Sombrilla Magazine | Summer 2022

SUMMER 2022

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EVERYTHING

DATA How UTSA is advancing data science and global cybersecurity while fostering economic development for San Antonio

P L U S : W E S T S I D E C O M M U N I T Y I M PA C T

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T I E R O N E S TAT U S

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Welcome to

SOMBRILLA MAGAZINE features | summer 2022

Lilliana Saldaña (right), professor and program coordinator for Mexican American Studies at UTSA, hands out breakfast tacos to participants of the Cesar Chavez March for Justice on the Westside in March. Learn more about UTSA’s efforts to support the Westside community on page 26.

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Everything Data

With the new School of Data Science and National Security Collaboration Center opening soon and top-level leaders guiding both entities, UTSA is securing its place as a forerunner in high-tech education. Learn more about how the nearly completed building and its inhabitants will spawn a new era of downtown growth.

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Westside Allied

From university leadership to faculty researchers to student volunteers, UTSA is committed to elevating San Antonio’s historic Westside. Read more about various projects at the university dedicated to boosting economic prosperity, educational attainment and the rich culture of the Westside community.

LIBBY CASTILLO / UTSA COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

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ORIENTATION

from the president’s desk by taylor eighmy

Data is All Around Us

U

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utsa is a hub of activity

summer 2022 issue 84

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nderstanding the impact that data has on our lives, UTSA made the decision to develop a new school dedicated to meeting the needs for data that powers our city and state economies.

The UTSA School of Data Science has been a cornerstone in our

vision to earn recognition as a world-class research institution. This past February we met that milestone, achieving the Tier One designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

With this designation, UTSA joins the top 4% of research institutions nationwide.

The school represents UTSA’s investment in the urban core—serving as the educational anchor of the city’s growing tech corridor. Data science jobs are some of the highest paying jobs available today. As we think about educational and economic equity in our community, we have an immense obligation to educate and prepare our students for the world. What better opportunity than to have students enter the myriad data science fields, graduate and stay in San Antonio to contribute to our community? As the roster of technology companies in San Antonio continues to grow, UTSA will have this center of excellence that will prepare students to be ready to meet the workforce needs of our city, state and nation.

The School of Data Science represents the beginning of our plans to significantly expand our Downtown Campus, bringing additional talent, energy and expertise to the heart of the city.

Our National Security Collaboration Center (NSCC) will be colocating with the school in our new state-of-the-art building. The NSCC is an integral component to UTSA’s work to build new research and development opportunities within the larger cybercommand ecosystem.

In this edition of Sombrilla Magazine, we also take a look at our investment in San Antonio’s Westside. From helping homeowners cut down on costs to strengthening businesses and expanding economic development opportunities, the Westside Community Partnerships Initiative is having a positive impact on this historic neighborhood. This commitment to our community is all part of building the university of the future in the city of the future.

stories to watch

Taylor Eighmy President Teresa Niño vice president for university relations Joe Izbrand Associate Vice President for strategic Communications and external affairs

{ EDITORIAL } Margaret Lamar managing Editor Valerie Bustamante Johnson Shea Conner senior Editors Courtney Clevenger Christi Fish Tricia Lynn Silva associate editors Libby Castillo Amanda Cerreto Kimberly Maldonado contributing writers Katia Diamante social media Editor

{ PRODUCTION } Mitzi Shipley Creative Services Manager Maria Castro Emanuel Rodriguez Creative production Shashi Pinheiro Director of Web Services Brandon Fletcher video and photography Ximena Vila Ferral Josie Medel web production

SUMMER 2022

Engineering Excellence Rena Bizios, Lutcher Brown Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering, was elected as a 2022 member of the National Academy of Engineering for her contributions to the theory and applications of cellular tissue engineering, cell/biomaterial interactions and surface modification biomaterials. This honor makes Bizios the only full-time faculty member in UTSA history to be elected to three U.S. national academies (National Academy of Medicine, 2015; National Academy of Inventors, 2019).

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Continental Crown The UTSA Carlos Alvarez College of Business Executive MBA (EMBA) program was ranked No. 1 in North America by CEO Magazine in its 2022 Global MBA Rankings. The 21-month EMBA program features general management and health professionals tracks and focuses on advancing the skills and knowledge that individuals need to solve the evolving challenges of today’s fast-paced economy.

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Discerning Design UTSA graduate architecture students are making a societal impact by designing better living spaces for people with disabilities. Students in assistant architecture professor Neda Norouzi’s Universal Design class are working with disABILITYsa to develop innovative universal design solutions to make homes more accessible and functional.

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Welcome to

SOMBRILLA MAGAZINE departments | summer 2022 PLAZAS & PASEOS

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4 After decades of research dedication and recent years of intense growth, UTSA achieved Tier One status. Learn more about how UTSA made the mark and how it will impact the university’s future.

6 The expansive Makerspace provides a game-changing facility for engineers and creators across the university.

9 UTSA is addressing the shortage of therapists trained to treat children with neurodivergent disorders.

38 Alumnus Oscar Perez started making Tio Pelon’s salsitas in his apartment in 2015 using his grandmother’s secret recipe. The award-winning salsa brand can now be found in grocery stores across the country.

10 Music professors at the university have launched a podcast discussing music theory scholarship in a fresh and innovative way.

40 Lesson Learned From “Encanto” to “In the Heights,” Latino representation in pop culture has improved in recent years. But is it good enough? UTSA distinguished senior lecturer John Phillip Santos weighs in.

11 A UTSA researcher is leading an international team of scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope to study galactic nuclei.

1 President’s Welcome 9 Discovery at UTSA

UTSA

COURTESY OF DANIELLE DELEON

IN EACH ISSUE

10 A new UTSA study raises the awareness of potential health risks for veterans who have suffered from traumatic brain injuries.

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32 From establishing new programs to student scholarships, philanthropists have helped UTSA reach new levels of success through their generosity.

Learn how donations from MacKenzie Scott, Carlos and Malú Alvarez, and Bill and Margie Klesse have been absolutely transformational for the Roadrunner community. ◀ 36 Through his unique brand of adventure therapy, UTSA alumnus and Montana counselor Sean Patrick improves his clients’ mental health and wellness through fishing, hunting and hiking excursions.

8 A regional effort led by UTSA helps foster youth attain a college degree and supports them through their academic journeys.

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’RUNNERS & SHAKERS

ORIENTATION

# u t sa watc h showcasing the pride of roadrunner nation from social media and around the globe

About

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Dynamic Duo Melanie Salazar ’21 crossed the stage with her grandfather, 88-year-old Rene Neira, during a Commencement ceremony at the Alamodome in December. Salazar earned her B.A. in communications while Neira received a Degree of Recognition in economics. Their big day was featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

{ ABOUT US } Sombrilla Magazine is the official pub­lication of The University of Texas at San Antonio. It is distributed without charge to students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of UTSA. The magazine strives to capture the intellectual, cultural, and social life of the university.

The UTSA Office of University Strategic Communications produces Sombrilla Magazine and other publications that highlight the achievements and impact of Roadrunners throughout the world. The department is responsible for promoting the university’s mission of academic and research excellence.

{ CONTACT US } A New Promise University of Texas System Chancellor James B. Milliken joined UTSA leaders, elected officials and other valued members of the community at the Downtown Campus in March to unveil details of the Promise Plus program, which will greatly expand tuition assistance and is expected to generate about $3 million in tuition-relief funding at UTSA this year.

utsa is a hub of activity

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sombrilla (Spanish): umbrella (sohm–BREE–yah)

Spheres of Reflection Kaldric Dow ’13 partnered with the City of San Antonio’s Department of Arts and Culture to create “Spheres of Reflection.”

The 17-foot steel-andconcrete sculpture is located at the entrance of Martin Luther King Park on San Antonio’s Eastside. It took more than a year to complete, from the initial sculpture design to engineers installing the steel structure.

stories to watch

Are you interested in sharing news with members of Roadrunner Nation? Or would you like to change your contact details or subscribe? Please contact us:

SOMBRILLA MAGAZINE office of university strategic Communications One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX 78249-1644 Editorial Email sombrilla@utsa.edu

SUMMER 2022

Plans and Predictions Arkajyoti Roy, assistant professor in the Department of Management Science and Statistics, is leading a first-of-its kind study working with colleagues at UT Health San Antonio to explore how artificial intelligence can be used to track cancer tumor shrinkage in radiotherapy patients. The team’s research demonstrated that it is possible to accurately predict tumor shrinkage and include tumor volume changes in radiation treatment plans.

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Crime Crackdown Violent crime has dipped in Dallas as a direct result of the Dallas Violent Crime Reduction Plan developed by UTSA criminology and criminal justice professors Michael Smith and Rob Tillyer, the Dallas Police Department and the City of Dallas. Violent crime has declined more than 50% in targeted hot spots since the plan was implemented in May 2021.

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Fever Fighters Mycology and immunology researchers from UTSA have been selected to receive a five-year, $6.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the San Antoniobased Coccidioidomycosis Collaborative Research Center.

The center will develop therapeutics and vaccines against coccidioidomycosis, better known as valley fever, a respiratory fungal infection largely found in the Southwestern United States.

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PLAZAS & PASEOS

TIERONE

2017 4

New president Taylor Eighmy outlines a fresh vision for UTSA as a great multicultural discovery enterprise and an exemplary urban-serving university of the future.

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UTSA

By reaching Tier One status, UTSA’s amplified exposure will help the university recruit top students and faculty from around the globe. The achievement will also attract innovative businesses to help make San Antonio and the South Texas region a more prominent and industrious destination.

“UTSA’s designation as Carnegie R1 positions the university to align with the prestigious Association of American Universities while empowering faculty, staff and students to achieve excellence that will help close education gaps within our community,” UTSA Vice President for Research, Economic Development, and Knowledge Enterprise Bernard Arulanandam says. “The classification will enable us to expand our strategic partnerships with federal granting agencies and our capacity to find solutions for our society’s grandest challenges.”

2018

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fter decades of dedication, UTSA officially earned the long sought-after R1—or “Tier One”—designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. While this achievement recognizes UTSA’s rapid growth as an institution with “very high research activity,” it also marks the university as one poised to tackle and solve the world’s greatest challenges.

“I am so grateful to our faculty, staff and graduate students for their incredible efforts leading to this recognition,” UTSA President Taylor Eighmy says. “The traction we’re seeing on multiple fronts—in athletics, fundraising, enrollment, academic innovation and research— position us to serve as an exemplar for the future of higher education in the United States.”

UTSA announces the expansion of the Downtown Campus with the National Security Collaboration Center and planned new School of Data Science.

PHOTOS BY BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

by kimberly maldonado and shea conner

2019

utsa earns the acclaimed tier one designation, placing it among the nation’s top public and private research institutions

UTSA has been formally recognized for its prolific level of research activity. Pictured here, students in Blake Weissling’s hydrogeophysics class perform seismic surveying at the Park West Campus.

Pictured below, biochemistry research is carried out in Francis Yoshimoto’s lab.

UTSA joins the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics and announces key areas at the university that will be supported by a new faculty cluster hiring program.

PLAZAS & PASEOS

Tier One advantage

The U.S. Department of Energy selects UTSA to lead the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute, and the university earns the prestigious Seal of Excelencia.

2021

2020

Key to Tier One designation was UTSA’s ability to fulfill three markers: increase annual research expenditures, expand its pipeline of doctoral students and garner national recognition for its researchers.

The top-tier designation places UTSA in several exclusive categories. It is now one of only 20 universities designated as both a Hispanic Serving Institution and as Tier One—amplifying UTSA’s ability to offer our nation’s most talented Latino students and faculty opportunities to conduct research with worldwide impact. UTSA is also one of only six Tier One universities that holds three National Centers of Academic Excellence designations from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and National Security Agency.

UTSA is also working toward National University

Hispanic-thriving advances UTSA’s location in a city that represents the nation’s demographic future puts it in a unique position as an urban-serving university and one of only 10 Tier One institutions with the Seal of Excelencia from Excelencia in Education. This seal is a testament to UTSA’s commitment to inclusivity and to helping more Latino students achieve academic success.

Tier One status gave UTSA the opportunity to join the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities. As a member, UTSA will help develop a more diverse doctoral pipeline and address societal challenges through strategic research and partnerships. S

The university’s research expenditures for the year reach an all-time high of $140 million, including a $12.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health for brain research.

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Waypoints to excellence

“For Roadrunners, the impact is immediate and direct.

Tier One designation improves degree value, increases choices for our students aiming to pursue graduate study, creates stronger professional affiliations for our faculty and elevates our stature in the national research community,” UTSA Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Kimberly Andrews Espy says. “Simultaneously, the designation advances San Antonio’s knowledge pipeline by attracting talented faculty, who will serve our local workforce.”

Additionally, Tier One status encourages more strategic partnerships between UTSA and local research organizations such as UT Health San Antonio, Southwest Research Institute, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Brooke Army Medical Center and Joint Base San Antonio— all set to positively impact both UTSA and the city.

PLAZAS & PASEOS

Research Fund (NRUF) eligibility in Texas to secure additional state research funding. NRUF access will mark another significant milestone in UTSA’s journey to be the great public research institution that is capable of tackling society’s grandest challenges. Armed with a path toward NRUF eligibility, UTSA anticipates research expenditures in excess of $300 million, with endowments of over $400 million over the next decade.

UTSA officially earns the R1 Classification from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education— aligning the university with the nation’s top research institutions.

SUMMER 2022

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engineering creation and collaboration

MAKING ANY

THING

BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

PLAZAS & PASEOS

POSSIBLE

located in utsa’s science and engineering building, the new makerspace is helping students achieve previously unreached levels of inventiveness

by shea conner

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alking into the Makerspace for the first time is a staggering experience. One is immediately taken aback by the sheer vastness of the 17,000-square-foot facility, but walk around for 15 minutes and a more enthralling realization emerges. Every tool, every machine, every high-performance computer, TIG welder and 3D printer is there to take away a limitation for an ingenious, determined Roadrunner.

The Makerspace isn’t just big, bright and brandnew; it’s a creator’s oasis where the possibilities are endless. “There are other ‘maker spaces’ in San Antonio and South Texas but nothing to this scale,” says Don Petersen, director of engineering, innovation and design for the UTSA Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design.

Located on the first floor of the university’s year-old Science and Engineering Building, the Makerspace includes a spacious project assembly and meeting area that encourages crosscollaboration between groups, five conference rooms fully equipped for telemeetings, a design studio that’s home to 10 computers loaded with computer-aided design (CAD) software, an electronics fabrication lab with oscilloscopes and soldering stations, and a machine shop that features lathes, mills, drill presses, saws, welding stations and just about anything else imaginable that one would need for fabrication.

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UTSA

But the crown jewel of the Makerspace, many would argue, is the 3D-printing shop, which is home to 30 3D printers boasting various capabilities. Here, students, faculty and staff can craft custom creations made of materials ranging from polyester, plastic and resin to fiberglass, Kevlar and carbon fiber. Skilled engineers may even use the grandaddy of them all — a 3D metal printer that was made possible thanks to a $500,000 gift from Ed Whitacre, former CEO of AT&T. “It can make really intricate parts that another machine or a welder couldn’t make,” Petersen explains. “The great thing about having these 3D printers on campus is the iteration, so if the students make a part, they can try it right away and see if it fits. They don’t have to send it off and wait a couple of weeks. It speeds up the process for them and they can make a better product in the end.”

In its first two years of existence, the Makerspace has been largely utilized by engineering students completing work for their senior design classes. Nearly 360 students were enrolled in senior design through UTSA’s four engineering departments during the 2020-2021 school year. Working in four-person teams, it’s a safe bet that every single one of them completed enhanced — or more ambitious — projects because of the Makerspace’s capabilities.

Team C.A.T.O. attests to this. For their senior design project in biomedical engineering, 2021 UTSA graduates Claudia Collier, Naomi Alyafei, Sean Tritley and Favour Obuseh developed a vest prototype that monitors the heart’s electrical rhythm and sends the user an alert if either an arrhythmia is detected or if the user’s QT interval gets longer. The vest then implements a machine-learning algorithm to predict if a heart arrhythmia is near, which would be useful for patients with Long QT Syndrome.

“It’s a huge game-changer,” says Alyafei, a 2020 Goldwater Scholar who recently enrolled in the Ph.D. bioengineering program at Stanford University. “If we didn’t have that facility, we wouldn’t have our project working at all.

Robert Ruiz ’21 says his team’s final product wouldn’t have been possible without the Makerspace either. Ruiz was the team leader for HRG Technologies, which came up with a new way to manufacture a complex

Mechancial engineering graduates Sterling Reynolds ‘21 (left) and Roberto Hudson ‘21 (right) test a catcher automation package transfer system in the Makerspace. Sponsored

by H-E-B, the robotic arm identifies packages of jalapeño poppers and accepts or rejects them based on packaging criteria.

“

The Makerspace isn’t just big, bright and brand-new; it’s a creator’s oasis where the possibilities are endless.

plug-arm component for downhole oil pumps. The part, which is made from a nickel chromium alloy called Inconel 718 and has very precise geometry, has long required extensive—and expensive—lathe and mill work. HRG was able to reduce the cost of the part by producing it with the metal 3D printer in the Makerspace.

Ruiz, who also routinely volunteered at the 3D-printing shop, says the Makerspace has fundamentally changed the engineering experience at UTSA. “Students are now able to quickly make changes and realize what’s happening,” Ruiz explains. “If this work were being done somewhere else, you wouldn’t understand how your parts are being made and how your design affects the parts.”

Even the teams utilizing the Makerspace in limited scopes are seeing the benefits. Kyle Fetter ’21 and the STANDard Engineering team spent countless hours milling and drilling in the machine

shop to craft a rocket motor test stand that more accurately measures and records thrust data for UTSA-designed rocket engines. Meanwhile, the experience for Andrew Alexander ’21 and the Precision Hypersonics team was more computerintensive. They developed a “shock tube control system” for the university’s Laser Spectroscopy and Chemical Propulsion Laboratory during the fall 2021 semester.

Both Fetter and Alexander have discussed the effect of teams rubbing off on each other.

Alexander describes himself as “an engineering major who’s a bit of a desk jockey,” but he admits that the first semester of senior design at the Makerspace boosted his interest in manufacturing and production. “I didn’t have a lot of handson experience, but ever since then, I’ve spent more time there and interacted more with other students,” Alexander says.

Cross-collaboration will be a driving force at the Makerspace going forward. Petersen says all students—not just engineering students—are welcome, whether they’re artists, social scientists or studying business. Now that students are physically returning to campus in larger numbers, the vision for the Makerspace includes collaborative components for the Center for Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship to help faculty members and students take UTSA discoveries, products and services to market. That vision also includes hackathons, seminars, camps, cookouts, competitions and other community gatherings.

“We want to reduce the barriers so that when anyone comes in, no matter how much experience they have, they don’t feel intimidated,” Petersen says. “They really can learn to program something here. They really can learn to build something here.” S

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PLAZAS & PASEOS student success empowering foster youth

Fostering Bold Futures utsa leads a regional collaboration helping foster youth attend college

here are many reasons collaborations develop.

Sometimes it’s to create efficiencies, generate profit or spur solutions. But the ones that most people remember are those that come from the heart. The Bexar County Fostering Educational Success project (BCFES) is a prime example of the region’s commitment to student success.

“I’ve learned that everyone has a pure interest in providing support to students with a history of foster care,” says Airika Buford, project director at BCFES. “They have compassion for our region’s students and want to see them succeed. It’s truly a selfless act of service.”

The BCFES is a partnership between UTSA, Texas A&M University-San Antonio, the Alamo Colleges District, Bexar County Children’s Court and Child Advocates San Antonio (CASA). The program aims to improve college graduation rates for students with a history in foster care and to increase college awareness and enrollment for children still in foster care.

Data show that about 4% of those who have been in foster care will earn a college degree. While many experience trauma, homelessness and mental health and substance abuse problems, they may never know the lifelong benefits of completing college.

“I have asked for a long time why is this so and why as a society do we tolerate it? Why are expectations any lower for young people who have been in foster care than what I hold for my own daughter or my parents held for me?” says UTSA First Lady Peggy Eighmy, who has been the catalyst for the BCFES project on behalf of the university and the region.

Eighmy began her career in child welfare in Massachusetts and has served as a court-appointed special advocate in Tennessee and Texas. Now she is aiming to improve across Bexar County the destinies of youth with a history of foster care.

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UTSA

VALERIE BUSTAMANTE JOHNSON / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

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MJ Jones, 25, is a peer advocate for the Children’s Court College Bound Docket, a program within BCFES that provides targeted mentoring, advocacy and academic support to improve college readiness for foster care youth in Bexar County. The program brought Jones to San Antonio in 2019 to attend UTSA where she recently earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Initially the project aimed to support only those at UTSA. However, Eighmy credits State Sen. José Menéndez and Children’s Court Judge Peter Sakai, both of whom advocated for the collaboration in Bexar County.

Eighmy also tapped expertise from Megan Piel, an assistant professor in the UTSA College for Health, Community and Policy’s Department of Social Work.

Piel’s research and social work experience have focused on supporting youth transitioning to adulthood from the foster care system, including transitions to postsecondary education.

Piel and Eighmy collaborated on the language that was needed to draft the bill sponsored by State Senators Menéndez and Pete Flores, as well as State Representatives Ina Minjarez and Trey Martinez Fischer, that eventually won first-of-its-kind funding

from the Texas Legislature.

The BCFES was awarded $3.5 million during its initial launch in 2019. As evidence of the pilot project’s early impact, the countywide collaboration received full funding again.

The pilot funds campus-based support programs, as well as pre-college programming in partnership with the Bexar County Children’s Court, CASA, Texas A&M-San Antonio and the Alamo Colleges.

Nearly 400 college students and youth still in foster care have received targeted support. The pilot has also expanded its work to partner with six independent school districts to reach high school students in foster care.

The success of the program is already evident.

The initial cohort consisted of 116 UTSA students, and enrollment for fall 2021 was up to nearly 200 students with a history in foster care. S

DISCOVERY AT UTSA THERAPist development EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

in the gaps

by LIBBY CASTILLO

UTSA’S PROJECT EARLY ADDRESSES SHORTAGE OF THERAPISTS FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

R

esearchers from the UTSA

Project EARLY will complete cooperative

College of Education and Human

coursework in school psychology and

Development’s Department of

applied behavior analysis while engaging

Educational Psychology were awarded

in innovative professional learning

a five-year, $1.2 million grant from the

communities. Cross-disciplinary

U.S. Department of Education’s Office of

coursework will include experiential

Special Education Programs for Project

learning and paid internships at the UTSA

EARLY (Evidence-based Action, Research

Autism Treatment Center and the autism

and Learning to support Young children

diagnostic clinic at the Children’s

with or at risk for autism).

Hospital of San Antonio. UTSA graduates

UTSA researchers will use the funding

will also complete school consultation

to help meet the nation’s shortage of

projects through the City of San Antonio’s

therapists who are trained to treat children

Early Head Start Program.

with neurodivergent disorders.

“Both school psychologists and applied

Upon completion of the program, students will be eligible to sit for the

behavioral analysts have documented

qualifying exams necessary for state

shortages, but there are even fewer

and national credentials.

professionals who possess competencies

UTSA educational psychology faculty

and credentialing across both specialty

expect to begin admitting their first cohort

areas,” says Felicia Castro-Villarreal, an

of students in fall 2022.

associate professor in the Department of

Project EARLY is representative of

Educational Psychology and co-principal

the educational psychology department’s

investigator of the grant. “Project EARLY

long history of interdisciplinary

seeks to address this professional need

collaboration. The hands-on learning

by increasing the quantity and enhancing

experiences available to students provide

the quality of providers available to offer

them with the opportunity to work

comprehensive services for children with

with and learn from each other

autism.”

and with leading experts in the

Graduate students who participate in

assessment and treatment of autism. S

PLAZAS & PASEOS

GOOD CITATIONS Francis Yoshimoto, assistant professor of chemistry, earned two citations by the World Health Organization for his COVID-related research on proteins. This is one of the highest levels of recognition a research scientist can receive. Yoshimoto published two articles sought after by researchers in the field aiming to accelerate knowledge of SARS-CoV-2.

GOLDWATER WINNER Samantha Oviedo, a UTSA junior majoring in biochemistry, has been named a Barry Goldwater Scholar. The award is the most prestigious national scholarship bestowed on undergraduate students engaging in research in science, engineering and mathematics. Oviedo is investigating sensory dysfunction through neurobiology and protein biochemistry research in professor Lindsey Macpherson’s laboratory.

A QUANTUM LEAP R. Tyler Sutherland, assistant professor of physics, was part of a group that set a world record for innovation in quantum computing. Sutherland created the theory behind the experiment, leading to the most accurate entangling gate demonstrated without lasers. This could lead to quantum computers that are more cost-effective and easier to use.

STREAM STUDIES Matthew Troia, assistant professor of environmental science, received a 2021 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America for his research on the environmental impact of large cities. His group found that U.S. cities have altered at least 7% of streams, which influenced habitats for over 60% of North America’s fish, mussel and crayfish species.

PLAZAS & PASEOS

The Cost of War new study raises awareness of risks for veterans with traumatic brain injury

by AMANDA Cerreto

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merging evidence from a study led

by Jeffrey Howard, UTSA associate professor of public health, suggests that harmful exposures during military service such as traumatic brain injury may contribute to long-term mental health, chronic disease and mortality risks.

It’s the first study of its kind to estimate the number of excess deaths among a large cohort of post-9/11 military veterans compared to the general U.S. population of the same age, sex and racial/ethnic composition.

Howard and his team studied data on 2,516,189 post-9/11 military veterans and discovered that they experienced excess mortality rates compared with the total U.S. population. The numbers of excess deaths were even greater among those exposed to traumatic brain injury.

“After WWII, Korea and Vietnam, veterans of those wars tended to have lower age-specific mortality than the

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general population because younger, healthier people tend to be selected for military service,” Howard says.

“However, we are not seeing this same pattern with veterans who have served after 9/11.”

The study’s findings suggest important patterns highlighting increased health risks for veterans. In addition to overall greater mortality risks for veterans compared to the general population, there were dramatically higher mortality risks for veterans exposed to traumatic brain injury across all causes of death, especially for those with moderate-tosevere injury.

“These rates paint a pretty stark picture,” Howard says. “The cost of war is not measured just in terms of combat deaths. Military service can not only come with harmful mental exposures but environmental factors as well which follow service members for many years.” S

UTSA

1604 seconds with…

JENNIFER BEAVERS

MUSIC TO OUR EARS UTSA professors launch a fresh, innovative podcast to explore music theory scholarship by valerie bustamante johnson

A

new podcast is breaking the mold on how researchers analyze music and tackle contemporary issues in music theory. SMT-Pod was launched in January by The Society for Music Theory as an audio scholarly publication. Jennifer Beavers, associate professor of music theory, and Thomas Yee, assistant professor of instruction in music theory, are among the global scholars behind the podcast.

Beavers, who is the co-chair of SMT-Pod, spoke with Sombrilla Magazine about the new project.

People say music theory can be a little intimidating and a very complex subject. How is SMTPod going to change that notion?

We want to make it accessible to anyone who is interested in music or wants to go deeper into music theory. We try to reduce the jargon so that if you were to listen you would understand when we’re talking about stylistic competencies. The research is

still very solid, but we’re trying to make it so it’s delivered in a simpler conversational modality to a larger audience.

What sort of topics do you hope to tackle?

We have a senior scholar in the field who is talking about “musicking while old.” We have stuff on Reddit communities and how it’s changing the world of scholarship. We have underrepresented women composers from the beginning of the 20th century to postmillennial punk. It is a little bit of everything. It’s breaking down a lot of boundaries. S

The James Webb Telescope was launched into space in December 2021.

astronomy galactic exploration

Supermassive SPACE RESEARCH utsa’s chris packham leads an international team of scientists using the james webb space telescope to study galactic nuclei

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ne of the most important new missions into space has a UTSA connection. NASA has awarded a select group of astronomers the opportunity to have time on the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope for research.

Chris Packham, a professor of astronomy in the UTSA College of Sciences, is co-leading a team of international scientists conducting research on black holes. Packham, an expert in the study of black holes, regularly uses some of the largest telescopes on Earth, located in Hawaii, Chile and La Palma, for his research.

According to NASA, the Webb is over 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope.

Scientists will use the Webb to study planets and

other bodies in our solar system, to determine their origin and evolution and to compare them with exoplanets, planets that orbit other stars.

The team Packham co-leads—a group of 55 researchers stretching from Alaska to Japan—is called Galactic Activity Torus and Outflow Survey, or GATOS. They’ll use the Webb telescope to increase their understanding of the interaction between active galactic nuclei. These are small regions at the center of a galaxy that are powered by supermassive black holes and emit huge amounts of energy in the form of radio, optical, X-ray or gamma radiation, or high-speed particle jets.

“We now think there’s a strong connection between the so-called host galaxy, and the

supermassive black hole in the center.

Supermassive black holes were thought to accumulate, only attracting everything in, but actually, they also expel material.” Packham explains. “This expulsion of material might have a very significant impact in how galaxies form and how they evolve. Our team will study how these supermassive black holes could be intimately linked to the whole of the galaxy.”

GATOS is part of a select number of teams awarded access to the Webb. The team has been granted 53 hours on the telescope to collect data.

It will use the Arcticus supercomputer, located in the UTSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory, to process the data. S

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BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

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Savoring the Moment

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UTSA running back Sincere McCormick celebrates with his mother and daughter after the Roadrunners defeated Western Kentucky 49–41 in the Ryan Conference USA Championship Game on December 3, 2021.

Winning the conference title was the high point of a remarkable 12–2 campaign for UTSA Football in 2021.

Over the course of the season, UTSA was nationally ranked for the first time­— reaching as high as No. 15 in the Associated Press poll.

During the fall, the university also announced future plans to join the American Athletic Conference and agreed on a contract extension with head coach Jeff Traylor through 2031. UTSA Football will aim for its second consecutive conference championship in 2022. The Roadrunners will host Houston in a season-opening clash at the Alamodome in September.

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BIRD’S-EYE VIEW Behind the Scenes Alumnus Bradley Freeman Jr. ’21 (second from right) puppeteers new “Sesame Street” character Wesley Walker on the set of the famous children’s show. He began working with Sesame Workshop two months before graduating with his B.A. in communication.

Freeman’s character, Wesley, often explores race through conversations with his father, showing viewers how to discuss tough topics such as appreciating the differences in people, melanin and skin color, and racism.

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COURTESY OF SESAME WORKSHOP

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BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

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Jump Right In

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BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

Feeling the festive mood in the air, Obiamaka Adedunta ’21 dances in the Central Plaza near the Sombrilla. Emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, the great campus gathering place returned to its robust vibrancy this school year through events like Día en la Sombrilla, Game Week Wednesdays and more.

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EVERYTHING

DATA UTSA is securing its place as a leader in data science and cybersecurity education—complete with the new School of Data Science and the National Security Collaboration Center, led by the best in the country

BY VALERIE BUSTAMANTE JOHNSON

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or years when driving into Downtown San Antonio on Interstate 35, the Tower of the Americas has stood in the distance, welcoming residents and visitors coming into the city. Frost Tower joined the iconic landmark nearly three years ago, changing the city's skyline and serving as a symbol for Downtown San Antonio’s transformative future.

Today, the city's beloved skyline has yet another new addition.

Across the highway from the UTSA Downtown Campus, along San Pedro Creek on Dolorosa Street, stands a six-story, 167,000-square-foot building with bold blue letters, spelling out UTSA. The long-awaited building is home to the brand-new UTSA School of Data Science (SDS) and National Security Collaboration Center (NSCC), a hub that will merge academia, technology and government in the heart of the Alamo City. In the fall of 2018, President Eighmy announced the concept in concert with news of a $15 million gift from entrepreneur Graham Weston and with support from The University of Texas System Board of Regents, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County.

With this ongoing support, UTSA will produce some of the most highly skilled individuals in the data science and cybersecurity industries and address the high demand in the job market.

Under the direction of the nation’s brightest talents from the West and East coasts, David Mongeau and Guy Walsh, this transdisciplinary building will serve as a powerhouse for Downtown San Antonio’s burgeoning high-tech corridor, while advancing economic development and creating prosperity for San Antonio.

“For more than 20 years, UTSA has been a pioneer in cybersecurity and also now offers best-in-class programs in data science, cyber manufacturing, cloud computing and artificial intelligence,” says UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. “This new transdisciplinary building is deeply connected to the economic well-being of San Antonio and will house the first School of Data Science in Texas, which will enable UTSA to prepare students for the high-tech jobs of the future and to grow its ecosystem of government, industry and academic partners tackling society’s grand security challenges.”

From the group of high-caliber researchers to the students who will be part of the local tech and cyber industries in the years to come, the growth of UTSA’s downtown presence will bring new vibrancy and opportunities to the city’s blossoming tech corridor.

“We are at a pivotal point in San Antonio’s growth trajectory. Businesses globally are choosing to invest in communities where they can employ a ready workforce to meet their needs today and in the future,” says Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, president and chief executive officer of greater:SATX. “UTSA is leading the way in developing the San Antonio region’s workforce of the future. The new School of Data Science and National Security Collaboration Center will further connect our current and future businesses with the tech talent they need to thrive in the greater San Antonio region.”

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BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

David Mongeau, the founding director of the UTSA School of Data Science, stands in front of the school’s new building located in Downtown San Antonio along San Pedro Creek.

School of Data Science

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In 2018, UTSA launched an initiative as part of its 10-year strategic plan to create the SDS to help address the job market’s growing need for data scientists. Now, as the new school comes to fruition, leading it into the future of data science is David Mongeau.

Recruited as the school’s founding director in 2021, Mongeau is a respected national leader and pioneer in data science.

Before UTSA, Mongeau served as the executive director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mongeau oversaw the research, training and outreach at the institute while also significantly expanding its engagement with industry and foundations to advance the use of data science methods and tools in health care and criminal justice.

Mongeau also co-led the Translational Data Analytics Institute at The Ohio State University, where he helped that institute expand its faculty by 52 positions across 12 colleges.

“SDS is a bold way for UTSA to respond to challenges facing higher education while participating in the economic development of

The School of Data Science is a bold way for UTSA to respond to challenges while participating in the economic development of San Antonio.

San Antonio,” says Kimberly Andrews Espy, UTSA provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “It will allow our students to succeed and make contributions to a data-rich society. Putting the school downtown is a way to help with the economic goals of the city, while making it accessible to prospective students and to help attract other businesses. We are thrilled to have David leading the SDS, UTSA and our city forward.”

The new SDS will take the second and third floors of the transdisciplinary building with a central data center, a large state-of-the-art computer lab, and office and instructional spaces.

The first of its kind in Texas, the school will also share the building with several UTSA research centers accelerating transdisciplinary research and development, including MATRIX: The UTSA AI Consortium for Human WellBeing and the Open Cloud Institute. With these centers housed in one space, there is hope for even further collaboration amongst the groups in the future.

Several faculty members from the computer science, computer engineering, statistics and data sciences, information systems and cybersecurity departments will also co-locate in the new facility.

“One of our goals is to make sure that the SDS is welcoming and anticipating the needs of all the academic disciplines,” Mongeau says. “I don’t view data science as solely the realm of computer science, statistics, engineering, math.

A lot of people talk about the foundations of data science being math, stats and computing—and they are—but perhaps there is a dance student who wants to be introduced to simulation so they can better understand how their bodies move and how they interact with the stage.”

The first floor includes a cybersecurity education center that will give the community a chance to see a security operation center up close and personal.

Port San Antonio, the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology, and federal and industry partners helped develop the space.

Mongeau hopes the new school will develop into a transdisciplinary, innovative research and education hub for all students and faculty.

UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), as designated by the U.S. Department of Education. The university is one of 20 other universities nationally that hold both the HSI and Carnegie R1 research designations.

Among the universities, UTSA is in the top three R1 HSIs for high percentages of undergraduate and graduate degrees awarded to students who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

One of the biggest impacts the school will have on the field of data science is diversifying who is in it. Studies show that data science currently has the least diversity compared to other tech fields. Fewer than 3% of data scientists are women of color, 5% are Latino, 4% are Black and 0.5% are Native American.

The SDS hopes to embrace its vision of inspiring and preparing a generation of women and people of color who become data scientists to make the field more equitable and to bring diverse perspectives to the field.

“UTSA leads other top-tier universities in the large percentage of Hispanic and Latino students and students from other underrepresented groups,” Espy says. “There are not a lot of schools in the country that are making the financial and strategic investment in data science that UTSA is making with a priority on its diversity and inclusion goals.”

The need for skilled individuals in the data science field is growing. In 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics named data science as one of the top 20 fastest-growing occupations. It now estimates 28% job growth in the field by 2026. Glassdoor ranks data scientist as the third-best occupation in its “50 Best Jobs in America for 2022.”

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The SDS will develop highly skilled individuals to fill the gaps for those in-demand jobs of the future.

“It’s great to have a degree and one thing to have a certification, but to get a degree and certification in the highdemand occupations that are growing, not just today but five to 10 years from now, is even more important,” SaucedoHerrera says. “Our focus is on getting San Antonians the skills they need for these jobs. Creating good jobs for San Antonians drives economic mobility.”

With the building’s central location in San Antonio’s growing tech district, businesses and startups will have the ability to engage with a pool of promising students and tap into the well of knowledge offered by world-class faculty members at SDS and NSCC. “Part of what attracts companies is the intellectual heft and talent for the workforce. San Antonio offers that here,” Mongeau says. “By putting this SDS building downtown and bringing the professors and the students, you’re perhaps creating new businesses and certainly new ideas to pursue, and that will attract people from the outside. You’re creating talent, and the companies see it. They hire the growing talent, and that allows us to grow with more investments.”

In 2020, Zillow released a report describing the South and the Midwest as the areas with growing tech markets, listing San Antonio in the top 10 markets for future tech growth.

“Tech and cybersecurity leaders, as well as many local entrepreneurs, see greater possibilities for economic growth to benefit the city and its citizens because we’re further integrating the academic-government-industry collaboration, which San Antonio does so well,” Mongeau says. “Moreover, the promise of a new critical mass of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) faculty and students in a university district downtown is a source of energy for the sector.”

“While there are already entrepreneurs making the investment, the ecosystem to support them is still sorely needed,” Saucedo-Herrera says.

“The data science school is bringing the talent aspect to that equation. You need to have the talent there in the mindset of building community,” she added.

The placement of the SDS in Downtown San Antonio is a key element in the university’s strategic vision to accelerate the development of the UTSA Downtown Campus.

“We work well together in San Antonio and we’re very proud of that, but there’s a proximity element to that,” Saucedo-Herrera says. “When we were visiting with the DeLorean CEO at city hall and Mayor Nirenberg could point to the new data science school and say, ‘You need software engineers? Right here, UTSA is building this campus and you’re going to have the talent, the majority being first-gen,’ that story is beautiful. That story is about diversity, equity and inclusion. The story is about economic mobility.”

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The new SDS is one part of the university’s investment in San Antonio’s urban core. Launched in 2018 as an investment to advance government, university and industry partnerships to protect America’s national security infrastructure, the National Security Collaboration Center is anchoring the city’s tech scene with its cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud computing capabilities.

Since its founding, the NSCC has established a variety of collaborations across several industries and produced groundbreaking research under the direction of Guy Walsh, its executive director. Walsh took the reins as the center’s founding director in 2019, bringing with him knowledge in cybersecurity operations, international affairs, risk mitigation, strategic planning, and local and state emergency management.

Before UTSA, Walsh spent 25 years as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and in 2010, a year after retiring at the rank of Brigadier General, he was tapped by the NSA director and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command to focus on cyber as the newest combat organization in the U.S. Department of Defense. Walsh also was a founding member and deputy director for the Capabilities Development group, which helped integrate USCYBERCOM’s cyberspace capability development.

For years, UTSA has been a longstanding leader in cybersecurity, cloud computing and analytics, and it has further solidified its place through the work of the NSCC. UTSA is one of few universities in the nation—and the only Hispanic Serving Institution—to hold three National Center of Excellence designations from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and National Security Agency.

The NSCC’s move from the UTSA Main Campus into its new downtown building will bring several opportunities, including bridging the strengths and talents of the SDS and NSCC. “While a first-class facility and central location on San Pedro Creek in the heart of downtown San Antonio give us an advantage, it is the breadth and diversity of our world-class research teams combining university, industry, federal and national lab partners that set the SDS and NSCC apart from other research institutions,” Walsh says.

Housed on a two-floor suite in the new building, the NSCC will connect with researchers across the globe in forensics, cryptography, cloud security, 5G, AI and national security.

While UTSA already has several existing collaborations in the local tech and cybersecurity sectors, such as with Joint Base San Antonio, CPS Energy, the San Antonio Water System and the Alamo Regional Security Operations Center, the hope is to further expand expand partnerships through new projects.

“Our partnerships and collaborations with San Antonio’s tech and cybersecurity sectors, particularly critical infrastructure owners, operators and industry partners, are game changers that elevate UTSA’s education and research capabilities,” says Bernard Arulanandam, UTSA vice president for research, economic development and knowledge enterprise.

At the same time, the university looks to further grow its federal and national partnerships, Walsh added.

To accelerate this goal, UTSA launched the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), a $111 million public-private partnership established in 2018 with the U.S. Department of Energy to introduce cyber-secure energy-ROI for energy-efficient manufacturing

and supply chains. In 2021, the university also secured an $18 million federal research contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“The Cyber Manufacturing Innovation Institute will continue to be an integral element of the SDS and NSCC to compliment the CyManII campus located at Port San Antonio,” Walsh says.

UTSA research labs are looking at becoming a center of U.S. research for health and well-being, Walsh says.

“In 2021, UTSA expanded our Army Research Lab team and recently hosted the Director of Army Research Labs to showcase San Antonio’s Fort Sam Houston as a flagship location for advancing research on the health and well-being of our military forces,” Walsh explained. “With five major commands and the third largest U.S. Army installation, we continue to highlight UTSA’s NSCC value, speaking to both research and workforce development.”

Saucedo-Herrera adds that housing the SDS and NSCC together downtown will propel the city to the national stage.

“When you hear UTSA is now a Tier One research institution, or they are investing in a National Security Collaboration Center, or hiring top talent around the country, that puts

BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

Guy Walsh, the executive director of the UTSA National Security Collaboration Center, discusses research with graduate students in computer science, where many projects are on the cutting edge of cybersecurity innovation.

San Antonio on the radar,” she says. “When we are out selling San Antonio to people around the world, that narrative is important. If we are bringing the right types of jobs to San Antonio and we are equipping San Antonians with the education to actually excel in those jobs and growing economic mobility and improving the economy, then we are doing our job.”

“UTSA’s leap to Tier One status in 2021, the highest tier of U.S. research institutions, has gained the attention of many new and potential partners, who will be with us when we open the doors this fall,” Walsh says. “All eyes are on San Antonio and for good reason.”

But most importantly, this building will be an opportunity for the community to better understand the importance of the fields of cybersecurity and hopefully inspire engagement from a new generation.

“Kids growing up today in San Antonio want to be a police officer, a doctor, the mayor, or a lawyer because that’s what they are exposed to,” Walsh says. “They don’t know what a career in cybersecurity looks like, but it’s all about exposing them at a younger age. So, having this building in the heart of San Antonio is going to change that. I want that fourth and fifth grader to visit the building’s cybersecurity center and be able to say, ‘Yep, that’s what I want to do when I grow up.’”

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RENDERING COURTESY OF WHITING-TURNER | JACOBS | OVERLAND

The new UTSA building that houses the SDS and the NSCC will bring a new vibrancy to downtown San Antonio.

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Data impacts our lives and jobs no matter where we are. At the grocery store, scanners and cameras feed data about a person’s purchasing patterns and whereabouts. This data influences sales, inventory management and even pushes digital coupons to mobile apps.

“The knowledge base economy of the 21st century is really around data. Data is a commodity. We are surrounded by data. Data is a currency that really needs to be appreciated, studied and integrated,” says Arulanandam. “Jobs in the 21st century will require students who have a very strong foundation of data science and analytics for this new world we live in.”

positions UTSA to lead San Antonio into its evolving and transformative future and bring a new dynamic to the city’s urban core.

“When you’re out at a restaurant for a meeting, you want to see all walks of life,” Saucedo Herrera says. “Being able to walk down the street and run into David Mongeau, Graham Weston or Guy Walsh — there’s power in that. You want to see a businessman with a backpack. You want to see an artist. You want to see a student. You want to see one of those airmen out of the military with their families.

You want to see everything that makes San Antonio unique.” S

BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

Jobs in the 21st century will require students who have a very strong foundation of data science and analytics for this new world we live in.

Over the last several years, UTSA has deliberately built a diverse group of highly skilled researchers to lead the university into a data-filled future.

“We have hired high-caliber faculty across the board on all aspects of data science through cluster hiring,” Espy says. “We have intentionally densified the number of faculty and talent that we have here at UTSA to become a thought leader in data science.”

Weston’s gift and the ongoing support from The University of Texas System, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County is enabling deep collaboration between the SDS, the NSCC and the university's faculty, researchers and students. This successfully

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, Guy Walsh, executive director of the National Security Collaboration Center, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and UTSA President Taylor Eighmy pose for a photo at the beam signing ceremony for the new UTSA building downtown.

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WESTSIDE ALLIED by shea conner Through one-on-one engagement, economic support and educational efforts, UTSA provides a positive impact to downtown San Antonio’s historic Westside

UTSA students, faculty, staff and their families marched in the Cesar Chavez March for Justice on the Westside in March.

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well-known saying states that “trust equals truth over time.” Roger Enriquez reflects on that formula often in his duties as executive director of the UTSA Westside Community Partnerships Initiative.

He’s determined to earn the trust of the people living in San Antonio’s historic Westside community, which shares the 78207 zip code with the UTSA Downtown Campus.

The Westside is rich in cultural heritage, from its deep roots in activism to its wide-ranging impact on various forms of arts and entertainment. Because the residents largely live below the poverty line, they have concerns about issues that impact their quality of life and their educational and economic mobility.

Strategic efforts and greater partnerships have long been necessary to tackle concerns over affordable housing, economic health, low educational

attainment and the gap in digital literacy.

UTSA was compelled to answer that call by providing the resources and support to address these pressing issues.

The university launched the Westside Community Partnerships Initiative in the fall of 2019 to bring a positive impact to the historic neighborhood. Its creation aligned with UTSA President Taylor Eighmy’s vision to expand the

Downtown Campus over the next decade and his commitment to having the Westside community inform and influence that expansion.

The initiative has four primary goals: to create pathways to economic prosperity, to create pathways to educational excellence, to foster communitycampus engagement, and to engage in important community-based research and advocacy.

“We want UTSA to harness its human, intellectual and economic power into one discrete part of town that has faced challenges for many generations,” Enriquez explains. “We’re not going to solve these things overnight, but we’re committed to being there for the long haul and being part of that solution.”

The following is a look at university projects that are supporting the community’s positive momentum on San Antonio’s Westside.

“

The university’s goal is to balance growth with the preservation of community assets such as the heritage, artistic legacies, social movements and working-class landscape that shape San Antonio's Westside.

Since its opening in 2019, the Westside Community Center has become a hub for community-based research, educational and cultural services, and career development and training opportunities. “The university’s goal is to balance growth with the preservation of community assets such as the heritage, artistic legacies, social movements and working-class landscape that shape San Antonio’s Westside,” says Teresa Niño, UTSA vice president for university relations.

UTSA launched the first-ever Westside Community Scholarship Fund at the center, and it hosted the “Celebrate History ReinVOKed” exhibition featuring rare memorabilia from Lanier High School. It also has served as a venue for sessions on public art feedback, housing information and social work training.

In recent months, the center has hosted Family Wednesdays to connect K-12 students and their families to admission counselors, financial aid and student housing resources. The Westside Community Center also served as the site for a breakfast kickoff event for the annual Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice.

BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

LIBBY CASTILLO / UTSA COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

LAYING DOWN ROOTS

The Westside Community Center is located at 1310 Guadalupe St.

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HELPING HOMEOWNERS

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Volunteers from the Roadrunner community have visited Westside homes in recent years to raise awareness of homestead property tax exemptions and provide warnings about predatory buyers snatching up properties in the neighborhood.

Preservation, there are an estimated 33,000 houses that are 1,000 square feet or smaller built in the city prior to 1960. Several hundred of these homes are “shotgun” houses, known for their narrow depth.

Enriquez explains that these small but historic San Antonio houses were a response to redlining by banks, a discriminatory practice in which Latino applicants were denied home loans, forcing residents to turn to local lumberyards that would sell them kits to build their own homes on narrow, cost-effective lots.

The team—which includes Enriquez, architecture professor Angela Lombardi and

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHIRLEY GONZALES

Residential stability has been a prevailing focus for the initiative since its creation. That’s why UTSA students and faculty participated in a door-to-door housing outreach workshop in October 2019 after former District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales established a pilot housing program that brought the university into the effort.

Student and faculty researchers found roughly 2,000 addresses in the 78207 zip code where homeowners were not taking all of their homestead or property tax exemptions, therefore paying more in taxes than necessary. They walked the Westside blocks to let these homeowners know about the exemptions, while also warning them of potential title problems they could encounter and about predatory buyers seeking to snatch up properties in the area.

Low-income residents on the Westside and in many other San Antonio neighborhoods are finding it increasingly difficult to hang on to—and preserve—their family homes. Some simply can’t keep pace with annual property tax increases, while others struggle to pay reputable contractors for necessary repairs and maintenance.

Many homeowners do not qualify for citysponsored assistance until they have clear legal titles. Enriquez estimates that between 70 to 80% of homes fall into disrepair because of fractionalized ownership, which is a pervasive problem throughout San Antonio but especially on the Westside.

“Those are situations where six or seven people own the house, and therefore no one really owns the house, no one pays the taxes, no one does the repairs and the asset gets wasted,” Enriquez explains.

UTSA’s “shoe-leather” academic work established a dialogue with many Westside homeowners and gave the university more opportunities to further explore housing and estate issues in the neighborhood on an individual basis. UTSA Westside Community Partnerships has since partnered with the Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC) to provide relief to hundreds of families that needed help to keep or clean the titles to their homes.

Another vital housing initiative aiming to mitigate home affordability issues on San Antonio’s Westside is the Shotgun Houses Project, a collaboration involving the UTSA Westside Community Partnerships Initiative and Department of Architecture to rehabilitate culturally significant “shotgun” houses at an affordable cost.

According to an affordable housing study commissioned by the city’s Office of Historic

her students, and Department of Architecture chair Sedef Doganer—is demonstrating to city departments and non-governmental organizations how the shotgun houses can be rehabilitated at an affordable cost using a mix of funding sources.

Today, more than 58% of all households in San Antonio house only one or two residents.

Renovated shotgun houses would be a welcome reprieve for those residents as home values continue to skyrocket in the Alamo City. “They’re an important part of our history, our legacy and our culture—and they’re actually a practical solution,” Enriquez says.

’RUNNERS & SHAKERS

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We bring our resources and the community brings their resources to a shared table.

Driven by initiatives such as the Bold Promise tuition assistance program, enrollment at UTSA has increased among Westside students coming from Lanier and Burbank high schools.

About 79% of Bold Promise students accepted in fall 2021 identified as Hispanic or Latino.

ENGAGING FUTURE STUDENTS In its effort to improve access to higher education for Westside youth, UTSA has deliberately focused on recruiting students in the area. From 2019 to 2021, enrollment at UTSA increased dramatically among Westside students coming from Lanier and Burbank high schools.

Lynn Barnes Jr., UTSA senior vice provost for strategic enrollment, says programs such as the UTSA Parent Summit have helped to bolster the enrollment increase. Held virtually for the first time in 2021, the summit offers bilingual presentations to the parents of elementary, middle and high schoolers to promote early academic success for their children. The UTSA Bold Promise tuition assistance program, which covers tuition for Texas students whose families earn $70,000 or less and who graduate in the top 25% of their high school class, has also given more Westside students an affordable path to a

bachelor’s degree.

As the enrollment of Westside students at UTSA increases, so too will the university’s civic engagement in the neighborhood. “Recruiting students from the Westside is something we’ve always done,” Barnes says, “but now we’re trying to do that while connecting them with our Westside Community Partnerships Initiative so we can mobilize UTSA students to give back to their community.”

Many UTSA students are giving back to the Westside through Rowdy Corps Community Scholars, a community-based work study program.

These scholars provide service while gaining hands-on experience through their duties for Westside community partners like Good Samaritan Community Services, the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Antonio and City Council District 5.

Westside youth have even drawn up meaningful

policy ideas in the Civic Leadership Academy that UTSA public administration professor Gina Amatangelo and her students established at Lanier High School. Through this academy, UTSA students worked with Lanier students to produce recommendations and prioritize policy solutions to community issues. Those ideas were then shared with city and county leaders. The academy encouraged teens at Lanier to imagine themselves as future college scholars while also providing them a venue to engage as citizens.

This kind of one-on-one engagement has deepened human connections between the university and the Westside, according to Belinda Harmon, UTSA senior director of community outreach and transfer programs. “We bring our resources and the community brings their resources—some tangible and some intangible— to a shared table.”

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The SBDC was an invaluable resource to help me go from an idea to a business that’s now helping care for thousands of children.

Richard Sifuentes, director of the UTSA Small Business Development Center, advised clients during a small business workshop at the UTSA Westside Community Center in February.

SPARKING SMALL BUSINESSES Throughout 2020, several Westside businesses were able to stay afloat and even expand, thanks to the assistance of the UTSA Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

In fiscal year 2020—a difficult year with the onset of the pandemic—the SBDC advised 127 Westside businesses and guided six through expansion, while helping retain 308 jobs in the neighborhood and creating 14 more. All in all, the SBDC created $1.27 million in capital infusion and helped procure nearly $900,000 in COVID disaster recovery loans for Westside businesses during that time period. “I mean, this is really when the community—especially the business community—needed us the most,” Enriquez says.

“We’re talking about tire shops. We’re talking about panaderías. We’re talking about small, familyowned businesses.”

The SBDC’s impact on the Westside grew in 2021 and continues that growth in 2022. In fiscal year 2021 alone, the SBDC staff engaged over 250 businesses, helped dozens of businesses open or

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expand and created 47 new jobs in the area.

In February of this year, the SBDC and San Antonio Small Business Administration held a small business workshop at the UTSA Westside Community Center to raise awareness of funding and other resources available, attended by more than 30 small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Physician Esteban Lopez contacted the SBDC seeking guidance to open Hopscotch Health, his pediatric urgent care facility. UTSA matched a certified business advisor with Lopez to research and develop a strategy for the facility’s launch.

With additional help from UTSA-hosted SBDCNet, the team identified two locations that best fit the targeted demographic for his clinic.

To date, Lopez has already created five new fulltime jobs and sees his two clinic locations — one near Woodlawn Lake on the Westside and another in Leon Valley — as the beginning of a larger network. “The SBDC was an invaluable resource to help me go from an idea to a business that’s now helping care for thousands of children across the

region during the pandemic,” Lopez says.

In addition to small business owners and employees, UTSA has also cultivated a close relationship with Prosper West San Antonio, a nonprofit community organization that fosters economic development, creates viable urban communities and preserves the character, culture and history of the Westside. Both the SBDC and Prosper are part of the burgeoning Westside Business Alliance, which connects Westside business owners to create advocacy networks and empowers them to promote projects that positively impact their businesses and communities.

SBDC director Richard Sifuentes says the alliance has been beneficial for UTSA leadership because they often learn about larger issues on the Westside as they introduce community members to the university’s resources. “Although we do help a lot of people and we have these services available at basically no cost, we’d like to help more small business owners and entrepreneurs on the Westside who haven’t taken advantage,” he says.

’RUNNERS & SHAKERS

SUPPORTING DIGITAL LITERACY ambassadors not only provide access to the internet for those who need it but also bilingual assistance with internet searches, online research, accessing social service web platforms, troubleshooting, printing, copying, scanning, and lessons about internet security and privacy.

Minelda Ochoa, a Westsider who only speaks Spanish, visited the ambassadors after she had accumulated $100 in late fees because she couldn’t effectively communicate with her mortgage lender.

Students Jazmin Arroyo and Mariana Bravo helped her create an online mortgage account and petition for the late fees to be removed and helped her enroll in autopay. They also assisted her in how to use a search engine and web browser, and how to write and send emails on her phone.

The ambassadors also lent a helping hand to local business owners. After the SBDC advised Elena’s Café owner Elena Gomez Peña through the Paycheck Protection Program financial aid process, Joi Sheppard-Udoh set up a profit and loss summary Excel spreadsheet, allowing Peña to track her total income, purchases, gross profit, net profit and total expenses for the year.

Westsiders with limited digital experience weren’t the only ones seeking their services.

Mariana Arrendondo showed a local high school student how to navigate a community college’s website. The student, who was more fluent in Spanish than English, expressed an interest in higher education with hopes of becoming a counselor in Spanish to better serve her community. However, she knew very little about the higher education process. Arrendondo introduced her to the types of degrees offered by universities, helped her find affordable college options, guided her through enrollment and referred her to an outside advisor for further career exploration.

Seeing the personal impact that these students had on the community has been a true inspiration to Enriquez and everyone else involved with the initiative. “We want this to become personal to UTSA—not just at the leadership level but at the department level, all the way down to individuals, faculty, students and even staff so that everyone sees this collectively as our mission at the university,” he says. S

BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

One of the more recent university efforts based at the Westside Community Center attempts to bridge the digital divide in 78207 and several other Westside zip codes. A student group called the Westside Digital Inclusion Ambassadors strives to improve digital literacy in the area.

A 2020 digital inclusion survey by the UTSA Policy Studies Center, in partnership with the City of San Antonio’s Office of Innovation and Bexar County Commissioner’s Court, found that broadband connectivity, device access and digital competency were significantly lagging in District 5 compared to the rest of the county.

Under the direction of Enriquez and UTSA public administration professor Chris Reddick, student ambassadors embedded themselves at the Westside Community Center to help people in the community with their technological needs.

“They were able to get these individuals from being confused and overwhelmed with technology to a more positive place in their lives,” Reddick says.

Socioeconomic status and the Spanish-English language barrier are among the primary drivers for the digital divide in District 5, so the UTSA student

The Westside Digital Inclusion Ambassadors provide free device access and bilingual digital assistance to clients who visit the UTSA Westside Community Center.

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ILLUSTRATION BY EMANUEL RODRIGUEZ / UNIVERSITY RELATIONS

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Clockwise from top: Carlos and Malú Alvarez; Bill and Margie Klesse; MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett

UTSA

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entrepreneur

philanthropy profile

PASSION FOR

Giving

by Valerie Bustamante Johnson

By establishing new programs and creating student scholarships, philanthropists help the Roadrunner community reach new levels of success

O

ver the last few years, UTSA has reached new heights in its mission to become the university of the future, rooted in student success, research excellence and innovation.

Multimillion-dollar commitments from San Antonio leaders such as Malú and Carlos Alvarez and Margie and Bill Klesse are creating new opportunities for two of UTSA’s largest academic colleges. Meanwhile, a recent gift from nationally renowned philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett will elevate the institution’s commitment to student success.

Their support will be the key to UTSA’s growth for many years to come.

“A university the size and caliber of UTSA is incredibly important for the economic, cultural and social development of San Antonio,” said Carlos Alvarez, co-chair of the UTSA Campaign Leadership Council. “It’s a major growth engine for the city, a sound and reliable local source for a high-quality employment pool.”

Last year, Alvarez, the founder of The Gambrinus Co. – owner of the Shiner Brewery in Shiner, Texas and Trumer Brewery in Berkeley, Calif. – and his wife, Malú committed $20 million toward the UTSA College of Business. The gift, a first of its kind for the university, enables more students access to greater opportunities. The donation will help advance several research-enhancing activities,

including establishing endowed faculty positions, graduate research fellowships and undergraduate research programs.

In recognition of the gift, the University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized the naming of the College of Business to the Carlos Alvarez College of Business at UTSA. It was the first named college at the university and the first school of business in the University of Texas System to be named after a Latino.

The university’s second named college would not be far behind.

This past December, former Valero CEO and Chairman of the Board Bill Klesse and his wife, Margie, committed a $20 million gift to the College of Engineering and Integrated Design to create new endowments for student scholarships and faculty support as well as expanded support for student success programs such as those offered by the college’s Student Success Center.

The couple was inspired to give to expand access to higher education STEM programs in San Antonio.

“We believe that earning degrees in STEM programs build valuable life and critical-thinking skills, and are thrilled to be able to support the

College of Engineering and Integrated Design to continue opening doors for women and students of all backgrounds into these important fields,” said Margie Klesse.

In honor of the gift, the Board of Regents authorized that the college be renamed the Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design at UTSA. “Margie and I appreciate the difference that the UTSA College of Engineering and Integrated Design is making for students in South Texas, and their families. The university and the college create an environment where all students are challenged with great academic rigor but also supported to help find their own path to success,” Klesse says. “The future will continue to bring many challenges to economic, reliable and sustainable energy supplies as well as built infrastructures, and we need these emerging new engineers and designers to help us create solutions that will benefit all members of our communities.”

Both the Alvarezes and Klesses have been longtime supporters of the Roadrunner community.

“Our family’s initial efforts were on

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PHOTOS BY BRANDON FLETCHER / UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

“

A university the size and caliber of UTSA is incredibly important for the economic, cultural and social development of San Antonio.

With gifts from the Carlos and Malú Alvarez Endowment for Student Success and other initiatives, first generation students can achieve their goals of graduation and career readiness.

— CARLOS ALVAREZ

scholarship aid – with emphasis on international students – and later expanded into graduate financial assistance to help UTSA attract the best potential candidates in its efforts to reach Tier One research university status,” says Alvarez who, along with his wife Malú, have been donors to the university for 20 years.

The Alvarezes’ previous contributions, totaling $7.4 million, have benefited more than 1,000 UTSA students. Their gifts established the Carlos and Malú Alvarez Endowment for Student Success, the Carlos Alvarez Endowment for Graduate Fellowships in Science and Engineering, the Carlos and Malú Alvarez College of Public Policy Endowed Graduate Research Excellence Fund and the Carlos Alvarez Distinguished Presidential Scholars Endowed Scholarship, which will continue to support students in perpetuity.

Alvarez said his family is “proud to support UTSA and its outstanding students, many of whom, like me, are first-generation Mexican American.”

Alvarez attributes his passion for helping and supporting the community to his father and his mentors.

“My father was very involved in Acapulco. I saw how involved he was in Acapulco helping the community,” Alvarez says. “You are

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naturally influenced by your parents’ example and this education continues as you mature.

Being exposed to leading figures such as (the late) Tom Frost, Sam Barshop, Governor Briscoe, Bill Greehey and many others, and seeing firsthand how their philanthropic efforts favorably impacted San Antonio also encouraged our family’s participation.”

Frost was particularly influential to Alvarez.

“Tom Frost was extremely generous with the time, attention, and advice he gave me. I guess he took an interest in supporting a young Mexican entrepreneur doing business in the U.S.,” Alvarez says.

In recognition of Frost’s passion to uplift UTSA through philanthropy, Alvarez also made an additional $2 million gift to establish the Tom C. Frost Distinguished University Chair for

Business Excellence. This endowment, which is held by the dean of the Carlos Alvarez College of Business, marks the first time in UTSA history a dean would hold two chaired positions.

In 2005, Margie and Bill Klesse established the Klesse Foundation to support scientific, educational, cultural, religious and other charitable organizations in San Antonio. Since that time, the Klesse Foundation has assisted students through endowed scholarships enabling hundreds of students to collectively receive thousands of dollars towards their education annually.

In 2017, the foundation gifted $1 million to establish the Klesse Unit Operations Laboratory — which led to the creation of a chemical engineering program at UTSA that just graduated its first class of students in 2022.

’RUNNERS & SHAKERS

The Klesse Unit Operations Laboratory and its state-of-the-art equipment supports students in chemical engineering on their path to success.

The university also used the gift to acquire state-of-the-art equipment, including a twostory distillation column that attracted national attention.

Next on the horizon is the creation of a doctoral program in chemical engineering.

“We are profoundly grateful to Margie and Bill Klesse. They have always been deeply committed to providing world-class opportunities to UTSA students and faculty members in engineering and design,” says UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. “This incredibly generous gift will advance UTSA’s vision to become a model for student success and a great public research university.”

These philanthropists’ passion for giving means the university can continue enabling lifechanging opportunities for all Roadrunners.

The university’s bold vision has attracted benefactors outside of San Antonio, including a transformational $40 million gift from philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett to benefit the current Roadrunner population and future generations. The couple was inspired by UTSA’s strong commitment to creating pathways to success for students from communities with significant attainment and income disparities, as well as the university’s mission as a Hispanic Serving Institution.

About 75% of UTSA’s students receive financial aid, while 45% receive federal Pell grants. The latter are awarded to students with exceptional financial needs. Fifty seven percent of the university’s student population is Hispanic.

A plan for allocating the gift to student

success initiatives — including enrollment, retention, learning and graduation — is in the works. This plan is expected to expand upon existing student success programs that are especially impactful for students in need.

“UTSA’s student population includes the next generation of leaders who will develop new innovations, businesses and social programs that will be key to ensuring a bright future for San Antonio and for Texas,” says Kimberly Andrews Espy, UTSA provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs. “As a public, urban serving university with limited resources, these generous gifts will go a long way in enabling UTSA to create life-changing opportunities for its students and to prepare a diverse pipeline of professionals for the workforce.” S

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’RUNNERS & SHAKERS Patrick opened Evoke Changes in Kalispell, Montana with aspirations of improving mental health and wellness through outdoor adventure therapy trips.

Therapy alumni profile

WELL-BEING IN THE

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DANIELLE DE LEON

Wild

Counselor SEAN PATRICK ’09 engages in therapy that’s literally and figuratively off the beaten path

by Shea conner

W

hen most people envision a visit to a therapist’s office, they may picture a chaise lounge flanked by rows of books and framed diplomas. When counselor Sean Patrick ’09 digs deep with his clients, however, it’s often knee-high in a babbling stream or in the midst of a formidable mountain hike.

Patrick opened the clinical practice Evoke Changes in Kalispell, Montana, in 2017 with aspirations of improving mental health and wellness through outdoor adventure therapy trips.

Although he continues to provide his services in a traditional setting as well, clients are increasingly seeking Patrick’s off-the-beaten-path brand of therapy.

“People can fake things in an office once a week. They can be whoever they want to be for 45 minutes or an hour,” Patrick says.

“But when you’re on a trip with somebody, you can only hold it together for so long.” Patrick takes his clients out of their comfort zones.

“And when that happens,” he explains, “confrontation is inevitable.”

He avows that confrontation is a necessary step to self-discovery.

Patrick’s outdoor therapy excursions typically last between four to seven days because day trips and adventure

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weekends generally don’t give clients enough time to confront any trauma they may have and then process it through movement.

Patrick caters each excursion to the needs of the patients. He has taken teams on hunting and fishing trips in Montana’s mountains, valleys and clear lakes. He has helped a client work through his issues with alcoholism while saltwater fishing in Baffin Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast.

He has even traveled with couples to Thailand for counseling accompanied by a kickboxing camp. Since opening his practice, he has also started a nonprofit providing outdoor therapy trips to veterans and first responders to help them develop the tools used to improve emotional coping skills, daily functioning abilities and overall quality of life.

At its heart, Evoke Changes seeks to help anyone who wants to improve their mental health and would benefit

“

I’ve been in different areas of despair in my life. I’ve pulled myself out of there and now I find gratitude in something on a daily basis.

from doing so in a space larger than a therapist’s office.

“Having people sit in a room and sometimes talk about the most difficult things that ever came up in their lives—it can be a struggle,” Patrick admits. In the elements, he frequently pushes his counterparts to learn new skills such as starting a fire, cooking in the wild, or safely getting drinking water from a lake.

“They recognize how strong they really are by doing that. To me, that’s the beauty of these trips.”

Throughout his life, Patrick has found solace and wellness in outdoor activities and the martial arts. Both helped him overcome personal struggles with depression and addiction that started well before he was a student at UTSA. He was diagnosed with a learning disability at a young age and visited several counselors throughout his adolescence. Patrick’s most gifted counselors inspired him to pursue a career in counseling, but he was quickly discouraged by his first foray

Patrick caters each excursion to the needs of the patients.

This includes hunting trips in Montana’s mountains, fishing trips in Texas’ Baffin Bay and even kickboxing camps in Thailand.

into higher education. He dropped out of college and started working construction jobs to get by—all while falling into a pattern of alcohol and drug abuse.

At age 20, he hit rock bottom and made the decision to go back to school and give it his all. Even as he continued to work construction jobs, he went to school at night—first earning an associate’s degree at San Antonio College and then pursuing his bachelor’s in psychology at UTSA. “I spent a ridiculous amount of time at the library,” he claims, adding that he would leave work at 5 p.m., go to class until 9:30 p.m., and stay at the JPL “until they shut it down.”

Patrick says he became particularly fascinated with the biological underpinnings of psychology while taking a class about the sensation of perception at UTSA. “I really started to study the way the mind worked and the science of how the brain functions—and that helped me gain a great understanding of myself,” he explains. “It helped me understand what happens to my brain when I get anxious or when I start to become angry.”

Lessons from that class have aided him throughout his professional life—even the obscure ones. He recalls reading Phantoms in the Brain, a book about bizarre neurological

Patrick fishes during a trip to Alaska.

disorders, as part of the assigned reading.

Sure enough, he later encountered a patient experiencing one of those disorders: phantom limb pain. “He was thinking he was crazy because he had this cramping, clenching feeling in a limb that no longer existed,” Patrick recalls. “Because of that experience I had at UTSA, I was able to help him.” Patrick read passages from the book along with him and they worked on techniques to help him relax.

After graduating from UTSA, he went on to earn his master’s degree in clinical psychology from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and began working toward a Ph.D. in Vermont before coming across a job opening in Kalispell that encouraged an outdoor therapy model. Within weeks of applying, he moved to Montana to take the job. Having discovered a career that connected therapy with his lifelong passion for outdoor activity, he went on to open his own practice, where he continues to guide others navigating the very struggles he’s often faced.

“I’ve been in different areas of despair in my life,” Patrick says. “I’ve pulled myself out of there, and now I find gratitude in something on a daily basis.” S

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’RUNNERS & SHAKERS

entrepreneur alumni profile

FROM HOME GARDEN TO

Whole Foods OSCAR PEREZ ’11 transforms family recipe into artisanal brand

by Valerie bustamante johnson

T PHOTOS BY VALERIE BUSTAMANTE JOHNSON / UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

he smell of jalapeños filled the air of the Tio Pelon’s Salsita kitchen as Oscar Perez '11, a UTSA alum and the real-life Tio Pelon, mixed the peppers in a large vat of boiling water.

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This is just one of the steps it takes to make one of the savory salsitas in the Tio Pelon line, a brand that was born out of Perez’s downtown San Antonio apartment kitchen in 2015 and is now created in a commercial kitchen on the city’s Westside.

Perez, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture, started a garden in his home. Rather than letting the homegrown produce go to waste, he decided to learn the canning process. After learning the basics, Perez acquired his grandmother Emma’s secret salsa recipe, a staple in his family.

“I called her on the phone and told her about my project of learning how to can my produce and wanted to learn how to make her salsa,” Perez says. “She always tells people how to make it, but it never comes out the same, so I went about my way of trying to recreate it. I made it per her instructions, and she gave me the thumbs-up of approval.”

Not long after, Perez took his nickname of “Tio Pelon,” which loosely translates to “Uncle Baldie,” and a doodle of himself a friend drew as the logo, and Tio Pelon’s Salsita was born. Perez sold his creations on Facebook and eventually began setting up shop at local farmer’s markets.

“After coming up with the logo, I registered the business as an LLC, but I wanted to know how I could grow this and make it successful,” Perez says. “I did my own research, but I also became part of San Antonio’s LaunchSA. They have a program called Break Fast & Launch, which is for entrepreneurs starting a food-related business.”

Tio Pelon’s found its first retail home in 2017 at Larder at the Pearl’s Hotel Emma. By the next year, Tio Pelon’s was in about 30 stores.

In 2020, the business saw its most exponential growth, forging partnerships with retailers such as Whole Foods, Randalls, Sprouts and H-E-B Central Market, Perez says.

“Architecture and making Tio Pelon’s aren’t much different. It’s about creating,” Perez says. “It’s not all about salsa making, it’s about creating a brand.

A lot of the stuff I learned in architecture school I am using today. I use the Adobe software I used in school.

Architecture school also taught me about time and project management, which has definitely been a big part in expanding my business and brand.”

Salsita Emma, a pure red jalapeño Mexican style sauce, started it all.

Now, Tio Pelon’s features three other products ranging, from tomatillo to chipotle flavors.

Perez credits his upbringing in the Rio Grande Valley and Mexican culture for serving as an inspiration for Tio Pelon’s.

“

Ultimately, we want to have an efficient system here and create jobs for our San Antonio people.

“Over there we’re very ranchero.

We love tacos, carne asadas. It’s all about barbequing on the weekends,” Perez says. “You go up to these taco stands on the border and they’ve got tons of salsas to choose from. Salsa or sauce is a key in Mexican cooking.

You put it in chilaquiles, guisados.

It’s the base in a lot of our dishes.

It’s our culture.”

Perez hopes to one day share his culture with the rest of the country, taking Tio Pelon’s Salsita nationwide.

“We’re already going to be in 18 states, so I want to be nationwide and be in bigger stores. Ultimately, we want to have an efficient system here and create jobs for our San Antonio people,” he says. S

Oscar Perez and his team mix peppers in a large vat of boiling water during the process of creating Tio Pelon's salsitas.

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Real Representation utsa’s john phillip santos on the past, present and future of the latino narrative in the media

by valerie bustamante johnson

O

ver the last few years, the small and big screens have showcased Latino culture and the community in ways never before seen—from Netflix’s “Gentefied” exploring the story of three Mexican American cousins in Los Angeles to a reboot of the sitcom “One Day at a Time” featuring a Cuban American family.

Questions, however, remain. Has Latino representation improved in the mass media? What still needs to be done to create a more diverse voice?

Sombrilla Magazine spoke with John Phillip Santos, a distinguished scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies at the UTSA Honors College, about Latino representation, identity and how the media tells the culture’s story.

Santos, a San Antonio native, has helped create a platform for exploring mestizo cultural identity at the institution.

John Phillip Santos, a distinguished scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies at the UTSA Honors College, says that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” (right) provided a hopeful sign that Latino representation in pop culture will continue to improve.

In the last year, we’ve seen the movies “In the Heights” and Disney’s “Encanto,” as well as Netflix’s “Selena: The Series.” Why this sudden wave of Latino representation?

There have been instances of bursts I would say. I think the larger issue remains relative to the visibility of Latinidad, especially Chicanx

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LESSON LEARNED

“ COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES

The future, like the past and the present, is about migration and mestizaje. It’s about our deepest humanity, without borders.

characters, ambiente and ideas. Selena is a very well-known figure and widely celebrated, so I think of that story as being safe ground for certain types of Latino representation in the mass culture. There’s also a celebrated podcast (called “Anything for Selena”) about her enduring appeal.

In terms of storytelling, lack of representation on issues related to poverty, racism, the struggles to achieve educational excellence and issues related to substance abuse and violence affecting our communities are only scantily treated.

Where are the Latino ideas programs, philosophical and literary Chicanx cultura?

There are still some struggles like these to be addressed, but I think shows like “Selena: The Series” and Lin-Manuel Miranda representing Latinos and our culture are very hopeful signs.

You worked in the industry as a writer, filmmaker, producer and journalist, so you’ve seen it all firsthand. Do you think Latino representation has improved in the media?

There’s a whole lot of work that still needs to be done. It makes a difference when someone like a reporter has a background in certain areas. It allows us to hear an authentic voice on what’s taking place. A very good example is a younger reporter at The New York Times named Edgar Sandoval. He is from the Valley and has been writing amazing pieces on the COVID epidemic in the Valley. In my many years of reading The New York Times,

I’ve never seen a reporter use Tex-Mex or Valley Spanglish in a way that wasn’t objectified.

In one of Sandoval’s stories, a son, whose mother had died from COVID, was talking to the funeral director and said, “peine la bien,” or “comb her well.”

He blended that mix of Spanish and English that’s familiar to all of our ears in a place like San Antonio or South Texas.

These are some things people might find insignificant, but for those of us invested in the hope for a new way of making media, it makes a huge difference. For the most part, these kinds of nuanced true Chicanx voices are still excluded from the mediasphere.

What nuanced representation of Latino multiracial identities—such as mestizo— have you seen in mainstream arts and entertainment?

At the time of the early 20th century, there was a big movement out of Mexico by artists, writers and intellectuals to celebrate the mestizo heritage of Mexico.

The person who is most associated with this is philosopher Jose Vasconcelos. He turned the derogatory representation of the mestizo and proclaimed people of Mexico as the “raza cósmica” or the cosmic race.

The term mestizo is not commonly used in the media. My primo, Robert Santos, who was just nominated to head the Census Bureau, talks about how he writes in mestizo as a qualifier when checking boxes relating to race and identity in the Census. It’s not something that is

officially in the Census yet, but I expect in the very near future we will see the Census include the term mestizo.

A lot of your work has focused on culture and ethnic identity. Why are these topics so relevant today?

Growing up between San Antonio and Northern Mexico, I didn’t romanticize the story of the founding fathers, but instead nurtured a curiosity about the stories of the Aztec and the Mayan civilizations.

But I was never taught about them in school, never invited to understand how their legacy related to me. That kind of education was reserved for teaching me about ancient Greece, ancient Rome.

My colleague, David Carrasco, from Harvard University talks about what he calls “the Aztec moment.” It’s when you, as a Mexican American, make your first trip to Mexico City and see what was never taught to you about our culture. My work has been about trying to tell those stories. As a documentary filmmaker, a lot of my stories around the world were about the poor, and I realized there was another aspect of our Mexicanidad that connected us to the struggles of the poor everywhere. That gave me a very powerful understanding— the Mexican struggle wasn’t just what we had to suffer through. It was part of a worldwide struggle of the marginalized. It turns out the future, like the past and the present, is about migration and mestizaje.

It’s about our deepest humanity, without borders. S

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Do you have a question about science or literature or any topic that’s always made you wonder “What? How? Why?” but you never got around to looking into it? Let us know at sombrilla@utsa.edu and we’ll find a UTSA expert to explain it.

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Occasions Illuminated The UTSA Monuments and Student Union Tower are known for their changing colors, used to recognize both solemn and celebratory events. During the spring, the university paused to express its support for the people of Ukraine with a blue and yellow display. Meanwhile, a vibrant orange glow indicates another major victory for Roadrunner Athletics.