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“UTSA
in the News” is a synopsis of items that have appeared in periodicals
mentioning UTSA, its faculty, staff, students and programs. July 2002 The sluggish economy is putting strains
on scholarship funds of local universities. The depressed stock market
means lower returns on investments for university funds and individual
college savings. The nation's economic picture
is leading more students back to school. UTSA is expecting increased
enrollment for the 2002-2003 academic year due to the slow economy and
the nation's job losses mean more students are applying for scholarships--their
parents suddenly no longer able to foot the bill. For the last two school
years, UTSA gave $3 million in private scholarships, and the academic
year before President Ricardo Romo came on board, UTSA disbursed $2.5
million in scholarships. The University of Texas at San Antonio's
School of Architecture has recently established a new scholarship program
for its interior design students. The scholarship is called the Intertech
Flooring Scholarship in Interior Design. It was developed based on money
donated to the school by Bill Imhoff, president and CEO of Austin-based
Intertech Flooring. The college will receive $7,500 from Intertech to
use toward the further enrichment of interior design students education.
The money will be distributed in increments of $1,500 every year for
five years. Offered this summer for the first time
and free of charge, high school students received the opportunity for
one-on-one tutoring in reading at the University of Texas at San Antonio
Downtown Campus. Often considered the cornerstone of all education,
reading is an integral part of a youth's development but sometimes they
need help with comprehension and vocabulary in order to dominate the
literature. Students were expected to attend 12 one-hour tutoring sessions
for three weeks in June. Without much attention, a group of
researchers is trying to figure out who we are as San Antonians by looking
at how the people from the United States and Mexico intersect here.
Philip Kasinitz, a sociology professor at City University of New York,
visited here to discuss the early stages of the Rockefeller Foundation
funded project, headed by Harriett Romo, a sociology professor at the
University of Texas at San Antonio. The researchers were looking at
how well-to-do Anglos and their Mexican counterparts maintain ties on
both sides of the border and how that differs from the Mexican American
majority in town. The leadership at the University of Texas at San
Antonio should be commended for the foresight that allowed the relatively
young campus to step up and fill an academic void after Sept. 11. Months
before the attacks focused the nation's attention on its vulnerability
to terrorists, UTSA was establishing an infrastructure
security program to take advantage of the university's proximity to
the Air Intelligence Agency, headquartered at Lackland AFB. The Center
for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) at UTSA received $2.5
million from the U.S. Defense Department's home-land security funds,
a start-up boost most fledgling academic programs don't see. The University of Texas at San Antonio Archives
will take charge of documenting the flood of 2002. Donations of photographs,
e-mails, letters or personal accounts of the flood will be accepted
and collected as part of San Antonio history by personnel at the archives.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.4
million grant to University of Texas at San Antonio assistant professor
Stephen Brown and researchers from Cornell University designed to encourage
youth involvement in community gardens. The grant will allow inner-city
youths to organize and conduct research on gardens, interviewing older
people in their communities and using their findings to create their
own gardens and to teach others how to garden successfully. The University of Texas at San Antonio
and the Air Force's Air Intelligence Agency at Lackland AFB may be one
step closer to receiving the government funding they seek for the Center
for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS). A few weeks back,
the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Department of Defense appropriations
bill with an almost unanimous vote. Included in that bill was $3.5 million
for CIAS for fiscal 2003. Comments or
questions to Kris Rodriguez
(krodriguez@utsa.edu)
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