Whether hardcover, paperback or electronic, a book is a book. Despite the flash and hoopla surrounding new media writing in this world of tweets, posts and microblogs, the classics remain the classics. And book clubs are still filling the needs of faculty, staff and students to read and discuss traditional, long-format writing, as is the case with one particular club on campus.

In conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas, the Jefferson Book Club serves as a resource for faculty, undergraduate and graduate students to engage in dialogue about classic literature, essays and films in an informal intellectual setting every few weeks. The Thomas Jefferson Center’s mission is “to realize Jefferson’s vision of educating citizens and leaders to understand the meaning of liberty and to exercise it wisely.”

Illustration by Bianca Krause

The term “book club” is loosely used to describe the function of the Jefferson Book Club, which was founded at the beginning of 2009. Indubitably, they read books, but they also absorb and dissect classic essays and movies. Like all UT organizations, the club has an adviser and officers, but moderation of book club sessions is taken over by a changing roster of professors, graduate students and post-doctoral students. Interdepartmental relationships and dialogue remain a pivotal aspect of their meetings.

“Definitely the way they put it together by having the lounge area next to the offices helps out a lot so the professors come and talk to the students,” said Matthew Levinton, a soft-spoken history undergraduate senior who serves as the club’s current president. “A lot of times we’ll provide copies if we are discussing an article, and we put it in the professor’s office so people can come in and interact with the faculty.”

The club has studied a diverse swath of authors from Lincoln, Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Nietzsche and Adam Smith. While many of the sessions are led by scholars in the classics or government departments, the club attempts to bring in academics from all departments on campus.

When the club chose to read Adam Smith’s writings, McCombs School of Business professor Eli Cox moderated the group. His discussion went beyond the economic theories typically attributed to Smith and explored the theories of how people make decisions based on moral inclinations, Levinton said. This cooperation between different academic departments harkens to an earlier era of intellectual discourse when University disciplines were less rigidly structured.

Levinton said he has been making a special effort to advertise to departments that are underrepresented in the Jefferson Book Club, such as natural sciences.

“Part of the mission of the center is to counteract the specialization that has occurred recently,” he said. “Every subject is enriched by the other. It’s kind of a shame that you could focus entirely on one thing in academia.”

Most of the book discussions are held in a small room on the fourth floor of historic Waggener Hall, which adjoins the faculty philosophy offices and the picturesque library of the Thomas Jefferson Center. This cozy environment sets a tone of approachability and seems to allow academic structure and hierarchy to fade into the background, as both faculty and students approach the same topic with intellectual curiosity and jointly involve themselves in the process of self-discovery.

The Jefferson Book Club will convene meetings again in the fall semester, and the Jefferson Center will host events for faculty and students who will be on campus during the summer. For more information about the book club and upcoming events, visit their website at utexas.edu/cola/centers/coretexts.

Editor’s Note: Returning to the campus where he earned both his journalism and law degrees, Tullos Wells is wrapping up his first semester teaching at UT in years, as a lecturer in the Department of Advertising leading the course “Legal Issues for Advertising and Public Relations in Sports,” a class he’ll continue this fall. He is a senior partner at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, and serves as the chief legal officer for the San Antonio Spurs. Our Campus writer Aaron West sat down with Wells to find out what the University was like when he was student, spending time in Austin and his role as the Spurs’ general counsel.

Our Campus: What’s it like being back at UT?

Tullos Wells: When I agreed to do this and I went over to that nasty little building to get my key — which I’ve now lost — it was hilarious, because I went in and told them who I am and that I need my key. And they came back and they said, “I’m sorry, you haven’t returned your key from 1974 yet.” I said, “How on Earth do you guys know that?” ’74 was pre-computers almost. They’re not doing it any differently than they were in ’74. I taught communications law here, and what’s different is basically everything. The students are so much brighter. Obviously they have access to so much more information. It’s been great. It’s more challenging this time around. I’m two or three generations removed from my students.

My experience and understanding is that you guys today are sailing into much more difficult waters than my generation was. Information and technology is moving so rapidly. The job market is shifting so rapidly.

What’s most interesting is from a comm[unication] perspective is that several years ago — I’ve stayed close to the University — several people have said, “Oh my gosh, journalism students can’t find jobs.” The experience has been very different than that; there’s so many different outlets today. Even though newspapers may be [in decline], there’s still a thirst for content to fulfill all of these media outlets that we have today.

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

OC: Is it everything you expected coming back?

Wells: No, but it’s been as rewarding as I hoped it would be. I’m not as good at it as I hoped to be. Hopefully I’ll be better next semester.

The biggest hurdle for me has been remembering that people in my class think of the Gulf War the same way I thought of the Civil War — there’s just such a generational difference between someone who’s my age and these kids. But I have a young daughter so it makes it a little easier. But the most interesting thing is that you guys retain data very differently than the way we used to. If you look at my students, and I spy on them all the time, they all have their laptops open on the pretension that they’re taking notes. And at any given time I’m guessing they have three or four screens open — one of which is Facebook, one where they’re taking notes and one where they’re looking at the Web — so it’s this continuous partial attention that makes the biggest difference.

OC: What changes have you noticed in the field of communications law, which you previously taught?

Wells: Communications law, when I was teaching it, had to do with trademark and copyright and First Amendment issues. A lot of that is still present, but there are so many other issues on top of that. And the First Amendment issues are very different. With sports and media law or entertainment law, as much as anything, I’m trying to pinpoint what the industry is really like, what the sports industry is really like. And then if you’re going to be a communications major, how you fit into that industry.

I don’t care if you like sports or don’t like sports, all of you are in the business of sports in one way or another. People seem to have some interest in seeing how this business really operates and how law impacts that. So that’s what I hope to accomplish — that [the students] walk out of this class and have a better sense of how [the] sports [business] operates and how law impacts everything that happens with it.

OC: How has campus itself changed?

Wells: It’s a busy campus. It’s a bustling campus. It’s a crowded campus. The ambience that the school had in the ’60s and ’70s was gone with the building boom. … So it’s not as physically attractive as it used to be, but you can’t help but love the energy in this place. It’s a physically very different place but a wonderful campus.

OC: Have there been any memorable moments or something a student has said or done that has stuck out?

Wells: I’ve had a number of guest speakers, and watching the students interact with the speakers has probably been the most fun because many of them really are interested in what these folks have to say. These men and women are really good about engaging. … It’s an impressive group.

OC: Could you expand on your duties as the San Antonio Spurs’ general counsel?

Wells: [It has] everything to do with any business operation, all of the things that go into that business — contracts, care and feeding of the organization, development. [I deal with] issues with respect to the NBA and the [National Basketball] Player’s Association with respect to sponsors and advertisers and players. I try to have very little interaction with players. Some are like my adopted kids, some of them I don’t know very well.

OC: What is the most enjoyable part of the job for you?

Wells: It’s show business. It’s fun business. We’re blessed to have a really good organization … And what we do makes a huge difference in the lives of San Antonians. We’re a big part of that community — what we invest in, what we spend our time in makes a big difference in the lives of people in that community. We can fly back from a playoff game, get back at 2 or 3 in the morning … and [there are] 2,500-5,000 people at the airport glad to see us when we get home.

Some days are very exciting and some days I’m getting people out of jury duty.

OC: Was it always an aspiration of yours to end up in entertainment or sports law or in the capacity you are now?

Wells: No. I went to law school wanting to be a writer. I have a degree in journalism from here and a law degree from here, but I absolutely wanted to be a journalist. I went ‘bad’ somewhere along the way. I became a communications lawyer and then wandered into being a trial lawyer, and lots of other things, and then stumbled into this about 20 years ago. It’s fun.

OC: What made you want to go into law after graduating with a journalism degree?

Wells: Have you ever heard of a guy named Dan Quayle? He was George H.W. Bush’s vice president. And when he was put on a ticket, he was a disaster, because he just wasn’t ready for prime time. [Quayle’s] first press officer was … a friend of mine who said, “Tullos, if you want to be a writer, you need to specialize. I’m doing law, and you oughtta do law; it’s great.” … He was the one who talked me into going to law school, a guy named Dave Beckwith.

… You know, I’ve had a chance to do things most people never get to do in their careers. There’s only 30 guys in the country who get to do what I do in professional sports.

OC: How do you divide up your time between San Antonio and the Spurs and coming here?

Wells: Well I have other clients besides the Spurs. It’s hectic. I have not had as much time to spend in Austin as I wanted to. When I agreed to do this, I had wanted to spend a couple nights [a week] here. [My law firm has] an office here as well, so it would have been easy, but I haven’t had a chance to do that as much. I love being in Austin.

The emergency gate was down in front of her office at Walter Webb Hall, and she had received numerous emergency alert text messages that Tuesday last September. Nyleva Corley knew crisis had hit campus.

On Sept. 28, 2010, mathematics sophomore Colton Tooley fired several rounds from an assault rifle before taking his own life in the Perry-Castaneda Library.

“I was afraid for the campus,” Corley said.

As the Web and new media manager for UT’s Office of Public Affairs, Corley and her department stepped into action with alerts on the University’s home page and updates on Twitter. By the end of the day, Corley said she and the public affairs office learned new media’s strengths and weaknesses when dealing with a crisis that involved informing tens of thousands of faculty, staff and students.

Photo by Lara Haase

“We used social media to post as quickly as possible and updated a worried community about the situation,” she said, adding that her office must communicate through multiple channels to send messages.

Corley calls herself a facilitator and a connector. Her job involves making connections within the University and effectively showcasing the campus to the outside world. She develops content for UT’s home page, manages the official Facebook page and acts as a liaison between the technology department and public affairs.

“My job is to tell the stories of the University,” she said. “We try to tell people about the University’s three missions: learning, research and community service.”

She said her favorite stories are those such as the January home page feature about Allen Bard, a professor in the College of Natural Sciences. The article showcases the chemistry and biology research Bard is doing to capture hydrogen for fuel. She said she loved bringing together Bard and College of Natural Sciences writer Daniel Oppenheimer to share this facet of UT.

“We are all about engagement,” Corley said. “We shed the institutional voice and talk as a person; we use our voice, not the school’s.”

Corley and Chris Latham, Web designer for Technology Resources, realized what they had learned about communicating during the crisis would be helpful for other communities experiencing potential emergencies. This March, they presented their realizations at SXSW’s Interactive Festival.

“What happened at UT was frightening,” Corley said. “We used [our communications experience] as a platform to discuss how we get emergency messages out quickly. We all need to focus on practicing the plans set into place so emotions can come second to what we need to do — just rely on muscle memory.”

Corley and Latham posted a detailed account of all communications that transpired during the crisis to show others what worked and what didn’t.

“I felt honored that people recognized the need for this discussion, and it felt good to put together something for others to take advantage of,” she said. The SXSW presentation centered on attendees discussing improvements and effective connections.

In the future, Corley said she hopes to make a collage of campus available through a platform such as Tumblr. Such a platform is free of content specifications and allows for a wide range of media.

“We would be aggregating things you find — a found project,” Corley said. “It would take bits and pieces of everything around campus — a photo in the communications school, an audio clip of LBJ or a poem from the English department.”

Corley’s job is to funnel representing voices from an 80,000-person population to appropriate outlets. Here the voices shape the campus’ image and inspire greater achievements within.

“We gather all UT’s social media channels in order to promote groups and to run collaboration,” Corley said. “We tap into the people on campus.”

The entire warehouse is burnt orange — plush Bevos in plastic bags, UT baseball T-shirts and game-day dresses spill out of cardboard shipping boxes that seem to reflect an orange tint. Out of the University Co-op warehouse comes all things burnt orange and UT-branded.

Behind much of this merchandise is Brian Jewell, the Co-op’s vice president of marketing. He handles all printed materials, including T-shirts and Co-op merchandise, and public relations, a job he described as the press secretary of the Co-op.

“[I’m the] somebody who knows what to say,” Jewell said. “Just welcome to a whirlwind [of events, design and press].”

His year revolves around Texas football and the holidays. From February to May, he and the Co-op’s departments analyze the past season’s failings and successes. They spend June through August planning new products and lines based off their analysis. When late August hits, Jewell and the Co-op staff implement seven months of preparation until just after the holidays in January.

“[We are just] holding on for dear life,” he said. Sales, ad campaigns, e-mail blasts and events fill their calendars.

Jewell said the events are of particular importance as they provide visibility and allow for feedback and customer interaction. People tell him what the Co-op should be, he said.

“Our brand exists because of what consumers say they want,” Jewell said. “We make the brand off reactions.”

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

He added that alumni, students and fans’ biggest expectation is for the Co-op to give back to the UT community. Most ask Jewell if money from their purchases still goes back to the Forty Acres.

“[This question] makes me feel good and know that [alumni] still care,” Jewell said. “[The money] still goes back, and they still want to give back.”

Last month, Jewell and his team went to San Antonio to represent the University in Fiesta San Antonio, an annual 11-day event that serves to highlight local nonprofit organizations. Jewell acted as liaison between the school and the press. He spoke with the media about University Co-op products released for Fiesta San Antonio and how the proceeds benefit a charity yet to be announced.

“[At the fiesta] I saw how a Longhorn nation will get on [board with] really good ideas and support them,” he said.

As part of his marketing duties, Jewell oversees the design of Co-op-branded products such as the Fiesta Longhorn medal created for this year’s Fiesta San Antonio. His creative staff, who mostly have backgrounds in the T-shirt business, draw from market trends, pop culture, sport chants and the Austin vibe to generate ideas for new products.

Jewell used the Co-op’s holiday T-shirts to exemplify the brainstorming process, saying T-shirt design starts with a base. The holiday designs start by asking what the holidays really are.

“We don’t want to make light of the religious symbols, so we go for the whimsical feel of Christmas,” Jewell said. “We take the broader concept and narrow it down.”

After deciding on a theme, the designers narrow in on appropriate icons and ask how they can be related to UT and Texas products.

“We take two concepts — marks and icons — to blend them together,” he said. “You don’t need to splatter longhorns all over the place.”

Designers are careful about their use of the Texas mark, as Jewell said it must be handled with care. Not only do the products represent the University, but also the Texas community, he said.

“As an extension of the University, we know that you expect the best from us,” Jewell said.

1. Professors should understand that students are real people and students should understand the same about professors. Among real people, kindness is always a virtue and its absence always a sadness and a pain. Students often don’t realize that not only can professors be unkind to students, but students can be unkind to professors. Twenty years later, I still remember an anonymous student evaluation that read: “I expected to enjoy this class, and I might have done so were it not for Dr. Singer. His physical appearance was MORE than disgusting! Had he been clean, maybe I would have been able to stand to look at him and listen. In short, I hated everything about Singer and his class.” I work very hard to make my classes both informative and interesting to students, and to have them dismissed so casually and completely is really quite painful!

2. Professorial duties are teaching, research and service. The only way to be a happy professor is to resign yourself very quickly to the fact that you can do none of these as well as you know you could do it if it were your only task. It’s true that research and teaching can complement each other, but this is mainly true for the most advanced classes and at the freshman level it is rare that my research directly feeds into and improves my teaching. In the main, research and teaching compete for my time and effort.

3. It IS possible to teach evolution to non-science students in Texas, if you do it gently.

4. Professoring is a good gig for folks like me who get sick from time to time. I am judged on what I have achieved in the past five years. If I were judged on what I’ve achieved in the past month, I’d be carrying a “will work for food” sign.

5. Professoring is NOT sexy. Around 1978 or so, I remember driving on 26th Street and passing three young women who hollered out, “Hey, cool car, give us a ride!” So I did, and someone said: “This is a neat car, what do you do?” Though I could have said, “I’m a truck driver,” because it used to be true … [I decided I was] going to tell the truth even though I thought I knew the consequence. So I said, “I teach biology at UT.” And the reply? “LET US OUT!”

HOPE FITZGERALD, lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies
[2 years at UT]

1. Challenge is a good thing. Our students know what they’re getting into when they decide to study a complicated language intensively. When we keep the environment challenging (but hopefully not too stressful!) they keep making great
progress.

2. Be flexible, keeping your priorities in mind. No matter how well I plan for a class, something is bound to change at the last second, and it’s important to keep my priorities for the course in place while being flexible with how we work toward them as a class. For example, the first one-third of this semester, Egypt was in turmoil, and instead of discussing class readings, we sometimes spent class time watching events unfold there on the news. Helping students connect their language learning to the real world and to that bit of history in the making was so important that some other priorities had to be modified.

3. Students are responsible for their own learning. Every instructor I work with really wants his or her students to succeed and tries hard to make it happen, but in the end, it’s the student who decides whether or not to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them.

4. Seek, and you’ll (probably) find. UT has great resources available but in such a huge school, it’s not always easy to hear about them. If you need a service (counseling, tutoring, funding for a research project) it’s probably available here at UT—just start asking about it.

5. If you don’t occasionally take some time off, your head will explode.

5.5. Sleep has to be a priority. Organize your time and prioritize getting enough rest, or your semester will not go well.

Compiled by Sarah Pfeffer / Our Campus staff.

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

By Victoria Heckenlaible

Late-night building attendant Refugio Esquivel peered over the metal railing down uniform stairs in the UT Administration Building before beginning to mop. The fluorescent lights bathed the entire staircase in an industrial glow.

“I always feel like I’m going to fall off these stairs,” he said.

Esquivel, who has been working at UT for 11 years, is part of the custodial staff that cleans the campus and its buildings from 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. Attendants start their shifts by signing in to receive building section assignments and chemical packets for cleaning. These building attendants concentrate on specific cleaning duties that rotate every three months from lights duties, vacuuming, cleaning restrooms and utilities work. This is a part of the team’s effort to speed up the cleaning process and add variety.

UT also uses a unique custodial organization system called Operating System 1, which increases the pace, promotes efficiency and helps cut back on waste. Employees are given cards with an hourly schedule of where they are supposed to be in the cleaning process along with exact chemical rations in small colorful bags.

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

Fidel Garcia, the building services supervisor, said he is proud that the University adopted this system, joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan.

“Now everything is portioned out in the bags and we know exactly how much [of the] cleaning supplies each person is using,”
Garcia said. “We can look at an employee’s card to find them instead of spending half our time looking for them.”

When Garcia started working at UT nine years ago, the piles of plastic bags and cleaning chemicals that often went unused bothered him, he said. Then the University implemented Operating System 1 to save money and time and to be more environmentally safe.

“Most of the employees didn’t like the change — no one ever likes change,” Garcia said. “But then they starting liking it; the new system was faster-paced.”

When the employees sign in, they receive a color-coded card with cleaning assignments and matching colored chemical packages: green for light cleaning, blue for vacuuming, pink for restrooms and yellow for utilities. Even the schedule on the dry erase board is color-coordinated.

Though the building attendant job is extremely organized and efficiently managed, the late-night hours give employees increased flexibility during the daytime.

“Most of us prefer the late-night hours, because it lets us do what we need to do [during the day],” Garcia said.

In some cases, the hours allow for the opportunity to have second job during the day.

Garcia said one UT building attendant only sleeps for three hours a night. The employee works at UT at night then drives to an Austin suburb for a daytime custodial position.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Garcia said. “And I don’t know how my brother did it either — he worked two jobs for 12 years and finally had to cut down to just one.”

For some of the attendants, an alternative to a second job is to sign up to work large UT events, which provide opportunities for extra hours on the weekends.

“Many of the employees try to work the big events,” said building attendant leader Roberto Rodriguez. “It helps them make extra money.”

As a building attendant leader, Rodriguez supervises teams of eight to 12 attendants, audits supply usage and keeps track of hours.

Even with the weekend opportunities and the flexibility of the late-night hours, the benefits can only last so long as workers get sick of working two jobs and others start families.

“I used to be fine with the hours, but now I have a daughter,” Garcia said. “She’s growing up and wants to spend time with us in the evenings.”

Garcia is usually only able to spend 30 minutes with his daughter between the time she arrives home from school and he has to go to work.

Outside of balancing work and home and other challenges that go along with their jobs, the late-night custodial employees have had some lighthearted and even bizarre moments working when no one else seems to be around campus.

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

“‘Junior, Junior,’ I kept hearing after I turned my lights off,” said attendant Esquivel. “On the third time, I turned around and I saw a person crawling on the floor with no legs.”

Esquivel said he stared in horror as the apparatus crawled closer and the blood pooled on his freshly cleaned floors. He finally snapped out of the vision as he began screaming, he said.

“I was terrified,” Esquivel said. “I just took off running with my friend chasing after me.”

When his friend caught up with him, he forced Esquivel to walk back to the spot in the original pharmacy building. But even with no blood or signs of the legless crawler, Esquivel still refuses to ever return.

Attendant leader Rodriguez has also had his share of interesting interactions. He said that at one point, he followed wet footprints every night over the course of several weeks around the Music Recital Hall building. Each time he followed the footprints they led to nothing, until finally he and a building attendant found the culprit.

“I swung open the restroom door to see a butt-naked man standing in front of the sink,” Rodriguez said.

The man was bathing, splashing water from the running sink on himself and using the soap from the soap dispenser as a puddle of water formed around him. Rodriguez and the attendant then called UTPD to handle the situation.

From possible spirits to attempted bathroom sink baths, the late-night custodial crews have seen it all. The nocturnal hours are prone to unusual sightings and potential challenges that seem to affect the building attendants’ and leaders’ daily lives.

While staplers and tape dispensers tend to occupy most desks around campus, exhibits designer John Maisano’s is filled with clay figures of mosasaurs, sketches of prehistoric creatures and sculpture molds. Being the one-man exhibits department at Texas Memorial Museum, Maisano is tasked with making the museum a place that people want to visit through designing, creating and bringing the exhibits to life.

“When someone walks into the museum, I have three seconds to grab their attention and make them go ‘Oh, what’s that?’,” Maisano said. “When you enter a space you get a feeling from it — either it is crazy fun or ‘Eww, I don’t want to be here.’ That’s the real challenge of the job.”

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

As the museum team member with the fine arts degree, Maisano brings the scientists’ specimens and dissertations to the public on a visual level, interpreting science through art.

“This position combines my architecture, art and theater experience,” he said. “It deals with lighting, the way people move around the space and how they encounter things. The lighting, colors and way a specimen is mounted [are] what draws
people in.”

The museum is a testament to his 11 years of work toward the goal of making science interesting and exciting. Whether it’s the larger-than-life-sized model of the rock cycle, the murals in the animal habitat display cases, the coloring book templates of dinosaurs or the entire Hall of Geology and Paleontology, Maisano has had a large impact on the public’s view of science.

“I will be given the room, the specimens, access to the scientists and curator, and have to make something pretty.”

Since he fills the role of carpenter, welder, painter and sculptor on top of actual designing, Maisano rarely has two days that look alike.

“It’s really neat — I never have any idea what’s coming down the pike on any given day,” he said. “This job entails everything from changing light bulbs to mounting specimens, to making and designing props for the needs of the education department.”

One of Maisano’s biggest projects right now is working with the education and paleontology departments to train K-12 teachers on how to incorporate science in their classrooms through art.

“It’s challenging because we’re dealing with people who have never drawn before, at the same time as art teachers,” he said. “I’m helping teachers to get rid of the fear of art — showing people who are afraid of drawing that it’s basically just shapes and that if you mess up clay, you can just do it again.”

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

Maisano’s work with the museum’s education department has also included involvement in the “Fright at the Museum” and “Darwin Days” events, from making models of the earth and fossils to designing “scary activities” in which petting coconut skins blindfolded feels like petting a tarantula.

“You don’t have to be versatile to be a designer, but there’s more possibilities if you are and you never get bored,” Maisano said. “I try to give as much as I can to this organization, and it benefits the public and the students.”

1. No matter how highly I regard my students, with proper push and support, they always surpass my expectations. Hook’em Horns!

2. Teaching is much harder than outsiders to the profession know. But on a crappy day, when nothing else works, we professors have the special privilege of being able to select a few students, engage them, and challenge them to prepare for a life worthy of their best goals and deepest values.

3. Stay in touch with your students. There is no end of pleasure in watching their careers develop and their achievements surpass our own.

4. Administration is a tough, messy and occasionally nasty business. We faculty should support — and regularly thank — our chairs, deans and senior campus leaders for their service, except, perhaps, when they seem to be taking too much pleasure in their work.

5. Too many Texans only know UT as the institution that rejected their child or relative for admission. Thus, our public service matters in generating broad public support and understanding of the important role the University plays in every Texan’s life.

MARTIN KEVORKIAN, associate professor, Department of English
[10 years at UT]

1. It’s a challenge for professors not to continue to see the world from the perspective of their own grad school experiences, and that’s one reason that teaching — of intrinsic value wherever it occurs — matters for the research mission of the University and vice versa. Tie at No. 1 with: Lists like this one pose a grave temptation to individuals with a capacity for fatuous declaration.

2. If you’re looking for parking on campus, you might want to try … wait, I’m not telling you that.

3. The shuttles and the free-with-ID access to Capital Metro almost mean that you don’t need the information that I’m withholding in item No. 2.

4. The wisdom of advising staff and course schedulers can fuel the engine of curriculum
development.

5. The students are both bright and polite, but they walk far too slowly!

SARA SUTCLIFFE, Lecturer, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
[6 years at UT]

As I have (honestly, by accident!) been at UT as an undergrad, a graduate student and now a lecturer, these have several perspectives:

1. It’s a really great feeling when an ex-/current student sees you and says, “Hello,” when you pass them on the street.

2. You are human: You’ll make mistakes. The trick is to find them, show why/how you made them and try to fix things as soon as you can.

3. Never get a flu shot and go straight back to teaching that afternoon. (I wasn’t sick, but the side effects made for an interesting afternoon’s lecturing…)

4. UT is a huge place. It can be very lonely when you first arrive (especially if you’re from another continent!). Join some student groups (ones that will help you succeed at your academic goals as well as give some social interaction), and after a while, it’ll shrink and feel like home. Remember it will ALWAYS take you longer than you think it should to get from A to B on campus, because it usually involves going via C, D, E …

5. One of the best things about UT is the myriad of different talks, exhibits and concerts that happen. Many of them are free; just go look at all the fliers in the buildings and online and go learn about something new!

Compiled by Rosch Wadera / Our Campus staff.

Psychology professor David Buss and a team of researchers have discovered that the need for financial security among Chinese mate-seekers has grown over the past 25 years, reflecting economic development in China. The findings were published in the February edition of “Personality and Individual Differences.”

Buss led an International Selection Project in 1983 that asked 500 Chinese men and women to rank a set of qualities they seek in a sexual partner. In 2008, the researchers once again collected data from 1,060 participants and compared that data to that of the first study.

The results show a strong correlation between the increase of the standard of living in China over the last two decades and the importance of a “good earning capacity.” Both genders rated financial security higher in the 2008 study, but more women than men desired traits such as “social status.”

The study also found that men place more emphasis on youth and attractiveness of mates, while women prefer financial prospects and social standing. This gender gap supports the evolutionary theory that women and men look for partners who are fertile and financially stable.

“These findings reveal both important trends in the cultural evolution of values surrounding mating, as well as the robustness of sex differences in mate preferences over time,” Buss said.

Pent-up emotion may cause aggression
Bottling up emotions can make people more aggressive but fatigue does not, according to a study published in the journal “Social Psychological and Personality Science” in March.

UT professors Arthur Markman and Todd Maddox and two University of Minnesota researchers showed participants two infamous classic movie scenes: the overeating scene in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” and the toilet bowl scene in “Trainspotting.” Half of the subjects, who were mostly students and members of the Army, were asked to stay awake for 24 hours prior to the study. The others were allowed to sleep.

Before watching the clips, some of the subjects were told not to visibly react to the images. Others were allowed to watch without restriction.

The study, which was funded in part by the U.S. Army, concluded that those who refrained from reacting were more aggressive than those who acted freely. The participants who were deprived of sleep reacted no differently than those who were well-rested, suggesting that fatigue does not make people more aggressive.

“Our research suggests people may become more aggressive after they have to control themselves,” Markman said. “Whatever psychological mechanisms are at work when people deal with stress and then have to exercise self control later are not the same thing that happens when you’re tired.”

The results of Markman and Maddox’s research reinforces the “ego depletion effect,” in which bottling up emotions may lead to increased aggression later in life.

Local action key to species conservation
Human activity, not simply climate change, is affecting plants and animals at the local level, according to UT biologists.

Professors Camille Parmesan and Michael C. Singer published their findings in “Nature Climate Change” in March, in response to increased pressure from policymakers to determine how many of the changes observed in species are from greenhouse gases versus other factors.

The general consensus among scientists is that funding would be better spent on studies of species adaptations and conservation of endangered species. Regardless of the reason behind species change, the affected animals and plants are feeling the heat.

“A changing climate is a changing climate, irrespective of its cause,” the scientists wrote in the journal.
The researchers emphasize the need to focus on human interactions with the environment, including air pollution and urban sprawl.

In “Nature Climate Change,” Parmesan and Singer cite the Quino butterfly population in the 1980s, which became endangered as a result of the urban growth of San Diego and Los Angeles. Singer, who has worked with the species since the 1960s, said that while climate change is partially to blame for the decline in Quino butterflies, it wasn’t the only driver.

The biologists stress the importance of acting locally to restore damaged habitats and removing invasive species. The issue of climate change is a problem on a much larger scale, they said.

— Jordan Schraeder

Albert Schuman oversees much of the University’s utilities that some might take for granted until something goes wrong. Just ask anyone who’s ever gotten stuck in an elevator.

As the associate director of utilities and energy management, Schuman, who graduated from UT with an electrical engineering degree in 1976 and supervises the University’s electrical distribution, was charged with elevator and escalator maintenance responsibilities in 1995. He makes sure that all the elevators and escalators on campus — close to 500 of them — are running correctly and comply with state and national safety codes.

Photo by Stephanie Bathurst

“We’re one of the bigger elevator institutions in the country,” Schuman said. “Just dealing with maintenance issues and compliance inspection issues and taking care of the elevators is a pretty big thing.”

UT outsources elevator and escalator maintenance to Tejas Elevator Co. The contract with Tejas Elevator Co. calls for seven service technicians to be on campus every day maintaining the system — and not only when something goes awry.

“An elevator is a very high-maintenance animal,” Schuman said. “You don’t just work on them when they stop; you have to work on them while they’re going to keep them going. An elevator is a large mechanical system that has a lot of movable parts that not only go through wear but go through abuse from people that don’t really see it as abuse.”

It’s called an entrapment when someone gets stuck in an elevator, and Schuman said the low number of entrapments is a good indication of the quality and frequency of maintenance that’s occurring.

“It’s kind of a gauge of efficiency,” he said. “We don’t want more than one entrapment per year per building. It says a lot about the level of maintenance you’ve got going in.“

There were at least 10 entrapments at UT last year, which Schuman said is a great record for an institution with as many elevators as UT. And even when entrapments do occur, the elevator isn’t always to blame.

“Most entrapments aren’t caused by the elevators,” Schuman said. “I’ll give you an example: During the summer there will be different camps and kids [who] always want to see how many people they can get on an elevator. Well, 22 people of reasonable weight — an elevator typically takes 3,000 pounds to 5,000 pounds — … overload the elevator.”

Hitting 28 years at UT, Schuman said he’s glad to be able to make a difference at the University. Beyond his duties as associate director, Schuman has served as the project manager for several campus utility projects. The most recent project was a thermal energy storage tank that keeps 4 million gallons of water cooled to 39 degrees so that air-conditioning on campus can run efficiently.

“It’s the most gratifying part of the job,” Schuman said. “We’ve done $150 million in projects to upgrade our infrastructure for our utility systems over the last 10 years.”