Natalia Berdyukova
Beard
Commencement Close-up: Student challenged to use all abilities
(Dec. 18, 2002)--At last Saturday's commencement ceremonies, Natalia Berdyukova Beard was part of the first group to graduate from the new School of Architecture. Eight years ago the young woman from Khabarovsk, Russia, did not imagine she would earn a B.S. in architecture from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Khabarovsk, a far eastern city near the Sea of Japan and the China border, is on the Trans Siberian Railway at the Amur River. An administrative center with defense, manufacturing, timber, fishing and agricultural industries, the city is a transportation hub, and, as in much of Russia, has a tradition of fine handicrafts and performance and visual arts.
Studying English at the Russian State Pedagogical University in Khabarovsk, Natalia -- who goes by Natasha -- planned to become a teacher. On scholarship from the Russian Culture Fund, she developed the drawing and painting skills she says she inherited from her father. She flexed her artistic muscles painting landscape and still-life water colors, but also broadened her knowledge studying literature and science.
While working in the university store selling student art pieces, she met her future husband, Bradley Beard, a San Antonian whose job in the oil business took him to Russia. She worked for him as an interpreter, and five years ago they married and settled in San Antonio. She is now in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.
After moving to San Antonio, Natasha decided UTSA was the perfect place to earn her degree, and that architecture would be her major.
"The UTSA architecture program offers an excellent approach for me," said Beard. "There is personal treatment from the faculty and a family atmosphere. The excitement of a growing program has allowed me freedom in exploring the design process, and a practical approach to utilizing all of one's artistic abilities."
"In architecture, you never stop learning," she added. "You have to know about every aspect of life -- literature, philosophy, film, art, environmental systems, science and physics. You have to look at things on a scale from an urban landscape to a door knob. You figure out how everything works and fits together."
Beard plans to work in an architectural firm for a couple of years to gain practical experience and then pursue a master's degree, with the long-term goal of working on international design projects.
Natasha and her husband have established a scholarship fund for 20 Russian students to study art. "It's my way of giving back. Without a scholarship, I wouldn't be where I am today," she said.
For more information about the scholarship fund, e-mail Beard.
The UTSA School of Architecture began as a program in 1979, became the Division of Architecture and Interior Design in 1995 and a school in Fall 2002. The School of Architecture takes advantage of the unique culture in South Texas and the borderlands of the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, offering a laboratory setting focusing on the particulars of the historic setting in intersection with contemporary theory.
For more information about the UTSA School of Architecture, call Julius Gribou,
director, at (210) 458-4299 or visit the School
of Architecture Web site.
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2002