Margaret Aguilar accepts her letter of acceptance from President Flawn and Dean Dora Grossenbacher.
Never Lose Patience
UTSA’s first undergraduate student to be accepted says she wished for the university in the 1950s
[ This article was originally published in UTSA newsletter The Discourse in January 1975 ]
Margaret Aguilar waited a long time for UTSA. “Even in the 1950s I felt that a public university was needed in San Antonio,” says the gentle-voiced substitute school teacher who was the first undergraduate student to complete her application for admission and be accepted at UTSA.
Along with a projected 3,700 other juniors and seniors and 1,800 graduate students, Aguilar will attend the first classes at the new UTSA campus next fall [1975].
Aguilar began her college education in 1965 when her daughter, Anna Louise, enrolled in kindergarten. When Anna Louise was in the eighth grade, Aguilar completed her freshman and sophomore work at San Antonio College. Since then she’s been waiting for UTSA’s undergraduate programs to open. Now she plans to earn a bachelor of arts degree in elementary education.
Aguilar is a teacher at heart—the kind who would never lose her patience or her temper. She is fascinated by elementary students and how quickly they learn.
She is also fascinated by what goes on in her own mind. “I used to be very narrow-minded,” she says with a laugh at herself. “But when I enrolled in college, my views broadened in a hurry.”
An uphill project for Aguilar will be riding her bicycle to the UTSA campus, which is five miles from her home. Eventually she may be joined by two other cyclists—her husband, Eulalio, an inventory management supervisor at Kelly Air Force Base, and Anna Louise.
Because she will be a part-time student at UTSA, Aguilar figures she will complete her degree requirements in 1981. In the meantime Eulalio will probably enroll at UTSA to complete the few hours of credit he needs to earn his degree. Once she finishes high school, Anna Louise plans to attend UTSA full-time. “Wouldn’t it be something,” muses Aguilar, “if the three of us graduated together?”