houston. Her work was also shown in group shows at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and the Grand Gallery at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, La.
Athletics James Hill ’76, “The Voice of the Tigers,” received
the 2012 Rhea Fern Malsbury Award, the highest award given to a Trinity employee. Business Administration Deli Yang addressed patent and trademark
examiners at the Summer Intellectual Property (IP) School organized by the United Nations World IP Organization (WIPO) last summer. Campus and Community Involvement Jamie Thompson ’05 was promoted to director of Campus & Community Involvement.
Chemistry Michelle Bushey was elected treasurer of the
Division of Analytical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. The term of office will run from January 2013 to December 2015.
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Communications Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Henderson co-edited the interdisciplinary anthology, Participatory Cultures Handbook, published by Routledge. Sammye Johnson served as a judge for the 2012 National Magazine Awards, considered the Pulitzer Prizes of the magazine industry. Johnson also published “Research: The Fulbright Experience,” and “The Finnish Line: A Few of My Favorite Things” in the professional journal Magazine Matter.
Patrick Keating’s essays, “Shooting for
Selznick” and “Emotional Curves and Linear Narratives,” were published in The Classical Hollywood Reader, a new anthology of essays about studio-era Hollywood.
Communication professor Rob Huesca spent the summer and fall semester in Benin, West Africa, on administrative leave. He studied French and also worked as a volunteer at an arts organization, where he taught a youth video course. Before leaving, Huesca partnered with local youth arts and cultural nonprofit SaySi to create a cultural exchange. His African students produced videos on local food and culture and may be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/ CIAMOBenin.
Education Angela Breidenstein co-authored Leading
for Powerful Learning: A Guide for Instructional Leaders, published by Teachers College Press at Columbia University.
Facilities Services Jose Vasquez and Leo Vasquez received the
Helen Heare McKinley Award in December. Geosciences
English Kathleen Surpless received the Biggs Award for Victoria Aarons published “The Certainties of
History and the Uncertainties of Representation in Post-Holocaust Writing,” in the most recent issue of Studies in American Jewish Literature. Andrew Porter’s novel, In Between Days, has been published by Knopf Publishers. David Rando’s essay, “The Perverse in Historical Perception: Anne Frank and Neutral Milk Hotel in the Aeroplane over the Sea,” was published in Resounding Pasts: Essays on Literature, Popular Music, and Cultural Memory. His book, Modernist Fiction and News: Representing Experience in the Early Twentieth Century, was reviewed in The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies.
Excellence in Earth Science Teaching from the Geological Society of America in November. Previously, Surpless had been awarded more than $450,000 in grants from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund and from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program to support her work. Health Care Administration Amer Kaissi published “Primary Care Physician
Shortage, Health Care Reform and Convenient Care: Challenge Meets Opportunity?”” in the Southern Medical Journal.
History David Lesch’s book, Syria: The Fall of the House
of Assad, was published by Yale University Press. Library Brenda Sheffield received the Helen Heare McKinley Employee Excellence Award for June 2012.
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T R I N I T Y T O D AY
POETRY PAYS OFF
Browne’s Poems Earn NEA Fellowship Poetry professor Jenny Browne is no stranger to discomfort. In fact, she welcomes it. When she encounters what she calls a “splinter,” a distressing piece of language or unsettling image, she dives into the mental and emotional struggle of “peeling back layers of the problem” in a search for discovery. “That’s what poets do,” she says. And she does it remarkably well. Browne recently submitted 20 poems from her new work titled Dear Stranger to the National Endowment for the Arts, where they landed her a $25,000 creative
writing Fellowship. To be published this spring by the University of Tampa Press, the volume will include, among other topics, poems that are love letters to cities she’s never visited and to her recently-deceased father in which she explores ways she did and didn’t know him,. Calling it a “huge honor” to be one of only 40 of the 1,173 applicants for the Fellowship, Browne adds, “This is an acknowledgement that not just my work, but creative work in general, matters.” Susie P. Gonzalez
The Trinity women’s volleyball team was on hand to congratulate James Hill ’76 after he received the Fern Malsbury award last fall. As the Voice of the Tigers, Hill is widely known for his enthusiastic athletic announcing and commentary. A long time and devoted Trinity employee, Hill is assistant sports information officer in the athletic department.
Mathematics
Psychology
Saber Elaydi was appointed a Fellow of the
Carolyn Becker joined the Board of Directors for the Academy for Eating Disorders as the director of Public Affairs. The Academy for Eating Disorders is a global, multidisciplinary, professional association committed to leadership in eating disorders research, education, treatment, and prevention. She is also associate editor for Behaviour Research and Therapy, an international multidisciplinary journal focused on cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Jane Childers and Trinity alumnae Mary Elaine Heard ’04, Anushka Pai ’03, Kolette Ring ’07, and Julie (Vaughan) Sallquist ’04 co-authored “Children use different cues to guide noun and verb extensions,” which was published in Language Learning and Development, 8,1-22.
department of mathematics and the department of economics of Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. This entitles him to collaborate with faculty from both departments and co-supervise Ph.D. students. Modern Languages and Literatures Nina Ekstein’s article, “Sex in Rotrou’s Theater:
Performance and Disorder,” was published in Orbis Litterarum. Another article, “The Theatrical lieu de culture within Molière’s Plays,” appeared in Lieux de culture dans la France du XVIIe siècle. Rita UrquijoRuiz’s book, Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Cultures was published by the University of Texas Press as part of its Chicana Matters Series.
Pauline Interpolation,” an article by William O. Walker Jr., emeritus, appeared in Journal For the Study of Paul and His Letters. Trinity University Press San Antonio’s literary arts organization, Gemini Ink, honored Barbara Ras with the Award for Literary Excellence at its annual Inkstravaganza gala on September 27, 2012.
Religion Music Diane Persellin co-authored the guidebook
Strengthening Undergraduate Learning: Six ResearchBased Principles for Teaching and Their Applications published by the Mellon Foundation.
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Ruben Dupertuis’ essay on comic-book Bibles,
titled “Translating the Bible into Pictures,” was published in Text, Image, and Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What Is in the Picture? (Semeia Studies 56; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2012). Chad Spigel’s book, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, was published by Mohr Siebeck in their Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism series. “Romans 8:29-30 as a Non-
University Communications Susie P. Gonzalez received the 2012 Maggie Cousins Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communications San Antonio (AWCSA) Chapter.
IN MEMORIAM
John Silber ‘47
Earl M. Lewis
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arl M. Lewis, professor emeritus and the driving force behind Trinity’s nationally recognized urban studies program, died Saturday, October 13, 2012 in Houston. He was 92. Lewis, Trinity’s first tenured African American professor, joined the University in 1968. The graduate Urban Studies Program he founded and directed from 1968 until his retirement in 1990 was transformative in its influence. Lewis and his colleagues trained and mentored more than 250 men and women to work in the public and private sectors, opening the way for them to contribute to the governance of this region, and far beyond. Graduates of the program routinely became city planners and city managers in major metropolitan areas across the country or attained other professional positions in state and federal government agencies and private economic development corporations. Lewis earned his undergraduate degree at Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi. He earned a master’s degree in American history at Loyola University in Chicago, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. In 1978, he earned an LL.D. from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. He was the author of numerous publications and was active on local, state, and national boards and commissions, including the Coalition for the Education of Black Children and Youth in Texas and Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. In 1981, Lewis was named the George Brackenridge Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies at Trinity, the first to hold the newly established professorship. Trinity twice nominated him for National Professor of the Year. His many honors included the Award for Service to the State of Texas by Texas Ministers for Social Progress in 1976 and the Brotherhood Award by the San Antonio chapter of the National Council of Christians and Jews in 1978, among other honors and civic activities. Lewis is survived by his wife, Hazelyn, two sons, a daughter, and a granddaughter.
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ohn Silber ’47, who was named Trinity’s Distinguished Alumnus in 1975, died September 27 at age 86 after a long and distinguished career. Silber was an outspoken, often controversial educational leader, who earned a national reputation as president of Boston University. At Trinity, Silber organized the Triniteers and became its first president. He also joined the debate team, where he met and later married Kathryn Underwood ’46. After earning bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and fine arts and minoring in German and music, Silber spent a year at the Yale Divinity School before entering the University of Texas Law School. He dropped out, returning to Yale to earn a doctorate in philosophy. In 1971, he took over failing Boston University and, despite notorious clashes with faculty and students, brought the school to new levels of academic excellence and financial stability. During his presidency, which lasted until 1996, BU’s endowment rose dramatically from $18.8 million to $654 million when he stepped down. Its physical plant more than doubled, the admissions standards were raised, and enrollment doubled. He enhanced the faculty with highprofile hires such as Nobel Prize winners Elie Wiesel, Derek Walcott, and Saul Bellow (a character in Bellow’s novel Ravelstein, Dr. Starling, is inspired by Silber); a future U.S. poet laureate, Robert Pinsky; soprano Phyllis Curtin; and literary critics Christopher Ricks and Roger Shattuck. In 1990, he came within 77,000 votes of becoming governor of Massachusetts and later served as chairman of the state Board of Education from 1995 to 1999. In the latter capacity, Silber was a chief architect of the MCAS exams, which are taken annually by public school students throughout the Commonwealth. Silber is survived by seven children, 26 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2005 and a son, David, died in 1994.
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by Mike Agresta
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Katie Garrett helps a young friend during her internship in Swaziland. With the exception of the Baylor Pediatric AIDS Initiative clinics, she was shocked to learn how few resources there were to treat AIDS patients.
Trinity students come home sobered—and successful— from summer internships at pediatric AIDS clinics in Swaziland and Botswana.
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atie Ogawa had no idea how much worse it could get. For weeks, the Trinity junior had been interning at the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) clinic in Botswana. BIPAI clinics work with outpatient children with HIV and AIDS, helping keep them on the antiretroviral therapies they need to stay alive. The clinics, now active in more than ten countries hard-hit by the AIDS pandemic, are modern and, in the words of Trinity biology professor Robert Blystone, “state-of-theart, comparable to what you’d find in the United States.” Now, however, Ogawa was taking her first tour of the public hospital, not 100 feet away from the BIPAI clinic. On the blog she kept during her internship, Ogawa described the scene: There are no separations between the beds. Some beds are on the floor. It felt like there were people everywhere! I might have been most surprised when I saw the “procedure room.” It was just another room, not exactly clean nor tidy. The “table” that all the procedures were done on was much like one found in an athletic training room, but the fabric was quite torn up. I was also told that needles are commonly stuck in the table, like a pin cushion. My mind quickly jumped to the rate of HIV here as my hands remained in my pockets…. There are no “visiting hours” or times when the parents go home. The mothers are to take care of the children, not necessarily the nurse. That is to say, each bed had a child and a mother. It was a vision of the status quo of pediatric AIDS treatment in Africa, minus the resources, expertise, and infrastructure of international non-government organizations like BIPAI. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. Ogawa was one of four Trinity students who volunteered last summer in BIPAI clinics in Botswana and Swaziland, small southern African countries where the HIV infection rate tops 25 percent. BIPAI was founded by Dr. Mark Kline, ’79, now Physicianin-Chief at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The seed for BIPAI was planted in 1996, when, on an official trip to Romania, Dr. Kline toured hospitals, clinics, and orphanages and saw children dying from lack of access to anti-retroviral drugs commonly available in the United States. Upon his return, he began to mobilize donors and doctors to build an organization that would eventually serve twelve countries across Africa and the world. Blystone, who taught Dr. Kline three decades ago, arranged the learning opportunity for his current Trinity students. “The function of BIPAI’s program is to provide medical care for children who are HIV/ AIDS positive and to help them toward a more normal life, primarily through the use of anti-retroviral therapy,” he says. “It works. Mark has children moving into their teenage years who would have been dead ten years ago.” Much of the Trinity students’ time was spent working with teenagers living with HIV/AIDS in “Teen Club.” Their work focused on creating an environment of trust for young people who may have to hide their HIV/AIDS status in their home communities. “It was really exciting to see them just be normal kids, normal teenagers,” says senior Katie Garrett, who volunteered in Swaziland. “The HIV treatment is so successful for these kids, they’re able to live into adolescenthood. That’s exciting; they’re kind of a new group.” Garrett and her fellow volunteers had to adjust to some disquieting quirks of modern African culture. For instance, while preparing snacks for Teen Club, Garrett quickly learned that many club members hated the taste of peanut butter. This is because Plumpy Nut, an ultra-low-cost malnutrition supplement, is made from a peanut butter base. Many poor African children associate the flavor with traumatic experiences in hospitals and clinics. At the same time, the volunteers also witnessed a stirring resilience among the HIV/AIDS-positive teens with whom they worked. On her blog, Ogawa describes a typical day at Teen Club organized around the theme
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of the Olympics. Volunteers organized races and other events. “At one point during a race, I looked to the side and one of the boys with crutches was playing soccer in the parking lot with some other boys,” Ogawa wrote. “Seeing him pass the ball with his crutch was truly inspiring.” This non-credit summer abroad experience, as designed by Blystone and Kline’s staff at BIPAI, aimed to give undergraduates a taste of international public health opportunities and challenges in two countries that are sorely underserved yet politically stable. “I wanted students to develop a broader perspective of health issues, to understand how health issues fit into the broader geopolitical domain, and to see how they as undergraduates can make a difference,” Blystone says. The pilot program was, by all accounts, a success. In preparation for their trip, all four students took a one-hour course with Blystone in Spring 2012. The seminar included discussions of local customs, child psychology, and HIV/AIDS specifics; guest lectures from the likes of professor Alfred Montoya, an anthropologist who studies HIV/AIDS control in Asia; a visit to Houston to talk to Dr. Kline’s staff; and Skype conversations with older students from other universities who had visited the clinics in question. “Now they’re in another seminar course,” Blystone reports. “They’re missionaries now, telling other students what their experiences were like.” He hopes that Trinity’s partnership with BIPAI will continue and become official over the next few years. However, he cautions, that will mostly depend on finding better funding to help future students cover the expenses of overseas travel.
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With all this preparation, students found themselves itching to get involved in the work of BIPAI beyond Teen Club, pill counting, and shadowing doctors. Looking back, students agree that volunteering at BIPAI, and in Africa generally, is not for the meek. “You need to be a self-starter, someone who’s motivated to come up with ideas, take initiative, and start projects on your own,” Garrett says. “You have the resources to come up with ideas and make something happen in the short time that you’re there, but if you don’t have the self-starting attitude you’re just going to end up following the doctors around all the time.” For Garrett and her fellow Swaziland volunteer, junior Barley Halton, that meant developing a pamphlet for Teen Club and writing a grant proposal for the Swaziland BIPAI clinic. The proposal was based on a keyhole garden initiative in nearby Lesotho that they’d learned about from BIPAI doctors. Using only easy-to-find materials
like straw, sand, dirt, tin cans, and mulch, Lesotho NGO workers had devised a way to build recycled water filtration systems to encourage the planting of backyard gardens in water-poor areas. Garrett and Halton hoped to replicate the model in Swaziland. “We spent a lot of our time researching how we could get these materials and finding prices,” Halton says. “In the end, we presented the project to the director of the clinic. A plan was drawn up to create two of these gardens on the clinic grounds. That’s now in process. Model gardens act as teaching aids for patients, to show how they can create their own food supply. There’s a direct relationship between progressive HIV and malnutrition.” On their last day in Swaziland, Garrett and Halton met with a representative of a local non-profit to present their proposal. The meeting—and the proposal project in general—was a success. “It fell almost perfectly in line with our goals, and within an hour, we made a deal to partner with their organization,” Garrett wrote on her travel blog. “We found funding, labor, and assurance that our project would come to life.” The four weeks in Africa brought highs and lows. For Ogawa and her fellow volunteer Paige Patrick in Botswana, the highs included striking up a friendship with the aunt of Botswana’s current president, Ian Khama. The two Trinity students met regularly for tea with the elderly British-born woman, who regaled them with stories of her youth in Botswana and her sister’s controversial marriage with Sir Seretse Khama, the leader of Botswana’s independence movement and the nation’s first president. Barley Halton takes time out for fun with village children. Halton and his fellow Trinity volunteer, Katie Garrett, helped develop plans for a model garden on the BIPAI clinic grounds to teach villagers how to grow their own food supply. Nutrition plays a significant role in the progression of HIV/AIDS.
In Botswana, Paige Patrick, left, and Katie Ogawa, enjoy a lighter moment after a long day working with young HIV/AIDS patients.
A more challenging aspect of the trip came when unpracticed students were thrust into the sensitive role of representatives of the international medical community in societies that sometimes view Western-style medicine with skepticism. Ogawa, a Christian, was working with a teen girl in the BIPAI Clinic’s “Adolescent Transition” programs, asking questions about her understanding of her HIV diagnosis, when the patient suddenly asked Ogawa how she could believe in God when HIV/AIDS existed in the world. “I was taken aback because we were talking about prevention,” Ogawa says. “At the same time, it was a valid question, because it was something she was struggling with. I looked to the doctor in the room, and she said, ‘You can answer it if you want.’ I started sharing, saying that sometimes there are struggles, but He doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle. She was like, ‘Okay, I think I understand.’ Then the doctor piped in: ‘In addition to having faith in God, you have to have faith in your medicine.’” This was in reference to one of the major problems with keeping HIV/AIDS patients on anti-retroviral therapies in Africa—the prevalence of so-called “healing churches” that claim to cure the disease through the power of prayer. Doctors and religious missionaries must walk a fine line,
allowing their patients to benefit from the hope and strength that come with faith while still encouraging them to be realistic about the scientific efficacy of anti-retroviral drugs. It was a role, however, that Ogawa relished taking on. “I was in a position where I really didn’t know what to say, but it was a really powerful position to be in, to try to answer these questions,” she says. “It’s a question we all struggle with: Why is there bad in the world?” This question was often on the minds of all four volunteers as they were introduced to the sorry state of medical care across the region. Much as Ogawa and Patrick had been taken aback by the conditions at the public hospital in Botswana, Garrett and Halton were shocked to learn that cancer patients in Swaziland had almost no recourse to treatment. After a visit
wrote of the experience on her travel blog, “Some of these people have absolutely no hope and are sitting in these beds just waiting to die. Teresa, as an oncology nurse, was especially frustrated with the situation. The country, the WHOLE country, is allowed 1kg of morphine per year and essentially no hospice care… There is essentially no oncology department here—no radiation, no access to chemo, nothing but a scalpel and last ditch efforts to amputate the affected organ.” Garrett and other students expressed newfound gratitude for the high level of care they’d taken for granted in their home country. Far from being discouraged, however, the student volunteers were in fact energized about the prospect of pursuing careers in international health. For Garrett, it was the example of her mentors and new friends that made the difference. “The more I hang out with these doctors who aren’t very old, as in their early thirties, and are super funny and cool and pretty and awesome, the more I can see myself doing this,” she wrote on her blog. Halton echoes her sentiment. He adds that, as an undergraduate pre-med, with an entire decade of training standing between him and a medical practice, he had begun to idly wonder whether medicine really was his calling. This hands-on experience, however, had him waking up each morning excited to go to the clinic and make a difference. “It’s something I could definitely see doing for the rest of my life,” he says.
to Good Shepherd Hospital in Mbabane, Garrett
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Less-but strategically focused
--is More By Andrew Faught
Curriculum Revision Reflects Philosophical Shift It’s a question getting no small consideration at Trinity these days: What skills and experiences should define the University’s graduates over the next decade? “What could be more fundamental than that?” asks University President Dennis Ahlburg.
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ore than a year of soul searching could soon yield answers. This spring, faculty are expected to vote on an ambitious curricular blueprint developed by three elected University committees and presented at numerous faculty forums. The process has been led by the ad hoc Coordinating Committee for Curricular Revision, a faculty-driven effort undertaken in tandem with Trinity Tomorrow, the broader strategic planning process initiated by Ahlburg upon his arrival in January 2010. Nearly 80 faculty members— approximately one third of Trinity’s full-time professors—have been directly involved in a discussion that, among other things, calls for reworking students’ first-year experience into something more intensive. The initiative is attempting to steer the University to a higher education landscape that presents new and sometimes disquieting vistas. Gone are the “boom times” of 20 years ago, Ahlburg says, replaced by a fragile national economy, high unemployment, and a changing ability and willingness among prospective students to pay for college. A
proliferation of online educational opportunities and the occasional charge that colleges and universities have become glorified social clubs further complicates the picture for institutions that long have operated without such appraisals. “There’s been a questioning of the value of higher education, which has not occurred before,” says Ahlburg. While no one doubts Trinity’s vitality, “it’s a good time to be very clear about what it is you stand for and where you’re going,” Ahlburg adds. “In the past, the idea has been that students are empty vessels, so we will fill them up and all will be well. We’ve learned that model is not particularly effective for meeting 21st century demands.” Spelled out in a 30-page report, the curricular revision, in addition to an enhanced first-year experience, calls for a core capacities requirement, an interdisciplinary course cluster, expanded experiential learning opportunities in San Antonio and abroad, and of course the major. Whether such reforms are viewed as evolutionary or revolutionary, the proposed changes are far more sweeping than the University’s last curriculum reforms
in 2002, which tweaked a curriculum framework adopted in the 1980s. Then, a handful of changes were made to required “understandings”—also known as the University’s “breadth requirement”—that dictated student learning. The new proposal instead favors “capacities,” a philosophical shift that requires less—but more focused—student coursework, with an emphasis on clear communication, critical thinking, and the ability to craft reasoned arguments. Proposed changes were born of an in-depth review of Trinity’s curriculum, an effort initially chaired by biology professor Mark Brodl, but later assumed by classical studies professor Erwin Cook. Cook calls the process “long and intensely laborious,” and one designed to involve as many faculty as possible. In September 2011, the Committee for Curriculum Review held a day-long University-wide retreat and symposium to identify shared educational priorities. That was followed in January 2012 by an “Ideas Lab,” an innovative workshop in which two-dozen elected faculty members were engaged in “outside the box” thinking as they generated
January 2013 29
creative solutions to grand challenges, Cook explains. The group developed five curricular prototypes. Then in March, the committee sponsored a “Design Lab,” in which a dozen elected faculty representatives were charged with identifying the “best ideas” from the Ideas Lab to craft a single curricular proposal. Finally, a third committee, this one with 15 elected faculty members, worked throughout the summer to refine the proposal. The report was influenced in part by similar efforts at other small liberal arts colleges and at Stanford University, where a focus on capacity development is already underway. It was in the 1980s that colleges and universities nationwide were first pressed for greater accountability by government agencies, state boards, and regional and professional accrediting bodies concerned about student performance. Landmark reports, such as “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 and “Integrity in the College Curriculum” in 1985 helped drive discussions. Outside scrutiny continues decades later, and many Trinity faculty have welcomed the opportunity for introspection. Some of those involved in the process say that, given the hyper-driven nature of the 21st century, a new academic software is in order. “This really is a joyous time,” says communication professor William Christ, a member of the summer committee that completed the design of the new curriculum. Christ and others describe the process as collegial throughout. If the proposed changes are approved, they could be enacted no sooner than fall 2014. “Even if it doesn’t pass,” says Christ, “the process we’ve gone through has been very good for the faculty and the institution.”
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Erwin Cook
Over the last 10 to 20 years, there’s been a movement from the mastery of content to demonstrating competencies--or capacities,” Christ says. “That’s what we’ve done with this curriculum. You’re still going to get content, but it’s in the context of these capacities. We want all of our students to be able to say, sure, they’ve majored in a certain discipline, but that they have this capacities foundation that we can be proud to say is part of a Trinity education. We think it will help them not only personally, but professionally.” For students, additional changes adopted in conjunction with a new curriculum could mean taking four classes per semester instead of five or six. “That would invite more in-depth study, with an emphasis on rigorous teaching and more demanding projects,”
says English professor Willis Salomon, who served on the summer committee with Christ. The plan would require more interaction among faculty members in planning and teaching courses, he adds. Despite the overhaul, Salomon says Trinity won’t look unfamiliar to alumni, should the proposal pass: “Any alumnus who has taken a writing class in the last 30 years will recognize what the writing intensive courses are about. Anyone who was here in the last 30 years will recognize the strong interdisciplinary character of Trinity’s faculty and their ability to work together to create interdisciplinary opportunities. I think anyone who has been here in the last 30 years will recognize their major.” Revising the first-year experience for students “is one of the major redefinitions in the curriculum, as we’ve proposed it, but I don’t see any wholesale changes here, I really don’t.” Salomon says. “Things have been going too well for too long to require anything drastic. The proposal is based on a lot of enduring principles of liberal arts education.” At the heart of the proposed first-year experience would be a new paired-course that would replace the existing two-course first-year seminar and writing workshop requirement. In its stead would be a teamtaught “holistic approach” that would address “a growing, national concern that today’s undergraduates are ‘academically adrift’ – showing little demonstrable improvement in critical thinking and reading, complex reading, and writing in their first two years of college,” according to the report. “This is a national problem and a cultural problem that students do not write as well as they did 10 to 20 years ago,” Salomon says.
“The digital revolution is a wonderful thing, but what it’s done is make written communication less of a priority. Writing and verbal communication have been at the center of the idea of an educated person in the West for 2,500 years, and I don’t think we need to reinvent its importance.” —Willis Salomon “The digital revolution is a wonderful thing, but what it’s done is make written communication less of a priority. Writing and verbal communication have been at the center of the idea of an educated person in the West for 2,500 years, and I don’t think we need to reinvent its importance. We need only to reemphasize it.”
Faculty have expressed “broad support,” the report says, for infusing the first-year experience with a team-taught course capable of better addressing writing instruction “in the context of powerful, engaging content.” The revised approach would continue in the spirit of the current HUMA freshman seminar. “A more intense first-year experience gets students into college academic life in a more concerted way,” Salomon says. “Schools that do this manage to get the best work from their students earlier than schools that don’t.” As proposed, Trinity will continue to play to its strengths: a 9-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio and a strong mix of pre-professional and liberal arts degree programs. Salomon also highlights the University’s urban setting, “in which hybridizations and biculturalism have been extremely friendly and extremely open to all sorts of town and gown ideas and opportunities. And because we’re so close to Mexico, we have an international profile. In many ways, our distinctiveness drove some of these attempts to redefine the curriculum as well.” In particular, Cook notes, “we have proposed a substantial increased emphasis on experiential learning. As a small liberal arts college, Trinity is virtually unique in being situated in one of the nation’s largest and most diverse cities, and failure to exploit that
fully as an integral part of a Trinity education would represent an enormous lost opportunity. But we’ve also defined experiential learning very broadly to include objectives such as global engagement and study abroad that are already hallmarks of a Trinity education.” Sophomore Lucretia Durant, a business administration and political science major from Scottsdale, Ariz., calls the first-year changes “the most profound feature” of the proposed curriculum revisons. “It allows student engagement in interdisciplinary concepts that are relevant to the 21st century,” says Durant, who sits on the University Curriculum Council, which allows her to offer opinions from a student perspective. “It establishes a foundation for students to engage in accelerated discussion and significant research in their respective fields of study.” Ahlburg, meanwhile, is pragmatic in the face of possible change. “We’re not throwing out the old model,” he says, “but we’re fitting what we’ve always done so well to the demands of the 21st century.”
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P R O F I L E
Ron Piretti ‘71 Fight club on Piretti is well trained in the art of combat. He can throw a punch, wield a knife, thrust a dagger, and slice the air with a sword. He has instigated countless fights and shown eager combatants how to best their opponents, ending with victory for some and an untimely—or well deserved— end for others. Not to worry. Piretti’s expertise is only for show – literally. As a flight director and certified teacher of the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD), Piretti works hard to create those realistic heart-stopping theatrical moments while adhering to the society’s high standards of safety and professionalism. Quiet and soft-spoken, Piretti seems the last person you’d imagine teaching people to beat each other up. But there’s more to this Stratford, Connecticut, native than meets the eye. He defines himself primarily as an actor, racking up credits in Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional stage shows, along with film, television, and commercial jobs. He’s also a writer, director, teacher, and coach. Piretti learned early on the value of versatility, especially in the tough and unpredictable world of show business. He entered that world well-armed after graduating from Trinity, thanks to Paul Baker’s legendary Integration of Abilities class. “He was phenomenal,” says Piretti. “It was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken in my life. He just opened you up artistically, as an actor, and brought in all the elements of art into theatre, which I had never thought of before. He was the greatest influence on me.” After graduation, Piretti headed straight for the Big Apple where he landed his first job –
Photo by Don Hamerman
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as a bartender. After doing “a couple of little things” in theatre, he realized that he wanted and needed more training. Off he went to Chicago to get two more degrees—BFA and MFA—from the then-Goodman School of Drama. But New York beckoned, and Piretti went back to “where I always wanted to be,” with a new job waiting for him – as a bartender. He did some off-off-Broadway, calling it “an intense time to be in New York, when it was still dirty and kind of scary, but it was also a very exciting time. One era was ending and another was beginning.” Piretti’s personal new era began when he got
his Actors Equity card for the show “Room Service,” with Shelley Berman. With a growing interest in stage combat, he also helped to form Fights R Us, a group that performed “all over the place, put on shows, making up fights. People said, ‘Why don’t you choreograph fights?’ So I did.” One thing led to another, and Piretti was hired as fight director for the four-time Tony winner In the Heights, his first Broadway show. His next job was even more impressive—the 2009 revival of West Side Story. Writer and director Arthur Laurents, then 92, gave him only one direction for the iconic, intricate fight scenes: “No holds barred.” In a particularly surreal twist, Piretti also ended up
playing Officer Krupke in that same production when the original actor left. “I asked to audition, and they said yes.” Laurents himself hired Piretti on the spot. “He hugged me and said, ‘Don’t spend all the money in one place, and have fun.’” Just like that, Piretti made his Broadway debut. “It was an amazing experience. Beyond my wildest dreams.” Piretti’s latest gigs include “staging a cat fight” for Broadway’s The Performers, with Henry Winkler and Alicia Silverstone; a dance piece based on The Miracle Worker in Chicago with Broadway legend Ann Reinking (“a great lady and good friend who’s been a mentor to me”); and a return to San Antonio last summer to stage the fight scenes in Othello for Shakespeare in the Park, directed by fellow Trinity alumus Richard Rosen. His teaching and coaching resume includes stints at Marymount Manhattan College and the Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University in New York; and most recently the Performing Arts Project, a summer intensive in North Carolina with classes in music, dance, acting, and stage combat for students age 16-22. Working with the Barrow Group (“my theatrical home”) for fifteen years, Piretti enjoys a community of fellow artists, takes acting and guitar lessons, works out, and keeps body and soul together with tai chi and meditation. He is pragmatic and unsentimental about his calling, balancing the realities of an insanely competitive field with unabashed infatuation. “If I didn’t love it, it would be the most ridiculous business to be a part of,” he says. “You never know where that next job is going to come from.” It gives “fighting for a living” a whole new meaning, and Ron Piretti has mastered that with aplomb. Julie Catalano
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P R O F I L E
George Burmeister ‘81 Energy efficient
Photo by Don Hamerman
G
eorge Burmeister is so at home in the mountains of Colorado that it’s hard to imagine him anywhere else. Fact is, as founder and president of Boulder-based Colorado Energy Group (CEG) with satellite offices in Washington D.C., and Sacramento and Stockton, California, he’s usually everywhere else as a leading energy adviser to governments, utilities, developers, and energy efficiency and renewable energy technology providers and suppliers. The St. Louis native gives fair warning: “Quick, uncensored honesty works for me. I shoot from the hip and have for the past 25 years.” He would have to, considering that his meteoric career includes appointments at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. “This is more than just a job,” he explains. “Climate is the number one issue of our lifetime, I believe.” He traces this passion back to Trinity, where he started as a journalism, broadcasting and film major, until he took professor Paul Goring’s class, “Man and his Modern Environment.” It was an eye-opener for the 18-year-old, who explained, “I had a hard time reconciling the traditional ‘be fruitful and multiply’ teachings of my youth with overpopulation and environmental consequences.” Switching his major to environmental studies with an emphasis in business administration, he helped start a Greenpeace chapter on campus. He also credits his late mother, who had him volunteering at nursing homes and hospitals at an early age. “Maybe that empathy carried over to my career,” he muses. After graduation, Burmeister gave the family business in textile manufacturing a try, working for a West German apparel
firm in Dallas half the year and lobbying for the Sierra Club in Colorado the other half. Eventually Colorado won out, and he got his master’s degree in public administration at the University of Colorado at Denver in 1989. It was his position as program principal/ senior policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in 1990 that allowed Burmeister to branch out. “I was working in all fifty states with all the nonprofits, the national labs involved in energy, and all the governor’s offices. It was kind of my springboard.” Along the way, he learned that Oregon’s Speaker of the House was trying to eliminate the state’s energy office. Burmeister stepped in to dissuade him, saying that the office was “doing great things, saving a lot of money, creating jobs and reducing a lot of emissions.” The department
was saved and with it the job of director and environmental leader Christine Ervin. Burmeister’s good karma came back to him while he was giving a speech on a book he co-authored, Energy Management and Conservation (NCSL, 1993). Ervin was in the audience, about to start her new job for President Clinton as Assistant Secretary, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. DOE. Afterward she asked Burmeister if he would come to Washington to work for her. As a senior special assistant, Burmeister was on “cloud nine, working on things that I love,” until the midterm elections brought Newt Gingrich and the Republicans into power, putting anything
climate related in the cross-hairs. “We had to take out 4,000 references to climate in the DOE budget because it was not politically acceptable at the time,” he says. Still, nothing could dampen what Burmeister calls “one of the highlights of my life – organizing the Environmental Inaugural Ball” when Clinton was re-elected in 1996. Burmeister stayed an extra year in D.C. for the chance to work with Scott Sklar, “the number one environmental lobbyist in Washington and one of my three best friends in life.” As executive director of Americans for Clean Energy (“the old solar lobby created by Dennis Hayes – that was cool!”), ACE mobilized a national grass roots membership of solar advocates and successfully helped defend the $1.2 billion annual federal clean energy budget. While working as policy director for the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), Burmeister began thinking of starting his own company, partly motivated by his children, Rachel, now 19, and Benjamin, 21, from his first 23-year marriage. “They were one and three when we moved to Washington.” Founding CEG gave him more quality family time and got them back to Boulder in 1999. He hints that a fourth office in Dallas is a possibility soon, having met “a wonderful woman from San Angelo” there. As for the future, Burmeister sees it as a bright one, despite ongoing political polarization. “You can’t win ’em all, but it’s a very exciting time. With respect to the climate issue, the key is economic development and job creation. I think that’s language that both sides of the aisle respect. It’s not a partisan issue, and it shouldn’t be.” The new energy economy, he adds, is “limitless, boundless. There are such great opportunities now. It is happening. People a lot smarter, a lot brighter, and a lot younger are coming up and taking the reins.” Perhaps. But they can’t possibly have more energy. Julie Catalano
January 2013 35
P R O F I L E
Sue Chen ’92 Upwardly mobile
Photo by Don Milici
T
alking with Sue Chen is an exercise in, well, exercise. Dashing here and there in impossibly high heels through her offices in Carson, California, Chen seems to be everywhere at once. You soon realize that there is literally no stopping her. Even as a child, “I knew that I was going to do something big. I just had no idea what it was.” It didn’t take her long to find out. At 23, she became the CEO of Nova Medical Products, Inc. (novamedicalproducts.com), now an 18-year-old company closing in on annual sales of $30 million with what Chen calls a “hot, racy line” of safety and mobility products, “while changing the stigma that’s often attached to these products.” She half-jokingly says this job was her second choice. The Taiwanese-born Chen, who immigrated with her family from Kaohsiung when she was four, learned a sobering lesson in her sixthgrade civics class in Florida: “I can never be president of the United States of America.” Undaunted, Chen moved on to her next goal: “Change the world.” College was her first real step in that direction. “When I visited Trinity I felt right at home. I thought, wow, this is a place where I could really find myself.” She found herself changing her major three times in the first year (“I wanted to be the next Connie Chung!”). “That’s the great thing about a liberal arts education. At Trinity you could dive right in and find out if what you think you want to be is really for you.” While trying to decide, Chen was developing “this little obsession with getting
to know my roots,” eventually landing on an international studies major with an emphasis on Asian studies. “To which my mother responded, ‘You’re already Asian. Why do you need to study it?’” Chen calls it “one of the smartest and most defining decisions” of her life, crediting professor Coleen Grissom’s diversity program as “inspirational in making me proud of who I was.” Chen remembers watching a documentary called “Big Happiness, Small Happiness,” about the one-child policy in China. “The story was if you have a boy, it’s a Big Happiness. A girl is a Small Happiness.” As one of three daughters, Chen believes this was partly “why my father wanted us to grow up in
America. My parents raised us to believe that we could do anything.” Sadly, Chen lost her father at age 14, but as a rehab physician, he had already started the wheels of Nova turning before his death from cancer. “He was so frustrated at the lack of innovation and beautiful equipment for his patients.” His brothers carried on, but “without my father’s vision and leadership, they were making the same old stuff – gray, industrial, unattractive.” After graduation, Chen moved to Los Angeles “to get job experience.” Her disapproval of a joint venture prospect led her frustrated grandfather to tell her to run the company herself. “They said, ‘We’ll
give you six months. Here’s some inventory, here’s some capital.’ It was do or die.” Chen did. “I feel that I showed them that women are as capable as men, and that I’ve made a difference in their daughters’ lives.” She says they now have “a wonderful partnership.” It was an encounter with a “sassy, amazing woman” in 1995 who told Chen how much her European style walker – one of Nova’s early favorites – meant to her, that changed everything. Chen asked her if she could choose any color for it, what would it be? Hot red, Ms. Sassy replied. Chen could relate. “I said, of course. I drive a red car, I paint my toenails red. Why not a hot red walker?” It set two things in motion: “One, this company is going to be defined by the voices and the courage and mobility of our customers; and two, we had to be a company that was doing something different. We can change things here.” Nova’s product line features colorful bags and canes, bathroom safety items, and other things for “when your body starts wearing down and you need a little help here and there.” Nova has 70 employees and a second office in Chicago. Chen is on the move again, heading toward the door of her office that’s overflowing with paperwork, fabric samples, the American flag, shark pictures – Chen is on the board of both Reef Check Foundation and Shark Savers – and another presence, unseen but not forgotten. “Even though I never knew my dad as an adult, I feel like I get to share in his mission, which is such a blessing.” And more. “I get to improve people’s lives. I get to save sharks. I am the happiest CEO around.” Make that one Big Happiness – to go. Julie Catalano
January 2013 37
38 Trinity
P R O F I L E
Melinda Parshall ‘06 Master plan
Photo by Don Milici
M
elinda Parshall has been in classes at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs for exactly one week, and already she’s sounding a bit frazzled. “It’s just so overwhelming,” says the full-time graduate student who’s working toward a master’s degree in urban planning. “It’s so interesting the different kinds of questions asked, and the different kind of focus you can have. It’s so exciting, and so refreshing.” If you noticed how quickly Parshall went from “overwhelmed” to “excited,” then you can understand how the Houston native moved from San Antonio to Houston to New York to Saudi Arabia to Los Angeles, throwing in visits to a dozen or so countries in between (“I should keep count”), without so much as a hiccup. The vivacious Houston native is nothing if not adaptable. After graduation with a B.A. in history, Parshall worked as a research assistant at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts while moonlighting at prestigious global design and architecture firm HOK. What followed was a classic example of right place, right time. “Two weeks after I started there, they signed a master plan for a new university in Saudi Arabia.” And not just any university. This was to be a 5.5 million square foot, state-of-theart, world-class model of sustainable design located in Thuwal, a small fishing village on the Red Sea. It was the 2006 brainchild of the Saudi king, who wanted it done in three years. And it was: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), broke ground in 2007 and was completed in 2009.
The massive, global endeavor “kind of began my journey” with a role in design and development first in Houston, and then relocation to the New York office in 2008, where working with more than forty principal investigators at KAUST to understand their research focus “was a really intense time but really interesting.” Things were about to get even more interesting: Parshall met her future husband, Brendan Rauw, who was also being recruited for the project. “So we were both able to get jobs there,” Parshall says with a laugh. “It’s such an unbelievable story, the way it
worked out.” The couple married in 2010, in a “very small ceremony in city hall” in New York City, before departing – with their two rescue dogs accompanying them in a climate controlled compartment on Lufthansa – for their new home on the KAUST campus, about thirty miles from the city of Jeddah. They just moved back to the U.S. in February of 2012. During those two years, Parshall worked as lab design coordinator, managing design and equipment procurement with a capital budget of $80 million. “It was the first university with mixed classes [men and women] in Saudi Arabia, so that was a very big change.” As for the image of oppressed women, Parshall says that was not the case in Jeddah. “It reminded
me of New York, with a very big social scene, people out late at night.” Although female outsiders could wear conservative dress, Parshall actually felt more at home and less conspicuous in the traditional abaya, a loose fitting robe-like garment. “The abayas I bought were beautiful, very colorful.” Leaving Saudi left Parshall with mixed feelings. She misses the freedom to travel and the couple’s newfound passion – diving. “The university had a boat, we’d just hop on and go out diving in the Red Sea. That’s an experience I’ll never forget.” But with Rauw’s new job as associate vice chancellor and executive director of entrepreneurship at UCLA, “it was the best catalyst to say, okay, the timing’s right to further my education.” Parshall can frequently be found at sidewalk cafes near their Westwood home, sketching her surroundings for studio class. It was a long, roundabout way from Texas, and Parshall will never forget the three Trinity professors who most influenced her: Char Miller, whose class “A City in History” resonated greatly; they still stay in touch. Eve Duffy was an adviser “who encouraged me to study abroad in Berlin, which gave me a global approach to my jobs.” Finally, history professor Linda Salvucci “was really provocative in the way she made you rethink certain things. I’ve certainly taken that to heart as I’ve lived abroad.” As for her current studies, Parshall hopes to maintain an international focus, eyeing South America and Latin America as her “next frontiers.” The LEED-accredited professional is also keenly interested in eco-tourism as “a way to get developing countries into ecological and sustainable development while boosting their economies. I’m going to talk to my advisor about doing a study on that.” Sounds like a plan. Julie Catalano
January 2013 39
A D VA N C E M E N T
Murchsion Influence Permeates Campus
Scholarships, professorships enrich academic landscape By R. Douglas Brackenridge
V
isible throughout the metropolitan San Antonio area, the T. Frank Murchison Memorial Tower on Trinity‘s campus symbolizes the prominence of one of the University’s most influential and generous patrons. The tower’s principal donor, Trinity Trustee Arch S. Underwood, requested that it be named after Murchison, his long-time friend. “Frank has done about as much to build Trinity as anybody I know,” Underwood said. “We need something tall on this campus to remind us of him because he was a tall man in Trinity’s affairs.” Indeed, during the first decade of Trinity’s presence in San Antonio, locals referred to Murchison as “Mr. Trinity,” due to his commitment of time, expertise, and financial resources to the University. The Murchison family had a long association with Trinity dating back to 1910 when T. (for Thomas) Frank, a native of Athens, Texas, enrolled as a freshman at Trinity in Waxahachie. His father, John W. Murchison, the town’s bank president, hoped that the disciplined atmosphere of a Presbyterian university would prove beneficial for Frank and his younger brother, Clint. While Frank thrived at Trinity, Clint preferred to be outdoors rather than in confining classrooms. He lasted only three weeks and embarked on a legendary career in the oil industry that made him a Texas icon. (His son, Clint Murchison, Jr., was the first owner of the Dallas Cowboys.) Clint Murchison Sr. joined with Underwood in 1951 to underwrite the cost of the original Student Union Building. Another brother, John W. Murchison, served on Trinity’s Board of Trustees and contributed generously to University projects. During his four years at Trinity, Frank Murchison (Class of 1914) excelled in academics and found ample time for extracurricular
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Murchison Tower, a prominent landmark, dominates the Trinity campus.
activities and business trips to Dallas. The Mirage described him as “a leader in all student activities. No one fears but his ready wit for emergencies and his broad smiling countenance will make for him a great fortune.” He served as president of the Press Club, president of the State Intercollegiate Press Association, president of his junior class, president of the Ratio-Maeonian Literary Society, treasurer of the Y. M.C.A., and associate editor of the Mirage. His senior thesis was titled, “The Organization of the Banking System in the United States.” Keen on athletics, Frank played football, basketball, baseball, and tennis, serving on several occasions as manager as well as player. Murchison also evidenced a sense of humor. As seniors, he and a group of friends offered
tongue-in-cheek advice to young men who wanted to date Trinity co-eds. Frank’s suggestion was, “See that all pictures of out-of-town girls are removed from watches before entering the [women’s residence] hall.” The 1914 Mirage featured a new organization known as The Ego Club, with Murchison listed as one of the charter members. The group had no president because everyone voted for himself. After military service in World War I, Frank returned to Athens to take charge of the bank for his ailing father. Subsequently, he teamed up with his brother Clint to purchase land leases for gas and oil exploration, but they eventually separated because Frank thought Clint was too impetuous and wanted to expand too rapidly. Frank amassed his own fortune through ownership of gas and oil
A D VA N C E M E N T
T. Frank Murchsion graduated from Trinity in Waxahachie but eventually played a very influential role in Trinity history after its move to the skyline campus. He served on the Board of Trustees, and his philanthropy continues to support numerous faculty and students.
pipelines, land leases, and other enterprises including banking and ranching. In the 1930s, he established an office in San Antonio and moved into a new home on Ironwood Drive in Olmos Park designed by an aspiring young architect named O’Neil Ford. In 1940, when Trinity was seeking to move from Waxahachie, civic leaders in several Texas cities hoped to entice Trinity to relocate in their communities. A member of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce visited Murchison to enlist his support to bring Trinity to the Alamo City. Initially, Murchison declared that he had no interest in the project. Only when his visitor told him that plans for the new Trinity were far reaching and involved millions of dollars to build a new campus and to create a substantial endowment did Murchison’s attitude change. ”If you are going in for something big, count me in,” he said, “I am not interested in a little boll weevil college in San Antonio. I am interested in a greater Trinity University.” From that point forward, Murchison’s involvement with Trinity grew steadily. In 1942 he became a member of the Board of Trustees,
and he served as its vice-chairman for a number of years. Few decisions were made regarding Trinity’s future without first consulting Murchison and securing his approval and support. Fellow Trustee C. W. Miller described Murchison’s pivotal role in shaping
“I am not interested in a little boll weevil college in San Antonio. I am interested in a greater Trinity University.” Trinity’s future. “In those early days, Frank was the spark plug. We spent many days and many evenings in Frank’s living room talking, planning, arguing, and dreaming. He was the man with the great vision. He had a vision of Trinity when those around
him simply couldn’t quite see all of it. He saw Trinity as a great cultural institution.” As co-chairman of the building committee, Murchison had considerable influence in deciding the location of the new campus and in inviting O’Neil Ford to become the University architect. As co-chair of the search committee for a new president, he was instrumental in persuading James W. Laurie to come to Trinity. He provided funds to erect one of the first buildings on the new campus, Murchison Dormitory, named in memory of his late father, John W. Murchison. As chairman of the athletic committee, Murchison took a special interest in football and tennis and funded athletic scholarships for those sports. He had aspirations for Trinity to become a member of the Southwest Conference and attain national recognition for its outstanding athletic program. In poor health and hobbled by crippling arthritis, Murchison died in 1955 at the age of 62. Trinity Trustees expressed their “profound gratitude to our late colleague for his vision, leadership, and support in helping to make possible Trinity University as it now exists and in laying present foundations for the achievement of his dream of a great Christian university.” Fortunately for Trinity, the Murchison connection didn’t end in 1955. His widow, Norine Randal Murchison, shared and retained her late husband’s commitment to Trinity. Educated at Stephens College and Southern Methodist University, Norine was active in San Antonio civic and social life. She was a founding member and lifelong patron of the Charity Ball Association, a volunteer organization created to support children whose needs were not being met by other charitable institutions. An avid traveler, she visited Africa, Alaska, and Europe, among other destinations. Norine’s involvement with Trinity dated back
January 2013 41
Norine Murchison unveils the plaque on the Murchison Tower honoring her husband’s role in the campus development. After his death, she continued his interest and exceptional philanthropic commitment.
to the early 1950s when she co-chaired a committee to undertake a major landscaping project on the barren campus. She frequently attended campus events and regularly contributed to endowment and operating budget needs. During her lifetime, she created a substantial Library Trust Fund and established the Norine R. Murchison Chair of Education and the Norine R. Murchison Endowed Scholarship Fund. In 1979, Interim President Bruce Thomas expressed his gratitude with these words. “You have been a constant source of inspiration to those of us here on the staff and to other donors, and I feel that your expressions of confidence in the future of this University have ensured a bright future for it. ‘Thank you’ is woefully inadequate, but I do not know any way to improve on it.” At her death in 1985, Norine Murchison left a bequest of approximately $27 million (now worth $69 million) to Trinity University. She indicated in her will that funds from her estate were to be used solely for educational purposes, such as scholarships for students and compensation for professorships. President Ronald K. Calgaard utilized the bequest to supple-
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Grace Carmona, ’92 was thrilled to learn she had been awarded a Murchison Scholarship. Today she works at an accounting firm in Houston.
ment existing Murchison funds and to create new ones including the T. Frank and Norine R. Murchison Faculty Development Fund, the Norine R. Murchison Education Scholarship Fund, and the Norine R. Murchison Gradu-
ate Scholarship Fund. Distributions from the Murchison scholarship funds from 1989 to the present have amounted to approximately $42 million dollars, and they continue to underwrite multiple academic endeavors. Gracie Carmona ’92, now employed in the audit department of a Houston accounting firm, recalled the excitement in her household when she was awarded a Murchison Scholarship. “I have never doubted the quality of the education I received,” she said, “and I am certain my career in accounting benefitted from the personal guidance I received from professors like Petrea Sandlin and Linda Specht. I will always be grateful for the opportunity the Murchison Scholarship provided me at Trinity University.” Today 108 students are receiving Murchison Scholarships that average roughly $18,00 annually, and another 16 undergraduates who have indicated they want to become teachers are receiving Murchison Education Scholarships that range between $1,000 and $12,0000. Three endowed Professorships today bear the Murchison name: The Norine R. Murchison Distinguished Professorship in Education, currently held by Shari Albright; the T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities, currently held by Arturo Madrid; and the Norine R. Murchison Distinguished Professorship in Classical Studies, currently held by Erwin Cook. A recent addition is the Murchison Term Professorships that provide three-year term appointments for outstanding tenured professors. Those are currently held by professors Nancy Mills (chemistry), Matthew Stroud (modern languages and literatures), and Don Clark (history). Near the end of Frank Murchison’s life, a reporter asked him how he planned to dispose of his wealth. Murchison said that he had thoughts about establishing a foundation but they had not been fully formulated. The reporter concluded his article with these prescient words: “No one knows the plans, which will at last crystallize in his mind. But the chances appear good that one day, in some manner or another, thousands of young men and women will be the beneficiaries of Frank Murchison.” On campus today, we have only to look up at the iconic Tower and look around at the outstanding faculty and student body to see the fulfillment of his prediction. R. Douglas Brackenridge
Trinity Press plans Murchison book Celebrating the University’s close association with the Murchison family, Trinity University Press is working with Burk Murchison, great-nephew to T. Frank Murchison, on a forthcoming book about the creation of the Texas Stadium, the long-time home of the Dallas Cowboys. The book will recount the exciting story of how Burk’s father, Clint Murchison Jr. applied his passion for architecture in building the famous Texas Stadium—an In addition to three endowed professorships, Murchison gifts fund three threeyear term professorships. Current holders are chemistry professor Nancy Mills, Spanish professor Matt Stroud, and history professor Don Clark, left to right.
innovative structure known for the hole in its dome. As founder of the Dallas Cowboys football team, Clint Murchison Jr. created a revolution in spectator sports and launched a team that, three decades, five Super Bowl appearances, and two world championships later, would become a legend. To be co-written with Dallas Morning News sportswriter Michael Granberry, this never-before-told narrative of the Texas Stadium will appear in 2014.
Three of the more than 100 current holders of Murchison scholarships are shown in the shadow of the tower that honors the late Trustee and philanthropist.
Sources for this article include information from the Trinity University Archives, the Offices of Advancement and Endowments, interviews with acquaintances of the Murchisons, and
books by Jane Wolfe, The Murchisons (New York, 1989) and Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (New York, 2009).
January 2013 43
A D VA N C E M E N T
Alumna Endows New Scholarship Fund
Janet McNutt ’63
CYNTHIA CLARK PHOTOS.COM
T
he recently established Janet McNutt Endowed Scholarship Fund at Trinity will provide critical new financial resources for talented students in need of support to achieve their dreams. Created by Janet McNutt ’63, the fund is the latest example of her generous support of Trinity and the broader community. As an undergraduate, she was a music major and continues to support that department with discretionary funds that are used to keep the pianos in tune and address other needs. In 2011, McNutt began exploring planned giving options with the University and decided to create the new scholarship fund with $100,000 rolled over from an existing individual retirement account. She was pleased to be able to take advantage of the opportunity to make an outright gift from her IRA without tax penalties.
44 Trinity
New endowment gifts of this amount are held by Trinity for 12 rolling quarters until they mature, then ultimately generate 4.5 percent, or about $4,500 annually, based on Trinity’s endowment policy as approved by the Board of Trustees. McNutt also named Trinity as the beneficiary of the remainder of her IRA account. The gift to Trinity qualified McNutt for membership in the University’s Heritage Society, which recognizes individuals who have included Trinity in their estate plans. “I enjoy being able to give back to Trinity and to San Antonio,” she says. “I look forward to meeting the students who will be helped by this new scholarship fund.” In addition to her work for Trinity, McNutt is active in many other San Antonio organizations, serving on several boards including those of Texas Public Radio and Planned Parenthood of San Antonio. The law Ms. McNutt took advantage of allowed tax-free IRA charitable rollovers up to $100,000 by individuals age 70½ or older. Congress recently extended this special incentive through December 31, 2013. If you are over age 70½, you are permitted to roll over up to $100,000 from your IRA without claiming any increased income or paying any additional tax. If you would like to speak with someone who can provide additional information, please contact the Office of Planned Giving at (210) 999-7697 or e-mail khowland@trinity.edu.
Entrepreneur Honors Mentor with Gift for CSI
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an Antonio entrepreneur and Trinity
alumnus Sardar Biglari ’99 pledged $250,000 through the Biglari Foundation to support a portion of the new Center for the Sciences and Innovation (CSI) in honor of former Trinity faculty member Philip L. Cooley, Ph.D. At Biglari’s request, entrepreneurship classroom 383 in Phase III of the CSI will be named in honor of Cooley, his former professor and the Prassel Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, who retired last May. A commemorative plaque to be placed inside the classroom will highlight Cooley’s accomplishments in “mentoring hundreds of future business leaders and advancing in-depth knowledge in the area of finance.” Biglari’s gift to Trinity accentuates the role of entrepreneurship in the new CSI facility and underscores his own success in the world of business. At 22, Biglari started a small hedge fund with money collected from the proceeds of an Internet company he founded while attending Trinity. Biglari, an entrepreneur, businessman, and investor, is chairman and CEO of Biglari Holdings, a diversified holding company.
A D VA N C E M E N T
Estate Gift Helps Underwrite Global Health Symposium
A
n estate gift from former Trinity University Trustee Charles H. Pistor Jr. provided vital support for Trinity’s first Global Health Symposium held on campus September 14-15, 2012. Pistor died this past July from complications of West Nile encephalopathy. A successful banker, businessman, and civic leader in Dallas, he spent a lifetime dedicated to education and medical advancement. He served on Trinity’s Board from 1980 to 1984. Kris Howland, Trinity’s director of planned giving, worked with Pistor’s wife of sixty years, Regina Pistor, and their daughter, Lori, class of ’76, in determining that the Global Health Symposium would be a fitting recipient for the gift. “We were excited about the opportunity for attendees and all those who will ultimately benefit from the conversations, research, and
progress following the symposium,” says Lori. Her father’s gift was particularly relevant and poignant as a reminder to participants that global health concerns are local as well as international. The landmark symposium allowed Trinity to encourage students to apply their studies in various fields to issues of global health. It also highlighted some of Trinity’s graduates who are pursuing work in the field, provided an opportunity for students to meet potential mentors, fostered connections and collaborations among local institutions, laid the groundwork for expanded study of global health at Trinity, and promoted service work in foreign settings. (See story page 16.) The University is deeply grateful for Charles Pistor’s life of service and generosity, including his designation of Trinity in his estate plan-
Charles H. Pistor Jr.
ning. For more information about including Trinity in your estate planning, please call the Office of Planned Giving at 210-999-7697.
Calgaards Fund Andy’s Place in Memory of Long-time Employee
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n personnel records, he was known as Andrés Hernandez, a Trinity employee for more than two decades who was named the Physical Plant Employee of the Year in 2005. But to former President Ron and Genie Calgaard, “Andy” was the guardian of their home who greeted them nearly every Monday morning with the question, “How many parties are we having this week?” Despite his tough visage, “his face was precious to us,” recalls Genie Calgaard. The former president seconds that opinion, lauding Andy for keeping their home at 150 Oakmont “shipshape” during nearly all of his 20-year tenure as president of Trinity. The Calgaards forged such a bond with Andy that soon after he died in September 2011, they began exploring ways to honor his memory on campus. They decided to establish and fund “Andy’s Place,” an outdoor area adjacent to the Prassel Parking Garage and also near the offices that are now called
President Ron and Genie Calgaard
Facilities Services. Covered by a garage overhang and furnished with Adirondack chairs, a picnic table, a barbecue pit, and equipment to play a relaxing game of “washers,” Andy’s Place has become a popular gathering spot for Facilities Services staff during lunch breaks and other social oc-
casions. During the dedication ceremony last August, Ron Calgaard noted, “We wanted to honor Andy, yes, but we also wanted to recognize the dedication of all of those employees who are so loyal and concerned about how our campus looks. It takes a lot of people to build an institution.”
January 2013 45
D
uring November, alumni from the 1970s and 1980s were issued a challenge to see which decade could finish the month with the highest percentage of donor participation. Challenge Then and Now was a huge success, energizing alumni spirits and providing support for the Trinity experience of current students.
Trinity’s Most Generous Generation is the 1970s with a participation rate of 7.57%!
Below is a list of donors from 1972, the class with the highest participation in the winning decade. Thank you to all our challenge participants; final challenge numbers and a complete list of donors can be found online at trinity.edu/ThenandNow. Overall alumni participation currently stands at 6.38 percent. All alumni can help increase that by making a gift online at trinity.edu/give.
Class of 1972 Dr. Max Adler Dr. Mark L. Bing Donyn K. Bird, Esq. Mr. Ned D. Boddie Mrs. Geraldine L. Boone Mrs. Lorrie P. Breedlove Dr. Carol B. Brown Ms. Donna S. Cameron Dr. Gary W. Cox Mrs. Jeanne P. Douglas Mrs. Constance C. Elms Mrs. Karen E. Foxworth Mr. Jack J. Froboese Jr. Ms. Margaret J. Gavin Mrs. Estela Getzen
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Mrs. Annette C. Gould Mr. John Paul Gould Dr. Peter N. Hofmann Dr. Bernard J. Horak Ms. Annabel House Dr. David E. Johnson Mrs. Rebecca S. Jones Dr. Katherine W. Klinger Mrs. Betsy Kropp Mr. Thomas A. Masinter Dr. S. Morton McPhail Ms. Pamela A. Moye Ms. Donna S. Munt Mr. Wendell R. Peters
Ms. Julia K. Powell Ms. Lynne L. Puckett Mr. Victor S. Recchi Mr. Ashby L. Rice, III Ms. Cynthia L. Sailor Dr. Ronald W. Scates Mr. Herman F. Schimpff Mrs. Sarah B. Shaw Mrs. Rebecca P. Simpson The Honorable Katherine Smith Mr. Earl D. Snoga Mr. John L. Stover Dr. Alicia H. Thomas Mr. W. Ronald Thomas
Mrs. Betsy M. Thurlo Mr. Dennis C. Watts Mr. James W. Weber Mrs. Suzanne M. West Mrs. Linda S. Wetz Dr. Belle S. Wheelan Mr. David B. Wheeler Michael K. Wheeler, M.D. Mrs. Sally W. Wheeler Dr. Sara W. White Mr. Charles D. Whitehead Mrs. Joan F. Whiteley Mrs. Janet Zimmerman Mr. Raymond C. Zowarka Jr.
Photo by Ahn-Viet Dinh ‘15. Stadium Drive, Then and Now
Challenge Then and Now
A L U M N E W S
An officer and a gentleman
Distinguished Alumnus Believes in Servant Leadership
A
t a dinner on January 25, the Trinity University Alumni Association bestowed its highest honor, the Distinguished Alumnus Award, on retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner ’79. On learning he was to be the honoree, Bergner responded in typical fashion. “I just feel humbled – this honor was something that never entered my mind.” But this humble reaction belies a distinguished and highly decorated 30-year military career and 30-year marriage to his wife, Carla, that included multiple deployments and numerous demanding, high level assignments. Along with service at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, service with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and service on the National Security Council staff at the White House, he was the Deputy Commander of the Multi-National Force in Mosul and served in Baghdad with the Multi-National Force as well. While in the military, Bergner earned a Master of Public Administration from the City University of New York. Prior to his retirement in 2010, Bergner was the U.S. Army’s Chief of Public Affairs, responsible for the formulation of communications and public affairs strategies, a job of enormous reach. During his three decades of service, Bergner earned 12 decorations and badges, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of
Kevin Bergner ’79.
Merit (with Oak Leaf Cluster) and Bronze Star Medal (with two Oak Leaf Clusters) for action and service in combat. After retirement, Bergner began a new career at USAA, a San Antonio-based insurance, banking, and investment company that serves 9.4 million U.S. military members and their families. He currently serves as president of The USAA Property
and Casualty Insurance Group. During an interview, Bergner, boyish-faced, openly friendly, and with a ready laugh, tapped his finger on the table and emphasized, “This is the most important thing about me I want to tell.” He then related the moment at his Army swearing in ceremony, when his father, a U.S. Army Colonel, advised
him, ‘If you take care of your soldiers, they will take care of everything else.’ “I have lived my life trying to fulfill that challenge,” says Bergner, who explained his core philosophy as “servant leadership.” “As a Trinity graduate, I left with a comprehensive liberal arts education and a strong sense that our country needs people who understand the importance of service to community, government, volunteerism, or the military.” Bergner attended Trinity on a full R.O.T.C. scholarship, and along with this early military experience he thanks his labor economics professor Joe Davis for influencing him to become a global thinker and understand the importance of having an international focus. He also credits Trinity with developing his ability to write. “That competency in written expression was a central part of enabling many facets of my career.” His advice to current Trinity students? “Challenge yourself to leave school with a global view and a commitment to keep learning and serving others.” Mary Lance
January 2013 47
A L U M N E W S
Where Are They Now?
John Burke, professor emeritus
A
proud native of Paris where he attended two years of college, John Burke boasted that it was the county seat of Lamar County in northeastern Texas and “the second largest Paris in the world.” Burke earned his baccalaureate degree (1959) at Texas Tech University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Ohio State University (1963). As a young Ph.D. in the post-Sputnik era, Burke had to choose between a career in industry or one in higher education. He chose education because he wanted to foster an interest in science among upcoming student generations. At Trinity (1963-2000) Burke helped develop an outstanding science faculty and highly regarded undergraduate student research programs. During the early years, he faced considerable challenges. To accommodate laboratory students, sessions often ran from early morning to late evening in cramped quarters that lacked even basic vent hoods. Despite the challenges, Burke sensed that Trinity was on the move. New buildings were being erected, the endowment was growing, and Trinity students were bright, industrious, and intellectually curious. As chemistry department chair (19691976) and dean of the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (1976-1986), Burke was positioned to implement his vision for Trinity’s future. While emphasizing the importance of classroom teaching, he fostered a pattern of undergraduate research by inviting nationally
48 Trinity
known scientists to give seminars and to encourage students to pursue graduate work at their respective institutions. Visitors were impressed with what they saw at Trinity and became advocates for the Texas school. As a result, Trinity faculty received invitations to give lectures and seminars that enhanced Trinity’s reputation for scientific studies. Gregarious by nature, Burke had interests other than academ-
ics. At Paris Junior College he played varsity tennis, and he has maintained a life-long interest in athletic activities. The first social event he attended at Trinity was an exhibition tennis match in 1964 between Chuck McKinley and Dennis Ralston who had just won the Davis Cup. As a tennis-playing faculty member, he was asked to interview tennis recruits and had opportunities to hit with varsity team members.
Burke was also the first faculty sponsor of Trinity’s Club Soccer Team and helped to organize an intercollegiate soccer conference in the late 1960s. Beyond athletics, Burke had a penchant for music. At a faculty talent show in the 1970s, Burke (drums), and colleagues Bill Kurtin (guitar), and Dale Clyde (piano) performed as the Three Molecules. Out of that trio emerged the Medina Mud Band. Thirty years later the group continues to perform at country western dance venues and is popular with the Trinity community. Burke retired in 2000 in order to care for his family and wife, Gwen, whose breast cancer had metastasized. She died the following year. Burke resides in San Antonio and maintains close contact with his three children and eight grandchildren. Still active in the Medina Mud Band, he also plays the guitar and accordion “but not for anybody but myself.” He plays golf five days a week with a group of equally avid friends and enjoys watching premier European soccer and other sporting events on television. Reading interests include Swedish detective novels and historical narratives combined with an annual visit to the Hesselager family in Sweden. Other preferences are biography, popular fiction, and articles dealing with major scientific developments. Burke welcomes e-mails and letters at Johngwenburke@aol. com or 1835 Buck Ridge Lane, San Antonio, Texas 78232. R. Douglas Brackenridge
A L U M N E W S
John Moore, professor emeritus
W
hen asked what he would miss most after teaching 33 years (1968-2001) at Trinity, John Moore replied, “The students have been my favorite part of working here at Trinity.” His response reflected what had always been his highest priorities as a member of the department of education— to motivate, inspire, and empower his students to be skilled, innovative, and caring educators. Student and peer accolades over the years attest
to a high attainment of his pedagogical goals. Moore always loved school and from an early age knew that he wanted to be a teacher. As a Trinity student, Moore participated in a variety of campus social and educational activities and was president of the Bengal Lancers. His student teaching assignment at Fox Tech in downtown San Antonio awakened him to the problems and possibilities of public school teaching. After earning graduate
degrees at SMU and Baylor, he taught social studies in Victoria, Texas. In 1968, Moore joined the Trinity faculty in the department of education and five years later became department chair. At his first curriculum council meeting, two colleagues moved and seconded to abolish the department of education. Although the motion was defeated, Moore left the meeting disconcerted but determined to make his department one of the best on campus. Working closely with local public schools and business organizations, he developed innovative programs that made a lasting impact on the San Antonio educational community. Included among his many accomplishments were the Brackenridge Interns in Teaching Program, the Trinity Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and the International School of the Americas, a school of choice in partnership with the North East Independent School District. At Trinity, he instituted the Five Year Degree Program, the first in Texas, that featured an education studies major in humanities and a 5th year internship under the supervision of a master teacher. Trinity honored Moore with the Norine R. Murchison Distinguished Professorship in Education and the Z. T. Scott Award for outstanding teaching and advising. In 2002, he was the first recipient of the Spirit of Trinity Award given by the Alumni Association. In their search for a retirement location, Moore, and his wife,
Suzanne, visited Sedona, Arizona, and were immediately captivated by its magnificent scenery and hospitable climate. He refers to Sedona as “a magical place” and loves his life in Red Rock Country. But Moore never really retired—he simply changed his base of operations. As a Friend of the Forest, Coconino National Forest, he is a member of the Trail Patrol Committee and hikes three days a week most weeks. He also works one afternoon at the Visitor’s Center of the Red Rock Ranger District. Twice a week he volunteers at Montezuma Castle National Monument, giving tours and talks and answering questions. (Suzanne calls it his outdoor classroom.) On Saturday mornings he leads a bird walk at Red Rock State Park. Both Moore and his wife are active in The Church of the Red Rocks, where he sings in the choir and serves on various commissions and committees and she is the organist. His reading and travel interests are in western history with a focus on Native American culture. Moore keeps a record of former students and colleagues who have come by to visit in Sedona, and the number is 70 and counting. He can be reached by telephone (928-282-4561) or by mail at 545 Brewer Road, Sedona, Arizona 86336. R. Douglas Brackenridge
January 2013 49
A L U M N E W S
AlumNet Turns 20!
L
ast September, AlumNet, the Trinity University electronic newsletter, celebrated its 20-year anniversary. Begun by biology professor Bob Blystone with the help of Steve Curry ’84, then the academic programmer in the Computing Center (now Information Technology Services), AlumNet debuted on Sept. 2, 1992, and was sent to 16 alumni for whom Blystone had e-mail addresses. At the time, Trinity subscribed to an electronic service called BitNet that connected schools, and Trinity became the first private university in San Antonio to go online. (Initially, the Internet was limited to non-profit use.) Blystone knew that if AlumNet was going to take off, it had to be on a regular schedule. He decided it would be a weekly, and AlumNet #2 was transmitted on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1992. As word spread, more and more alumni signed up. In October of 1993, AlumNet was featured as an innovative
new use of the Internet at the EduCOM conference in Philadelphia, and the following year it was still the only electronic alumni newsletter in the world. By 1995, more than 300 alumni were signed up. On Jan. 1, 1996, everything changed. The IBM grant funding BitNet ran out as well as other grants that were funding other bits and pieces of what had become the Internet. In order to continue, the non-profit restriction was lifted. During the spring of 1996, the Internet grew at 18,000 percent per month for three consecutive months. From the beginning, Blystone kept the Alumni Relations office informed. A draft of each issue was sent to them for review prior to transmission. But, in 1996, interest in the newsletter exploded. Subscriptions shot up from 300 to nearly 1,200. It became clear that AlumNet was going to have to evolve. It had become too big for two volunteers to support on a weekly basis. Four years after its creation, AlumNet became an official
monthly publication of Trinity University, and the offices of Alumni Relations and University Communications took over editorship. Today, AlumNet is transmitted to some 17,000 subscribers every month. New technologies have dressed it up with pictures and colors beyond the simple text-only format of AlumNet #1; however, the original issues in print can be viewed in the Archives at Coates Library. But it’s nice to know that Blystone’s legacy fills an important if little-known niche in history as the oldest university e-publication on earth. Happy 20th birthday, AlumNet. Steve Curry ’84 Editor’s note: Stephen Curry recently joined Trinity United Methodist Church in San Antonio as a student pastor. This internship will complete his seminary studies leading to a Master’s of Divinity at the Perkins School of Theology. Curry was a systems programmer at Trinity for 27 years.
Faculty, alumnus provide support, unity, and mentoring
Marshal, Sponsor Named for Class of 2016
K
imberlyn Montford, associate professor of music, and Jim Boelens ‘76, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, have been named Class Marshal and Alumni Sponsor, respectively, for the Class of 2016. The duo will frame the college experience for the class, offering to help students see where they are, where they have been, and where they are headed. A New Jersey native, Montford holds a Bachelor of Music from Westminster Choir College, a Master of Music from Northwestern University, and a doctorate from Rutgers University. She teaches courses ranging from hip hop culture to operas of Verdi and Wagner and researches documents containing the musical activities of nuns, which are housed in the Vatican archives. As Class Marshal, Montford will serve as a welcoming and personal representative of the faculty and advise the class on academic and personal matters.
50 Trinity
Kimberlyn Montford
Jim Boelens ’76
Boelens graduated from Trinity with B.A.s in journalism and English. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he earned his Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and served congregations in Omaha and Austin, prior to entering active duty as a chaplain with
the Army. Retired after 24 years, Boelens volunteers at the TSA Canine Breeding and Development Center, working with Labrador retriever puppies. As Alumni Sponsor, he will serve as a consistent presence and resource for students as they engage in the San Antonio community and off-campus issues.
A L U M N E W S
Chapter and Network Activities Arizona The chapter’s first alumni family picnic was held on October 13 at the Desert Horizon Park in Scottsdale. Alumni spanning four decades and their families enjoyed a barbecue, became reacquainted with former classmates, and met new friends. It was hard to tell who had a better time, the alumni or all the young kids running around together.
Atlanta Alumni from the class of 1997 to 2012 had a great time at a Happy Hour on September 12 at the Square Pub in downtown Decatur. It was an opportunity to relax after work and meet, reconnect, and network with fellow alumni. Trinity alumni and their families spent a cool yet sunny Sunday afternoon in Atlanta at the house of Nicole Allen ’94.
Drive with Trinity pride,
Benefit your Alma Mater
T
rinity University specialty plates are available for the first time and may be purchased through MyPlates, the official Texas specialty plate vendor. Released in October, the plates are DMV certified and made to fit on a wide range of vehicles including automobiles, motorcycles, and boats. Trinity University plates start at $55 for a one-year, backgroundonly design, and personalization starts at $85 for one year. The cost per year decreases with the number of years the plates are ordered. Ten percent of sales from the specialty plates benefits Trinity University.Additional pricing details and other information are available at www.myplates.com/go/trinity
“Same plate I’ve had for 25 years, better background,” writes Kevin Jones ’81 of his new Trinity license plate. Buy yours at myplates.com/go/trinity
January 2013 51
A L U M N E W S
Colorado
Austin Chapter alumni set sail on a boat cruise on Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin to support Hospice Austin’s Camp Brave Heart.
Austin
Bay Area
The chapter set sail on July 27 on Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin to support Hospice Austin’s Camp Brave Heart, a three-day camp for kids who have recently lost a loved one. Fun and fellowship was had by all with special thanks to the sponsors Mangia’s Pizza, Schlotsky’s Sandwiches, Tito’s Vodka, and Brown Distributing. On September 27, alumni gathered at the Handlebar for “First September,” an event to rally around students fresh out of Trinity embarking on their first September not attending school.
San Francisco’s Biergarten on Octavia was the venue for an alumni social hour on October 3.
Jenny Savage ’05, president of the Colorado Alumni Chapter, Jim Laurie ’63, son of former Trinity President James Laurie; Neal Patrick, a guest; and Kate Wilson ’06 were among many alumni and parents who gathered at the reception with Trinity University President Dennis A. Ahlburg on August 13 at the home of Trinity Trustee Miles Cortez ’65 and his wife Jan Cortez in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado.
52 Trinity
Chicago About a dozen alumni met on October 11 for Happy Hour at the Zed451 on Clark Street.
Alumni met at Wynkoop Brewing Company in downtown Denver on July 11 for a beer tasting and tour. Wynkoop’s conductor/ idea man, Marty Jones, led the group on a tour through the brewery while describing the “liquid art” they were drinking. At the end of the tour, Jones pulled out a guitar and performed his own beer-themed songs before tapping a 5-gallon keg of the one-time only wheat beer that Wynkoop brewed for the event: “Tiger’s Pride.” The next event was the family picnic at Washington Park in Denver on September 16. About 30 alumni were in attendance, with classes represented from the 70s through the 2000s. The weather cooperated perfectly. Alumni and their guests were able to enjoy hamburgers and hotdogs by the lake at the park. A corn-hole tournament was played, with Whitney Irwin ’06 sweeping the bracket. Scott Spencer MHA ’09 and Dave Siever ’03 came
in second. On October 11, the chapter hosted professor Amer Kaissi, from the Healthcare Administration department, for a lecture on healthcare reform at the Denver Press Club. Kaissi described reform provisions from the point of view of both presidential candidates, as well as what might happen after the November elections.
Dallas The annual “Welcome to Dallas” Happy Hour was held at J. Black’s on June 21, 2012. Alumni toasted the 2012 graduates and welcomed them to the Dallas chapter. The 11th Annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas was proud to host Trinity alumni at the grand penthouse of the Stoneleigh Hotel on July 12 for their opening night party. They all knew it was the real deal the moment the Lion Dancers came busting through the crowd for a special
A L U M N E W S
Alumni and their families gathered at Washington Park in Denver on September 16. Nearly 30 alumni were in attendance, with classes represented from the 70s through the 2000s.
Alumni met at Wynkoop Brewing Company in downtown Denver on July 11 for a beer tasting and tour.
January 2013 53
A L U M N E W S
Colorado-area alumni enjoyed a tour (and Michael Phelps run-in!) on May 19 at the Olympic Training Center led by Terris Tiller ‘00. surprise performance. From the party, several alumni attended the Texas Premiere of Ace Attorney from the very prolific and popular Japanese director, Takeshi Miike at the Magnolia Theatre in the West Village. The chapter held a “Back to School” service project with Community Partners on July 21. It was well organized and timed well enough that it wasn’t too exhausting. It was a great opportunity for alumni to serve the community and connect with fellow alumni. Alumni also
54 Trinity
met on September 16 to cheer on the Texas Rangers against the Seattle Mariners. The Rangers won 2-1, bringing a bright ending to a drizzly Sunday. The chapter held its “First September” on September 28 at El Fenix Mexican Restaurant to welcome recent alumni to the area. The next event was the wine tasting on October 17 at Wine’tastic. A hand-picked selection of wines, customcreated for Trinity alumni, was offered with introductions on each special pick. Wines
were sampled while light hors d’oeuvres were served.
Fort Worth The Fort Worth chapter held its annual “Welcome to Fort Worth” Happy Hour on June 21 at Chuy’s on West 7th Street to honor the 2012 graduates. Those who came had a great time establishing new connections or catching up with old friends. The chapter held its “First September” Happy
Hour at Bar Louie in the West 7th area of Fort Worth. Alumni met again at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art on October 20 for a special tour of the new exhibition, To See as Artists See: American Art from The Phillips Collection. It is the first large-scale, traveling presentation of The Phillips’s celebrated collection of American art. On November 3, the Fort Worth and Dallas chapters teamed up to support the Dallas Mavericks at their home opener against the Charlotte Bobcats.
A L U M N E W S
The Mavericks returned the favor by taking care of business and picking up their third win of the season. Good times were had by all. A sincere thank you to all who came and pulled together to make this a fun and successful event!
The Fort Worth Chapterarea alumni met at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art on October 20 for a special tour of the new exhibition “To See as Artists See: American Art from the Phillips Collection.” Left to right: Kyle Felix, Kristie Gibson, Amber and Bryan Cancel, Rush Olson, Phillip, Blake and Jessica Poole, Michael Johnston, Jodi and Doug Saegesser.
Houston The Houston-area alumni got together on June 28 at Celtic Gardens to welcome in the 2012 graduates to the Houston community. This is always one of the chapter’s most well attended events. More than 70 alumni gathered to share stories of college and professional life while enjoying tasty food and cold drinks. The chapter alumni gathered at the Inn at the Ballpark on July 8 to enjoy drinks and appetizers before the Astros took on the Brewers. It was a fun game with a good mix of alumni and families. The game went to extra innings, and we ended up losing 5 to 3, but the gathering was not dampened, even by the storm. Alumni attended the Houston Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of The Wizard of Oz on July 21. They enjoyed the large-screen presentation of the show. To kick off the fall season, alumni gathered on September 15 at the popular Saint Arnold’s Brewery to enjoy some local craft beer and tour the brewery. This was one of the most popular events of the year as TU alumni of all ages came out to catch up and network over cold drinks and tasty tacos. We look forward to continuing this event in the future! The chapter’s golf tournament on October 20 at Tour 18 was also a great success. The weather was perfect for the nine groups to play for trophies, prizes, and bragging rights. Trophies were awarded to each member of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams. Special thanks go to the sponsors of the event and event volunteers.
Nine teams squared off at the Houston golf tournament on October 20 at an amazingly manicured golf course of Tour 18.
The Houston-area alumni had a great time at the Trinity Day at the Astros on Sunday, July 8.
January 2013 55
A L U M N E W S The Greater Los Angeles chapter-area alumni enjoyed whale watching on August 4 in Newport Beach.
Greater Los Angeles Alumni enjoyed whale watching on August 4 in Newport Beach. They saw lots of marine life, including two blue whales, and had a wonderful time.
Nashville Alumni gathered on August 16 for a Night at the Nashville Sounds. They enjoyed the lovely evening and celebrated the Sounds’ win on “Elvis Night” at Greer Stadium. As usual, the “dizzy spin around the bat” fan game was the crowd favorite! Be on the lookout for information on their next event, tentatively scheduled for early 2013.
National Capital Area On a beautiful day in August, alumni gathered at the home of Luke Peterson ’02 and family for the National Capital Area Summer Potluck BBQ. Many attendees were new to the area and happy to reunite with former classmates over brisket and beer. On September 21, alumni met to cheer on the Washington Nationals as they took on the Milwaukee Brewers. The chapter held a private tour of the U.S. Supreme Court, arranged by General William Suter ‘59, on September 26. After the tour, all attendees had the opportunity to meet with General Suter in his offices. On October 6, alumni stepped back into the Texas Hill Country as they gathered for lunch at Hill Country BBQ. Thirty-one attendees enjoyed reminiscing about their college days while enjoying Texas specialties such as brisket, Kreuz sausage, corn pudding, and Blue Bell ice cream. The chapter plans to continue this annual tradition. On November 5, Trinity alumni gathered at a local Washington D.C. tavern to test their knowledge of current events, politics, and popular culture. Although the group’s knowledge of George Clooney movies was limited, they made a come back during the ge-
56 Trinity
Carrie Bryant ‘05 and Leslie South ‘04 enjoyed meeting Nashville area-alumni while watching the Nashville Sounds.
ography round -- and were proud not to finish in last place.
New York On a hot August afternoon, a group of brave Trinity alumni visited the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden (also known as the Astoria Beer Garden) to mingle and meet. Sitting at long tables in the backyard of New York’s oldest beer garden, folks reminisced over beers and brats. It was a fun-filled afternoon and a great way to kick-off the 2012-2013 events calendar! On September 20, alumni gathered to celebrate the beginning of fall at Hill Country Barbeque. With great food and plenty of Shiner Bock beer to go around, alumni from all ages networked, caught up with friends, and met fellow alumni over guacamole and barbeque sliders.
On a beautiful day in August, the DC area-alumni gathered at the home of Luke Peterson ‘02 and family for the National Capital Area Chapter’s Summer Potluck BBQ.
A L U M N E W S
Oklahoma City Alumni in the Oklahoma City area enjoyed wine, appetizers, and good company during a wine tasting at Bin 73 on October 3, 2012.
San Antonio On August 23, more than 50 alumni representing six decades attended a Kick-Off Happy Hour at Tycoon Flats. It was another successful start to the chapter’s 2012-2013 event season. Trinity University Making Connections 2012 was the most interactive, engaging event to date! YEAH! Seventy-nine students registered and 79 students attended so we had more students than alumni for the first time! Fifty-six alumni attended and everyone had the opportunity to tweet questions and concerns about careers in real time and find answers quickly. The thought-provoking keynote speaker, Trinity Trustee Tres Kleberg ’65, said the key to professional networking began with developing, then nurturing, great relationships. He was followed by Drew Scheberle ’93, senior VP of Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, who was also dynamic and gave valuable insights for students on current trends in careers in central Texas. Despite the early morning rain, October 14 turned out to be a great day for Trinity soccer. Both the men’s and women’s teams beat Centenary (La), while a crowd of close to 50 alumni and their families cheered them on. The jerseys and t-shirts provided by soccer coaches, Paul McGinlay and Lance Key, were a huge hit!
The NCA Chapter area-alumni enjoyed stepping back into the Texas Hill Country on October 6. They gathered for lunch at Hill Country BBQ, which reminded them of their San Antonio days at Trinity.
More than 50 alumni representing six decades attended the San Antonio Alumni Kick-Off Happy Hour on August 23 at Tycoon Flats.
January 2013 57
C L A S S
San Diego
Seattle
On September 15, alumni and their families went to La Jolla Shores beach for a sunset bonfire. The chapter provided hot dogs and s’mores for roasting over the fire and hot chocolate to keep them warm. All had a great time!
The Seattle chapter-area alumni took a tour on August 25 of Pike Place Market. included stops at Vital Tea Leaf, DeLaurentis, Bottega Italiana, Crumpet Shop, BB Ranch, Pike Place Chowder, Pure Food Fish Market, Truffle Cafe and Seatown. They enjoyed the fellowship with Trinity alumni on this wonderful tour.
A C T S A note about photo submissions: Digital photos should be saved at a minimum size of 4” x 6” at a resolution of 300 dpi or 1200 x 1800 pixels. Save in jpg format and e-mail as attachments to alumni@trinity.edu. Prints should be mailed to: Office of Alumni Relations, Trinity University, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas 78212-7200 There’s a chapter near you! If you would like to be involved in chapter activities or to serve on the Board, contact these respective chapter presidents. The ones listed with * denote that they are not yet established chapters. They are in the formation stage.
Fort Worth Bryan Cancel ’98 bcancel@hotmail.com ftworth@alum.trinity.edu
*Albuquerque: Scott Webster ‘85 scott.webster@pnm.com
New England (includes New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut) Jessica Patrick ‘02, stillchasingsummer@gmail.com NewEngland@alum.trinity.edu
Arizona Bryan Bertucci ’95 bbertucci@hotmail.com Arizona@alum.trinity.edu
Alumni and their family members in the San Diego Chapter gathered for the Sunset Bonfire at La Jolla Shores beach on September 15.
Dion Wade ’02 and Heidi Ochoa ’77 enjoyed the stop at DeLaurenti Specialty Food & Wine during the Pike Place Market tour.
Atlanta Dan Wright ’96, danielswright@yahoo.com Atlanta@alum.trinity.edu Austin Rich Coffey ’02, rcoffey30@hotmail.com Austin@alum.trinity.edu The Bay Area Walter Evans ’07, wevans1@alum.trinity.edu thebayarea@alum.trinity.edu Chicago Erin Baker ‘99 erinmbaker22@gmail.com Chicago@alum.trinity.edu Colorado Jenny Savage ’05, JennySavage2@gmail.com Colorado@alum.trinity.edu Dallas Natalie Webb ’04, nataliewebb82@gmail.com Dallas@alum.trinity.edu *Florida Jody Tompson ’87 jtompson@ut.edu
58 Trinity
Houston Craig Fecel ’00, cfecel2@gmail.com Houston@alum.trinity.edu *Kansas City Travis Holt ‘06 tholt@alum.trinity.edu Los Angeles Matt Clark ‘92 Matt.Clark@pimco.com LosAngeles@alum.trinity.edu National Capital Area Genevieve Moreland ‘97 Genevievem@juno.com NationalCapitalArea@alum.trinity. edu
New York Nora Ziegenhagen ‘04, nziegenh@gmail.com NewYork@alum.trinity.edu Oklahoma City Jenny Richard ‘97 Jennyarichard@yahoo.com OklahomaCity@alum.trinity.edu *Portland Jonathan Logan ‘84 loganjonathan@comcast.net San Antonio James Sanders ‘98, james.sanders@mssb.com SanAntonio@alum.trinity.edu San Diego Sara Quarterman ‘04, sara.quarterman@gmail.com SanDiego@alum.trinity.edu Seattle Heather Richardson ‘06 heatherita@gmail.com Seattle@alum.trinity.edu St. Louis Courtney Rawlins ‘00 courtneyrawlins@aol.com StLouis@alum.trinity.edu *Tulsa Hilary McKinney ‘07 hilarymckinney@gmail.com
C L A S S
Class Acts 1943 Margaret Pearson Baublit Seehafer attended Trinity in the winter of 1939-40 and is interested in hearing from anyone who was in school with her.
1947 Catherine Boand Miller has been elected Incoming president of Resident’s Association of Bayou Manor in Houston.
1948
1957 Leon Ginsberg was the keynote speaker at the 13th Annual Social Work Conference held at Coker College in October. He received The Council on Social Work Education’s Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Award in 2011. Three recent books, The Hope for School Reform,The New Social Studies: People, Projects, and Perspectives, and The Tragedy of School Reform, as well as a forthcoming Constructivism and the New Social Studies, collectively, include Allan Kownslar’s role as one of the nation’s main leaders in the New Social Studies Movement with emphasis on ten of his books, which stress an inquiry-oriented,
A C T S point-counterpoint approach to the writing and teaching of history and political science. Bobbie Braly Smetherman thought it time for a reunion with her good friends and former suitemates who had lived on the third floor of Isabel for their last two years at Trinity. She e-mailed Mary Jane Grafton Judd, Dorothy Lass Christ Tilson, and Lanelle Waddil Taylor. The four gathered at the home of Dorothy Tilson in Pasadena, Calif. Mary Jane reported that for three days they enjoyed the pool, they ate, talked,and reminisced, but also took time for the Huntington and a play at the Los Angeles Concert Hall. Charles H. Teykl is serving as a parish associate at St. Phillip Presbyterian Church in Hurst, Texas.
1959 William K. Suter completed 50 years of consecutive federal service on September 2, 2012. He entered the Army on September 2, 1962, retired on February 1, 1991, and was appointed Clerk of the Supreme Court the same day.
1960 Betty Jameson Verdino sent a photograph of the “Wine and Music” event honoring Lucia and Larry Street ’59 and celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County, Texas.
Lucille Leal Bridgewater lives in Phoenix where she does volunteer work and enjoys traveling.
1954 Gayle Smith Epperson and Virginia Grafa Stotts were in North Carolina in the summer enjoying scenic views and walking some of the Appalachian Trail. On the way home, they stopped by Greensboro, N.C., to visit with Mary Webb Olson ’56 and in Jacksonville, Texas, to see Mary “Pid” Bone Adamson ’51.
Allan Kownslar
L-R, Angelo Verdino, Betty Verdino ’60. Lucia Street ’59. and Larry Street ’59
The Geosciences Field Trip to the Hill Country in October 2012 was a huge success with students, faculty, and alumni from the 60s to present day participating.
January 2013 59
C L A S S
For the Record Marriages
1961 Fredrick Finch has published Starry Nights: Stories of The Days With Jesus. Fred lives in Birmingham, Ala. and is a retired Riverside editor-in -chief.
Lorrie Hayes and David W. Castle ‘81
A C T S
1973 Bob Warneke has retired from his position at the State of Texas and is working as a travel adviser for his wife’s company, JB Journeys.
January 7, 2012 ¢ Nora Bernson and David Abell ‘89 September 15, 2012 ¢ Marty Canner and Tracy Gostyla ‘95 April 21, 2012 ¢ Gerald Dax Pummill and Heather MacKay Morlang ‘98 June 9, 2012 ¢ Chris Jackson and Stephanie Plagens ‘01 June 17, 2012 ¢ Long Le and
1964 Kay Jordan is the recipient of the Each Moment Matters Award presented by the Presbyterian Communities and Services Foundation. She is being honored for her work at Faith Presbyterian Hospice in Dallas.
1974 Naomi Shihab Nye has been named laureate of the 2013 NSA Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. She will be presented the $25,000 prize, a silver medallion, and a certificate during official ceremonies at the University of Oklahoma in fall 2013.
Jennifer Powell ‘02 July 6, 2012 ¢ Sean O’Neal and Jessica Rangel ‘04 June 2, 2012 ¢ Taylor Oliver ’05 and Danielle Mitchell ‘05 April 14, 2012 ¢ Ryan Condon ’05 and Holly Frindell ‘06 June 2, 2012 ¢ Phil Avacato ’09 and Meaghan Golden
1969 E.J. “Jere” Pederson is the former executive vice president and CEO of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He will be serving as the acting head of Texas A&M Health Science Center.
‘09 February 11, 2012 ¢ Jason Roe ’06 and Sarah Lube ‘09 June 30, 2012
1972
¢ Jonathan Rasmussen and Christina Carni ‘10 February 11, 2012
Births Olivia Lily Mitchell to Craig Mitchell and Katherine Chiarello ‘95 March 24, 2012 ¢ Tessa Grace to Kristen and Doug Conyers ‘97 August 22, 2012 ¢ Dylan William to Jason and Lindsay Anhold Lew ‘97 July 12, 2012 ¢ Blythe to Alistair and Lee Boyd Charlton ‘99 March 4, 2012 ¢ Chloe Evelyn to Matt and Kathleen Chamberlain Yarbro ‘99 February 2, 2011 ¢ Adrian Christopher to Alfonso and Kathryn Feazel Ibarreta ‘01 August 30, 2012 ¢ Alexandra Catherine to Christopher and Jenny Chriesl Ogle ‘01 February 10, 2012 ¢ Dixon Bennett to Ryan ’04 and Shelley Laabs Weber ‘01 June 5, 2012 ¢ Ofelia Ana to Damian and Erika Lamoreaux Cano ‘02 May 28, 2012 ¢ Etienne to Erick and Karen Booker Estrada ‘02 May 4, 2012 ¢ Adelaide Robertson to Jeffrey ’01 and Samantha Robertson Holy ‘02 July 26, 2012 ¢ Piper Jean to Ben ’02 and Lane Hermann Rideout ‘02 June 11, 2012 ¢ Logan Patrick to Daniel and Emily Moeller White ‘02 November 21, 2011
60 Trinity
John Hall is the recipient of the Lynn Ford Craftsman Award from the San Antonio Conservation Society. Over the past 35 years, Hall has finely-crafted millwork to produce matches that have contributed to the rehabilitation of a number of historic buildings in the San Antonio area. Dr. Bernard J. Horak is the director of the master’s program in health services administration at Georgetown University. Wayne Smith is one of only eight national health leaders who have been included in all eleven of the rankings published annually in the magazine, Modern Healthcare. Smith is president and chief executive officer of Community Health Systems in Franklin, Tenn. Other Trinity alumni included on the list were Joe Allison ’73, president and CEO of Baylor Health Care System in Dallas, and Douglas Hawthorne ’69 ’72, president and CEO of Presbyterian Health Care Resources of Dallas. Belle Wheelan was the opening speaker at The Links, Inc., the Historically Black Colleges and Universities-Community College Collaborative Convention in June. The organization works to build strong ties between schools and enhance completion rates. Wheelan is chief executive officer for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. In addition to her receiving the Distinguished Alumna Award in 2002, she has been honored with four honorary degrees, and the AAUW Woman of Distinction Award in 2002, and was named in Washingtonian magazine among the 100 Most Powerful Women in Washington, D.C.
1975 Harry “Bud” Holzman is a retired U.S. Army officer and petroleum geologist who has advised the U.S. Central Command on oil and gas matters in Iraq. In 2004, the Army put him in charge of evaluating the entire Iraqi infrastructure system, from oil and natural gas to electricity, including how to estimate what the country has and how to rebuild it. This included refineries, pipelines, and electric power generation plants. Larry Waks is included in the 2013 edition of Best Lawyers in America.
1978
Cheese Club. Lima has published short stories, fiction, and non-fiction throughout her writing career and was nominated for an Agatha Award for best short story. Uma Pemmaraju was one of six Northside ISD alumni honored at Westin La Cantera Resort at a gala sponsored by the NISD Partnership organization, where she received the Pillar of Responsibility award. She is currently an anchor and host for the Fox News Channel, “America’s News HQ.”
1981 Sally Bailey has been promoted to full professor in theatre at Kansas State University. She was awarded the American Alliance for Theatre in Education Distinguished Book Award 2011 for her book, Barrier-Free Theatre.
1982 Scott Blount has joined the Sullivan International Group as chief operations officer working out of the San Francisco office. David Holmes spoke at a dinner and reception honoring the new members of Alpha Kappa Psi on April 14 in the Skyline Room at Trinity. Holmes reflected on changes in the business world over the last thirty years and new challenges faced by the class as they launch their business careers.
Kimberly Dotson is a Doctor of Audiology living in King City, Ore. She has received the Charles Holland Award for Excellence for her superior service at So-
1984
Kimberly Dotson
1985
nus Westside, a premier audiology clinic. Raul E. Hinojosa has been appointed to the Board of the U.S. Selection Service System.
Jim Grocholski has been named CEO of the 65-bed Wesley Rehabilitation Hospital in Wichita, Kan.
Colin Campbell has been elected to a third term on the board of directors of the Visual Effects Society, the entertainment industry’s organization representing all areas of film, television, and commercials, with 2,500 members in 29 countries. Robert Delwood is the senior systems analyst at Barios Technology in NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston. XML Press recently published Delwood’s The Secret Life of Word. It explains MicrosoftWord’s automation and scripting abilities.
1986 1980 Robert Bowling has been appointed a U.S. administrative law judge and assigned to Huntington, W.Va. Maria Lima presented a writer’s workshop at San Antonio College, sponsored by the Cheshyre
Gretchen Magers has been named women’s tennis head coach at ClaremontMudd-Scripps. She has been head coach at San Diego City College since 2008 and previously served as tennis professional at several prestigious clubs on the California
C L A S S
coast. Gretchen was a quarterfinalist at the U.S. Open, French Open, and Wimbledon. She represented the United States in the 1984 Olympics and a number of international events. Mike Hensley and his wife, Carol, have bottled their inaugural 2009 Hensley Family Vineyards Hillside Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley, producing 395 cases to be distributed in Calif., Texas, and Washington, D.C. Julie Keim performed at the Victoria Bach Festival. She sang the soprano role in the famous American masterwork, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, by Samuel Barber. Jerome Renaud and Laura Eastman Renaud reside in Dunwoody, Ga. They recently celebrated their 26th anniversary and the high school graduation of their daughter.
1987 Michael C. McMurray was elected by the Board of Directors of Owens Corning to be vice president and chief financial officer. He has been with Owens Corning since 2008 following two decades with Royal Dutch Shell.
1988 Bryce D. Linsenmayer has been named a partner in the Houston office of McGuireWoods LLP. His practice includes mergers and acquisitions, stock and asset acquisitions, and joint ventures. Following graduation, Talley Summerlin formed a rock band with his brothers. They toured the Southeast for about 13 years. He has resumed writing songs and has recently released his first solo EP called Shake the Gates. He lives in Madison, N.J., and will perform for the next year in the Northeast U.S.
A C T S
For the Record 1990 Margaret Oertling Cupples is a managing partner in the firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and has been listed in the inaugural edition of the top 250 Women in Litigation. Her practice focuses on civil appeals and commercial litigation. Kristene West Hays is an educator in the Northeast ISD in San Antonio. Christian Mammen has been named a partner in the firm of Hogan Lovells. He practices intellectual property litigation, with an emphasis on patent litigation. He recently served as acting assistant dean of international and graduate programs and visiting professor with the University of California Hastings College.
1991 Bill Holmes has been promoted to first chief business development officer at Netflix, Inc. in Los Gatos, Calif.
1992 Sue Chen is the founder of Nova Medical Products and has been named one of Fortune magazine’s 2011 “10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.” She will be speaking at the October 24th Conference for Women in Austin. Michael Roth is the new principal of Vera Scott Elementary School in Colorado Springs.
1993 Tiffani Richburg Lupenski is now the news director at the KATU-TV, the ABC affiliate in Portland, Ore. She has been an executive producer in Seattle and Denver, and she previously worked for CNN Headline News.
(continued)
¢ Peighton Song to T.J. ’04 and Carolyn Nguyen Collier ‘03 April 4, 2011 ¢ Andrew Connor to Bryan ’04 and Sarah Empson Quilici ‘03 April 8, 2012
1994 Kelly Mullins Haas was joined by alumni football players and their families for a reunion and a Tiger football game. The group included Jeff Bryan, Martin Kellner, Derrick Stokes, John Tobola. Also, Garrett Taylor ’92, Ross Copeland ’95 and Joe Terry ’95. Amy Waddell Stewart left her “cutest little town in Conneticut” to return to Colorado. They are living in Broomfield, Colo. Amy is looking forward to volunteering at school with Young Life in Boulder. Eric Youngstrom has been named vice president of marketing for Food On The Table, a consumer app that powers the shopping and meal planning experiences of more than one million families.
1995 Tanya Spencer serves as the acting principal officer of the U.S. Consulate General in Dubai. She joined the Consulate as chief of the political/economic section in 2011. She has served in Kabul, Afghanistan, as special assistant to the Ambassador in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as an economic officer, and in Bratislava,
1989 David Abell is a “serial entrepreneur” whose latest company is TriLumina Corp., maker of the world’s fastest and most powerful semiconductor lasers. Christopher Haunschild has joined the tax department in the international firm of Greenberg Taurig, LLP. He is located in the Silicon Valley, Calif. office.
Births
Pictured, from left to right, Sam Warters ‘03, Jenny De Souza Venza (03’), and Kate Rawley Warters ‘04 at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
In Memoriam Mary Jane Harty ‘35 July 21, 2012 Elizabeth Motley ‘38 August 2, 2012 Mildred Naomi Stacks Rausal ‘39 May 19, 2012 Rev. Edward M. Esler ‘45 March 14, 2012 Alice Paul Tyson Jacob ‘46 July 1, 2012 Betty Grisham Ullman ‘46 July 7, 2012 John R. Silber ‘47 September 27, 2012 Wanda Addington Cates ‘48 September 3, 2012 Charles “Chuck” Arthur Lewis ‘48 August 16, 2012 David C. Paul ‘48 October 11, 2012 Dorothy Stephens Sharpe ‘48 August 7, 2012 Norma Johnston ‘49 July 22. 2012 Alfred “Al” West ‘50 July 29, 2012 Earl Wisdom ‘50 August 9, 2012 Henry “Hank” G. Escobedo ‘51 June 4, 2012 James Ralph “Jim” Ferguson ‘51 June 27, 2012 Samuel Miles King ‘51 August 19, 2012 William McCall ‘51 September 8, 2012 Dr. Gordon O. Stafford ‘52 June 28, 2012 Donald Kennedy ‘54 September 3, 2012 Dalton E. Klaus ‘55 April 1, 2012 Irving I. Lipskind ‘55 May 26, 2012 Lou Ippolito Smith ‘56 June 17, 2012
January 2013 61
C L A S S
For the Record In Memoriam Charles “Ted” Kastor ‘57 February 28, 2012 William Alfred Moerner ‘58 September 9, 2012 Louis A. “Charlie” Millican ‘59 May 11, 2012 Betty Ann Janert ‘61 September 4, 2012 Winnie Ruth Marsh Price ‘61 August 2, 2012 Dwight A Carper ‘ 62 April 10, 2010 Patricia Elizabeth Nevins McIlhenny ‘63
Slovakia, as a political officer.
1996 Susan Conley has been named CEO for DeKalb Community Hospital in Smithville and Stones River Hospital in Woodbury, Tenn.
1997 Michael Beaver has been named president of St. Anthony Hospital by SSM Health Care Oklahoma. Major Beth Kelley Horine took command of the 4th Combat Camera Squadron August 4, 2012 at March Air Reserve Base, Calif. She recently received an in-residence Masters of Military Arts and Sciences from Air University In June.
May 9, 2012 Patricia Singleton ‘63
1998
July 28, 2012 Alex Thomas ‘63
A C T S
Simon R. Mayer is an associate in the
From left to right, siblings Suzanne Mammen ‘99 and Christopher Mammen ‘05, George Thomas ‘98, and Margot Slosson Fuentes ‘09 visited Cuba for a week in October with the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.
September 8, 2012 Christos Zachariades ‘65
2001
July 24, 2012
2004
George B. Killick ‘66
Kevin C. Hughes resides in the Netherlands, where he is senior legal officer for the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Den Haag, Netherlands.
August 21, 2012 J. Howard Fitch ‘71 September 16, 2012 Paul Callihan ‘72
2002
March 31, 2012 Joseph Cavin ‘72 September 3, 2012 Joseph Charles Lusco ‘72 June 4, 2012 Jack Max “Jackie” Landman, Jr. ‘74 August 17, 2012 Sharon Joan Vaughan ‘75 June 11, 2012 John Winston Moseley ‘79 October 25, 2011 Harry S. Redmon, III ‘84 June 6, 2012 Ted Turner ‘86 June 6, 2012 Deborah S. Bryant ‘87 June 1, 2012 Lee Dirks ‘88
Simon R. Mayer firm of Hughes Watters Askanase in Houston where he received the 2011-2012 President’s Award for outstanding contributions as co-chair of the Eikenburg Law Week Fun Run Committee. The award was presented at the annual Houston Bar Association dinner at the River Oaks Country Club.
1999 Monica Vargas-Mahar is the COO of the Providence Memorial Hospital in El Paso, a 359-bed hospital owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. She is being recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the Up and Comers of 2012
August 28, 2012 Tiffany Tankersley ‘90
2000
September 7, 2012
Canaan C. Factor has accepted the position of vice president at Post Oak Energy Capital. He resides in Houston.
2003 Aaron M. Harison co-founded the online news publication The Washington Free Beacon. He currently serves as the president of the site’s parent organization, The Center for American Freedom, which is based in Washington, D.C. Celina Suarez has been named to the faculty at the University of Arkansas. Suarez is an assistant professor in the department of geosciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. She was featured in a 2011 episode of the television show Dirty Jobs to showcase the physically demanding nature of paleontological research on a dig site. She was described by the show’s host as a “cardiovascular machine with a giant brain and an insatiable level of curiosity.”
Jennifer L. Bergman lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she is a partner in a law office. She has been selected by the Rotary Club to go to the Virgin Islands for a Group Study Exchange to learn about the people and the culture of the region.
2005 Morley Healy is a program manager for Via Christi Health, Kansas’ largest health-services provider. She was named to the Board of Directors of Ballantine Communications, Inc. Miranda McGee taught a three-class Shakespeare in the Summer workshop at the Howmet Playhouse in Cincinnati. In July she performed in The Nerd.
2006 Laurie Mont teaches and works her own line of designs at the Austin School of Fashion and Design. After a brief time designing children’s clothing at Carter’s, Mont moved back to Austin and started teaching a variety of classes. Her line of feminine dresses, jackets, and more are on www.lauriemont.com.
Rachel Petrich Cook is a new associate at Alliance Title, LLC in Baton Rouge, La.
2008 Nickolas Chea has been accepted to an executive MBA program at UTSA. He has
62 Trinity
Bobby McKinney ’07 married Jenny Robicheaux ’09 on April 17, 2011. Alumni in the wedding party included (left to right) are Steven Leach ’07, Claire Adams ’09, Adrian Chenault ’07, Jenny Robicheaux McKinney ’09, Bobby McKinney ’07, Adam Clemmons ’05, Matt Simmons ’06, Danielle Dory ’09, Ron Fortin ’08, and Jill Rushing ’08.
Progress in Washington, D. C. also recently received a promotion with Valero Energy. Renae Goettel benefited from the Make-A-Wish organization and as a result she met her idol, Sean Elliot. That brought her to San Antonio and to Trinity. After graduation she worked for the Spurs and is now involved with the Make-A-Wish organization. On September 23, in Seattle, she was working on the 5K walk and fund raiser at Marymoor Park. Son Nguyen has entered
2011 Alisa Dill is attending the University of Texas School of Dentistry in Houston. Elenora M. Leeper serves as the director of young professional relations for the Downtown Alliance San Antonio. Greg Starbird is a second year MFA lighting design student at the University of Houston. He is also a TA for lighting and sound technology and oversees the undergraduate lighting crew.
2012
Son Nguyen the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as a full-time MBA candidate. Angeline Vuong graduated from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley in May and has accepted a position as project manager for immigration policy and economic policy at the Center for American
Patrick Crim entered the Sixth Annual LG Mobile U.S. National Texting Championships. The competition began with 100,000 entrants that over eight weeks was narrowed to 180 and that was narrowed to 10 finalists that included Crim. Unfortunately, he did not win the $50,000. Zach Garcia recently signed a professional contract with the San Antonio Scorpions of the North American Soccer League. Ben Klimesh has been drafted by the Cincinnati Reds and “is ready to work his way toward his dream of pitching in the big leagues.” At Trinity he broke the conference records for career strikeouts and strikeouts in a season and ranks in the top 10 in Division III History for career strikeouts. Paige Perry has been advised that her just published book, Turn The Page, is available from Amazon.
Pictured left to right are Candice Comeaux ’01, Kathlyn “Kylie” Feazel Ibarreta ’01, and Andrea Schoeneberger Shields ’01 at a baby shower in Waltham, Mass.
January 2013 63
A Christmas Vision By James W. Laurie, president, Trinity University, 1951-1970 Reprinted from San Antonio Express and News Sunday, December 23, 1962
T
he Christmas I remember best was spent in the hospital. Eyes bandaged. Visibility, zero.
It was December of 1959. My doctor had given me the dreary verdict of almost complete immobility for weeks, and forecast for recovery of vision in one eye (the good one) was then uncertain. Even with people in the room, one becomes very lonely in the dark. Especially is this true when one is accustomed to the active life of the bustling campus of a young and vigorous university. For a much longer period of time than a minister cares to admit, it did not seem possible for me to maintain vision without sight. Then came the almost ludicrous moment when our University architects brought to my hospital room six beautiful drawings of proposed new buildings. What could I say? How could I critique these architectural conceptions with both eyes so blindly harnessed? And then it came clearly into focus what must be done. I would see these structures in a manner that would transcend sight, through sharing them with others in terms of the great educational purposes to be served. Upon my invitation, friends of the University came to discuss these matters with me in my hospital room, until I came to “see” these buildings with more meaningful perception than ever before. And viewing the drawings under such circumstances seemed to help me communicate much more effectively the vital role of Christian education in the life of this nation and its people. Today I can look out my window on this campus and see all but one of those drawings outlined against the sky, vibrant indeed in the life of this University. And yet, in some ways, they will never again be quite so poignantly real in my mind’s eye as they were on that Christmas eve three years ago. The spirit of Christmas? Traditionally it brings to mind Santa Claus and the reading of lovely messages on greeting cards and the lighting of trees and the exchanging of presents. But one who has encountered the harsh reality of blindness without warning discovers anew in Christmas its deeper spiritual meaning, surpassing the limitations of the physical view. For Christmas, as it has been so richly given me to see, really exists in the hearts of people who have been touched with the love of humanity, a love that tells of the concern of God for those whom He created and who belong to Him throughout eternity. At Christmas time, I am drawn ever more intently and clearly to this understanding of the true meaning of a moment in time when the love of God became visible and real and wonderfully sensitive in the life of a little Child. And this perception of the spirit is life’s greatest treasure, for it can be seen and understood even when one is separated in some physical way from the beauties of God’s material world.
64 Trinity
[ déjà view ]
Reflection Pool C
ompleted in 1952 with funding provided by Trinity trustee T. Frank k Murchison, the Reflection Pool once sparkled d as the Esplanade’s focal point on the new campus. us. s. In 1956 it was retrofitted d to feed a nearby waterfall and rock garden as a memorial to Murchison n who had died the previous ou o us year. Murchison envisioned oned ned ne the pool’s pure blue water ter er to be seen and appreciated atted ed by those who passed byy as as an adornment to the campus amp mpu uss landscaping. Trinity students, udent dent de nts, s, however, had other ideas ass regarding the pool’s functionalnct ctio iona nallity. Tossing unwilling victims iccti icti tim mss in the Reflection Pool’s shallow sha hall all llow lo ow w waters quickly became a d deeply de eep plyy engrained student tradition. ittio on n.. No No special occasions were necessary neccessa essaary es ry to prompt such immersions, siion sio ons, s, b u ut but first-year students were prime targets. It was not unusual for recent victims to appear in the dining hall dripping wet from their latest encounter with Trinity’s “outdoor baptistry.” At the end of the orientation period, sophomores dumped trash and left-over food on first-year students and directed them to wash off in the pool. Dunkings in the Reflection Pool were not limited to firstyear students. Newly elected class and student council officers, newly engaged couples, Greek pledges, and members of other campus organizations were subject to immersions that frequently turned into rowdy affairs. In the early 1960s a student suffered a serious gash to his
Circa Ci C irc rca 1963, 196 19 63 3, 3, bi b irt rthd hd h da ay ys re equ quir ire ed d birthdays required dun du nk k in in the the refl th refl re flec ec e cttiion on pool po oo ol a dunk ection on the th he e Esplanade. Esp spla an na ade de. on
h ad he d tthat haat h at re rrequired equ quir ired ed an an emergency emer em emer erge rgeenc ncy cy head trip to the hospital. The Office of Student Life threatened disciplinary action against students and organizations who continued to engage in the practice. As a result, the tradition evolved into a more genteel ritual of friends tossing friends into the pool on their birthdays. Long before its demise, the Reflection Pool suffered from benign neglect and student scorn. Despite sporadic efforts by physical plant staff to maintain water purity, the pool frequently contained algae and other aquatic growth along with debris from student pranks. Conditions became so bad in 1961 that a group of students undertook what they termed the “Reflection Pool War” by organizing an
aall-day al ll da d y event even ev even ent to to clean cle l an an the th hee pool pool ool oo and the nearby rock garden. That effort proved to be only a temporary fix. The pool continued to be plagued with algae and other pollutants. A 1964 Trinitonian report stated that “the surface of the water is now filled with the corpses of once-lively tadpoles, in addition to a few floating water bugs. Trinity may have to deal with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals before long.” The pool remained a fixture until periodic modifications reduced it to a small rock fountain surrounded by quadrants of grass and bisected by a paved walkway. Nearby benches provided seating for reading and relaxation. Over time, the birthday dunking tradition shifted to the Miller
Fo ou un nttaaiin n lo llocated cated cate ca teed on n a grassy grraassssy Fountain, site east of the original Northup Hall, where the circulating water was cleaner and the site less accident prone. In 1983 the Henry Moore sculpture, Large Interior Form, occupied the former site of the Reflection Pool. The brick perimeter is the only legacy of what was once Trinity’s miniature water park, the source of fun and consternation for numerous student generations. If you would like to share your stories or photographs of being dunked in the Reflection Pool with the Trinity University Special Collections and Archives, please contact Amy Roberson, special collections librarian and University archivist, at arobers1@ trinity.edu or (210) 999-7613. R. Douglas Brackenridge
Non-Profit Organization U. S. Postage PAID Permit No. 210 San Antonio, Texas 78212
One Trinity Place San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
change service requested
Coming this Spring Distinguished Lecture Series Series made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Walter F. Brown Sr. of San Antonio
February 5 Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2007 to 2010) 7:30 p.m., Laurie Auditorium
CAMERON LECTURE on politics and public affairs Lecture made possible by a gift from Mrs. Flora Crichton of San Antonio
Felipe Calderon, former president of Mexico (2006-2012) March 21, 7:30 p.m., Laurie Auditorium
Both Lectures are free, but tickets are required. See Trinity website for distribution dates.