San Antonio mayor, prominent business leader to keynote UTSA Commencement

By Christi Fish
Associate Director of Media Relations

(May 8, 2013) -- Thousands of UTSA graduates will be joined by their families, friends and colleagues to celebrate commencement, held for the first time in the Alamodome. San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and information security entrepreneur Nancy Kudla '87 will keynote UTSA's May 13 commencement exercises.

>> Learn more and meet UTSA graduates at UTSA Commencement website.

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Mayor Julián Castro will keynote the 2 p.m. commencement ceremony, which will recognize graduates from the College of Engineering, College of Liberal and Fine Arts, College of Public Policy and College of Sciences. At age 38, Castro is the youngest mayor of a Top 50 American city. After serving on the San Antonio City Council from 2001 to 2005, the San Antonio native was elected mayor in 2009 and won re-election in 2011 with nearly 82 percent of the vote. He was the first Hispanic to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in 2012.

As mayor, Castro has focused on attracting well-paying jobs to the city, raising educational attainment and revitalizing the city’s urban core. Castro’s administration created the SA2020 initiative to create a brainpower community and Café College, a one-stop center for guidance on college admissions and financial aid for San Antonio students. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

Nancy Kudla '87 will keynote UTSA's 7 p.m. ceremony, which will recognize graduates from the College of Architecture, College of Business, College of Education and Human Development, and University College. The UTSA 2011 Alumna of the Year, Kudla has always been passionate about education. She graduated in 1980 among the U.S. Air Force Academy's first class of female graduates.

In 1987, she graduated from UTSA with an M.B.A. and helped found Research Dynamics just two years later. She helped chart UTSA's foray into cyber security, starting with her service on the College of Business Advisory Council and the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) Council. Additionally, she has been instrumental in providing scholarships for UTSA science and engineering students.

Nearly 4,400 graduates are eligible to participate in commencement this semester, including 3,389 undergraduates, 931 master’s students and 55 doctoral candidates. Their graduation will bring UTSA’s total alumni base to 96,000.

The UTSA commencement ceremonies will be telecast live on AT&T U-verse channel 99, Grande Cable channel 21 and Time Warner Cable channel 98 and on the UTSA Information Technology website.

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UTSA Spring 2013 Commencement preliminary statistics
(Statistics may change when finalized in June 2013.)

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The University of Texas at San Antonio is an emerging Tier One research institution specializing in health, energy, security, sustainability, and human and social development. With nearly 31,000 students, it is the largest university in the San Antonio metropolitan region. UTSA advances knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. The university embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property -- for Texas, the nation and the world.