Blog


  • Biden Administration to Nominate Liberal Arts Alumna to Chair ACHP

    President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Sara Bronin, a Plan II Honors and Architecture alumna from The University of Texas at Austin, as Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) chairperson.


  • The Body’s Real-Time Response to Racism

    For the first time, researchers have recorded how the body responds when someone is confronted with racism or discrimination in the real world, providing new insight into health disparities in the United States and the stress experienced by students-of-color.


  • 2021 Keene Prize for Literature

    When asked where she drew inspiration for her award-winning work, fiction-writer Carrie R. Moore points somewhere between track 12 and 13 on the Solange Knowles’ album “When I Get Home.”


  • Making the Most of Self-Care

    March marked the one-year anniversary of the WHO declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic, and to say that it’s been a rough year would be an understatement. Whether we’ve lost loved ones, jobs, or simply the ability to distinguish between Sundays and Mondays, everyone is struggling under the weight of a constantly shifting “new normal.”


  • Capturing Culture

    When people travel to the United States, they might be shocked at how large our portion sizes are, how friendly strangers may seem or how informal and direct conversations tend to be.


  • Listen to Black Lives Texas

    This month, millions of young Texans will face new struggles in the transition back to school amid a global pandemic. But for those facing food insecurity or limited internet access, the new school year poses greater threats.


  • Exploring the World Through Language

    Sometimes we fall in love when we least expect it. Arriving at The University of Texas at Austin as a mathematically inclined freshman, Heather Rice had no intention of learning Russian.


  • Retracing UT’s Complicated Racial Past

    Taking graduation photos in front of Littlefield Fountain and singing “The Eyes of Texas” at a packed home football game are common bucket-list experiences uniting UT Austin’s students and alumni.


  • Women’s Activism in Tunisia

    In 2014, Maro Youssef arrived in Tunisia just one day before the country passed a constitution that is among the most progressive in the world. She was serving as a foreign affairs analyst at the American embassy in Tunisia.


  • Earliest Mayan Ceremonial Structure Unearthed

    The discovery of a near 3,000-year-old platform, built among wetlands and rivers of the Mexican tropical forest, offers new insight into the Maya’s early communal development.


  • Three Ways Kids Can Learn through Play at Home

    family and community. But recent shelter-in-place efforts have limited many of these routine yet vital experiences — especially because young kids can’t video call or text their friends as freely as others.


  • German Outreach Program Takes Shape

    The German Outreach Program at The University of Texas at Austin grew organically from an interest on the part of undergraduates to change their roles in the classroom and share the German language with a younger generation.


  • Career Advice for Graduating Seniors

    As we approach the last few weeks of the school year, students are beginning to look toward future plans, and for most graduating seniors this means focusing on their careers.


  • From Bloody Shoes to Dancing Mice: The Evolution of Fairy Tales

    In the Grimms version of Snow White, our heroine is awoken from her bewitched slumber not by a handsome prince’s kiss, but when the jostling of a clumsy servant dislodges a chunk of poisoned apple from her throat.


  • Inhale. Exhale. Analyze.

    Mehdi Haghshenas’ signature course “What We See, What We Believe” focuses on critical analysis of media, but he begins the class with a meditation.


  • Timeline Tool Connects the Dots

    Learning history requires more than just being able to recall the dates when battles were fought or naming all 45 U.S. presidents.


  • Camp Alba

    After spending three days on the University of Texas at Austin campus, sixth graders from Martin Middle School left with a greater sense of connection to their communities and their first single track, produced by hip-hop artist and activist Olmeca. 


  • Finding common ground in water

    When pressed to summarize the path of his wide spanning career, Paul Adams offers one word,  “discourse.”


  • Design Thinking

    Daunting problems require new ideas and a new way of thinking — design thinking.


  • Comics in the Classroom

    Rikke Cortsen is occasionally surprised to remember that not everyone she meets is an avid reader of comic books.


  • Arsenic and Lace: Why Save (Deadly) Objects?

    Killer wallpaper. A childhood comic strip. A 10-foot portrait made of hair combs. Secret Oval Office Dictabelt recordings. These objects share one thing in common — they’re preserved in archives.


  • Follow Your Arts Desire

    With all the events going on around town this month, it’s easy to forget that we have several excellent art galleries right on campus.


  • A Whole World of Music

    Every March thousands of musicians from around the globe descend on Austin for South by Southwest (SXSW), clogging traffic, jacking up flight prices and making it impossible for locals to enjoy a quiet drink within a five-mile radius of downtown.


  • Free Minds, Free Education

    While higher education is often touted as the cornerstone of a successful and prosperous life, many are left in the dust, unable to afford the tuition or balance the time needed to build that foundation.


  • Written in Stone: Studying the Relationship Between Ancient Writing Systems and Their Writers

    Beyond the classrooms in Waggener Hall and deep in the archives on prehistoric scripts, Cassandra Donnelly found her calling.