What do you consider the most valuable lesson you learned at the center?
I learned a lot of things from writing, from reading other people’s work, and from hearing comments on my writing and on my classmates’ writing, but I think the lessons learned were more specific to the work at hand rather than over-arching ideas.

What was your impression of James Michener?
I was impressed that Mr. Michener attended some of our workshops and not just as a guest but as a participant.  He actually read our work and had honest and constructive feedback on our writing.  He was very pragmatic about writing and that was a lesson that stuck with me.  About sticking with it, about establishing a routine, about seeing it as a job – and a privilege – as opposed to something loftier or more glamorous.  He even liked to talk to us about how we planned to make a living after we graduated.  He was such a realist and, even though he had been wildly successful in his career, he never seemed to take that for granted or to be above speaking about the practicalities of writing while also paying the bills.

How did your work change as a result of your experience at the center?
If I’m remembering correctly, I submitted my screenplay False River and a short story, Brother, with my application.  Both pieces were very much inspired by and immersed in my extended family and my life in Louisiana before coming to Austin.  I think that over the course of my time in the program, and since, I’ve been able to expand and imagine other lives outside of my own experience, and as a result, the focus of my work has expanded and hopefully gotten richer.

How did the experience at the center shape you as a writer?
More than anything, it gave me the time to write and the freedom to focus completely on writing.  It also reinforced how important it is to seek out some kind of writing community to get and give feedback on one another’s writing, to bounce ideas off of, and of course for companionship in whining.

What have you done since graduating from the center?
I’ve continued to write since graduating.  I was hired to write screenplays for New Line, ABC, Lifetime, Edward Pressman Productions, Silver Dream Productions, and others, and I’m in the process of revising my first novel.  I’ve also been fortunate enough to teach screenwriting at UT, both for the Radio-TV-Film Department and currently for the Michener Center.

What have you published or produced?
A television movie that I wrote was produced and aired on USA Network.  Some of my feature film scripts have been optioned though none yet produced.  I hoping that I’ll get my novel published and I received some encouragement on that front when it was named a semi-finalist in the James Jones First Novel Writing Fellowship award.

Do you have a writing ritual?
I don’t have a set ritual.  I usually write in the morning.  I read over what I wrote last time and begin.  Okay, sometimes I play a game of internet checkers and then begin.

Have you ever experienced writers block? If so, how did you overcome it?
Yes, I did experience writers block several years ago and what helped me was starting something completely new in a different genre – a novel rather than a screenplay.

Who is your favorite author and what is your favorite book?
My all-time favorite novel is Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.   I love the precision of his writing and the way he’s able to get inside the head of the main character and makes us feel the things she feels, even though she’s not a particularly likable person.   For example, in this passage, he describes Emma’s boredom with her husband:

“But it was above all at mealtimes that she could bear it no longer, in that little room on the ground floor, with the smoking stove, the creaking door, the oozing walls, the damp floor-tiles; all the bitterness of life seemed to be served to her on her plate, and, with the steam from the boiled beef, there rose from the depths of her soul other exhalations as it were of disgust. Charles was a slow eater; she would nibble a few hazel-nuts, or else, leaning on her elbow, would amuse herself making marks on the oilcloth with the point of her table-knife.”

Emma’s commentary on her home life is harsh and hypercritical, yet we get such a visceral sense of her boredom and her longing for something exciting that we can’t help but identify with her.  Or at least I can’t.

What are your future plans, if any?
Keep writing as much as time allows and keep teaching when that’s available.

What do you miss most about the Michener Center for Writers?
The time to focus on writing exclusively and the camaraderie of our class.

Who would you look forward to seeing most at a Michener Center for Writers reunion and why?
I would look forward to catching up with all of my fellow Fellows.

Jack Brannon
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Education: Rice University, BA political science, University of Texas at Austin, MEd.
Career: University Administrator, UT Austin Colleg of Fine Arts, 1979-2005
Genres: Primary-Poetry; Secondary-Playwriting

Who was the most important lesson you learned at the center?
David Wevill taught me that I could be a storyteller and a poet at the same time — something I had not known. Judith Kroll opened my eyes to the craft of writing in a way I had not seen. It expanded my horizons.  Some of the visiting writers were an important part of that.  The experience gave me understanding that my task and goal as a writer have to be to realize and convey my own voice, no one else’s.

What were your impressions of James Michener?
When I was in the program, Mr. Michener had gotten more frail and was not coming to campus but each semester, he invited each fellow to send him [one’s] work and then come out to his house for a private conversation or work-shopping.  Each of those occasions was remarkable and beneficial for me.  He had a keen eye and his mind still razor sharp.  He could swell your head with praise and then shrink you back to size with a few key observations of your work.  I have great admiration for Mr. Michener.  I thought his notion of having us study more than one genre made sense in the world we live in today.  He cared about the fellows and was usually present at any center gatherings. He was fun with his sharp wit, and he was a humble philanthropist who gave back generously, especially to education and the arts, while living simply and without great personal luxury.

How did your work change as a result of your time at the center?
I submitted a short manuscript of poems when I applied.  By the end of the program, I had made some real progress in the aspects of crafting a poem and of making fuller use of language and rhythm.  My writing has evolved consistent with the mode of narrative poetry that I studied at the Michener Center.  I have also developed an interest in writing memoir or creative non-fiction, something I did not study in the MFA program.

What have you been doing since graduating from the program?
Ten years ago I established the Poetry at Round Top festival and we have been “growing” that project for a decade.  Running a festival wasn’t something I ever anticipated doing, but Jim Magnuson taught me that we don’t always pick our niche; sometimes a niche picks us.  It is very satisfying work of spreading the word of good poetry and building community for writers and readers.  I also retired from my “university day job.”  I continue to write but not nearly enough to satisfy me.

What have you published?
Very few and scattered publications. Poems in a couple of excellent anthologies: one in the Texas Observer.  A poem commissioned for the opening of the Blanton Museum of Art — a poem I dedicated in part to James Michener, who was a leading donor.  A text commissioned for a piece of classical music.  Self-published one book of poems and in 2009, a new chapbook of poems.

Do you have a writing ritual?
I am not well-disciplined.  I wish I had a better practice.  Mr. Michener was a great model of self-discipline in writing.  I wish I had learned that lesson better.

Have you ever experienced writer’s block? If so, how did you overcome it?
Writer’s block — yes, more often than not.  An endless struggle.  Joining a writing workshop or writing circle is one way that I overcome block and get something going.

Who is your favorite author and what is your favorite book?
[It’s] hard to narrow that down.  I’ll say Mark Doty, a poet, memoirist, essayist, editor and teacher.  He wrote his important life story in both poetry, “Atlantis,” and in prose, “Heaven’s Coast.”  Both are remarkable works of art and intellect.

What are your future plans?
I still plan and hope to write more, submit more and publish more, including an essay or book-length memoir.  I will continue to direct the Round Top festival.

What do you miss most about The Michener Center?
Fellowship, collegiality, and the extra creative sources of visiting writers and seminars.

Who would you look forward to seeing most at a Michener Center reunion?
All the fellows were good to know and work with — but maybe Bruce Snider, a fine poet who has continued to work at and develop his writing and career.

In 1993, The Michener Center for Writers admitted its first class, affectionately referred to by the center’s senior program coordinator Marla Akin as its first-borns. James Michener, legendary author of more than 40 books who passed away in 1997, established the interdisciplinary program for poets, playwrights, screenwriters and fiction writers with a $20 million donation to the University. James Magnuson, the center’s director since 1994, said the program has become one of the most competitive in the country with, most recently, 1,100 applicants vying for only 12 spots. The ten inaugural Michener Fellows, who graduated in 1996, are sharing their craft with the world in classrooms, books, plays and films. Our Campus spoke with Akin, Magnuson and four of the ten first-borns about their experiences at the James A. Michener Center for Writers. The Michener Center for Writer's first class. Back row left to right: Jack Brannon, Joseph Skibell, George Langworthy, Middle row left to right: Amy Williams Adams, Sarah Wolbach, Amparo Garcia, Alex Smith and Kathleen Orillion. Front: Bruce Snider. Not pictured: Laura Maffei

Jim Magnuson

Interview with Jim Magnuson

Hometown: A series of small towns in Wisconsin

Education: University of Wisconsin, English

Career: Director of The James A.

Michener Center for Writers,

Novelist, Playwright, Screenwriter

Our Campus: How is The Michener Center unique from other MFA programs?

Jim Magnuson: Students get fellowships of $25,000 a year plus all their tuition and fees for three years. So that’s unmatched anywhere. We have been able to host some of the best visiting writers in the world including most recently the poet Dean Young and the fiction writer Elizabeth McCracken, who are not only important literary figures but also superb teachers. We try to keep it familial — there are only 36 students at one time. Michener’s idea to break the program into four genres is different. The students have a primary and a secondary genre.  His mantra was to create a program for the professional writer, not for the teacher of writing. He said that being able to work in another genre is like having another arrow in one’s quiver. People learn from being with people who are working in other genres. And a lot of the time the biggest successes come from people who start in one and succeed in another — like Laeta Kalogridis who worked on the movies “Shutter Island” and “Avatar.” She started as a fiction writer in our program.

OC: What were your impressions of James Michener?

JM: He grew up in the Great Depression, so on one hand he was enormously generous — one of the world’s greatest philanthropists, but he was also the kid from the Depression. If he saw a two-for-one Arby’s coupon fluttering down the sidewalk he would stab it with the rubber tip of his cane and say, “This is where we’re going to lunch Jim.” He worked until the end of his life, publishing a book of 100 sonnets when he was 90 years old. He wanted to do grand things. He was very much a citizen of the world. I remember once he said, “You know I always wanted to support a young talented writer, but I’ve never been able to find one.” That was at the first picnic we ever had. He could say alarming things. Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific” was a wonderful book. There’s an awkwardness in it, but there’s an honesty that certainly doesn’t romanticize the American GI in the war. He kept a whole generation of Americans reading. I think at one point he was responsible for all Random House profits. Think about that. He basically created Random House.

OC:  What does The Michener Center look for in its students?

JM: It’s based 90 percent on the writing sample. We don’t look at GPA and GRE that much. But when you’re talking about a one percent acceptance rate, the person is pretty amazing.  So usually, they’re dazzling in all parts of their life. The average age of students is 28 years old. Very few are admitted straight out of college. It’s better if they’ve been out doing something for a while so there’s something to write about besides dorm life. Some have been published before, often stories, or on rare occasions they have published one book. If they’re young enough, we figure this could still be of help to them.  A lot of our applicants are older and have published three or four books. It just looks like they’re looking to come in out of the cold and we’re not so sure we’d be that much help. I always joke that we get a certain number of people from the Ivy League and a certain number of people from Idaho. They balance each other out. The majority are English majors.

Marla Akin

Interview with Marla Akin

Hometown: Conroe, Texas

Education: University of Texas, English

Career: Senior Program

Coordinator for The James A. Michener Center for Writers

Our Campus: Describe your role as program coordinator.

Marla Akin: When I first came over in 1992 there was no program, and I came more knowledgeable about the academic end because I had been the graduate coordinator in English. They needed someone to develop advising materials, establish ways to monitor student progress in the program and deal with the graduate school about degree requirements. We had to start running a visiting writers series and at that time Michener was alive and had ideas about who he wanted to bring in. He would often bring in an editor from New York or an agent of his own. I’m still very active in that part of it because I’m still very interested in the students, but I moved on to run our literary reading series, manage our budget, do the visiting faculty recruitment (the distinguished writers that we bring in for a semester), the program advertising and the Web site. I’m also involved with admissions.

OC: Who are your most successful fellows?

MA:  Hard to say because people who have published have met some goal and people who win residencies and prizes are meeting goals that they set for themselves in the writing life. I think that anyone who is still writing and believes in their writing is successful.

OC: What does the next Michener Center class look like?

MA: We admitted 12 for the fall from the 1,100 applications we received.  Of those, the greatest number, 700, were in fiction and we accepted just 5 of them. We also admitted 1 screenwriter from about 40 applications, 2 playwrights from just over 60 applicants, and 4 poets from a pool of about 260.

Interviews with Four of

The Michener Center’s

First Fellows

George Langworthy

George Langworthy

Hometown: Kansas City,  Kansas

Education: Rice University, Cambridge University, English

Career: Screenwriter, Director, Producer

Genres: Primary-Screenwriting; Secondary-Fiction

Our Campus: What is the most valuable lesson you learned at The Michener Center for Writers?

George Langworthy: The most important thing I learned, which applies to all forms of art, is a really firm grasp of tone. Tone is really the most overarching definitive aspect of any work of art. And I learned it when I was studying with John Coetzee, the South African visiting author and Nobel Prize in Literature winner. We were doing fiction writing in that class and I had this epiphany understanding of tone when reading one of our fellow English department student’s short stories called “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” It was kind of like weaving a magic spell. She had you in an emotional engagement in her narrative just as something very serious and straight Hemingway-style would. It was surreal, but because of the special tone she created, which was poetic and comic, the force of her narrative still worked when it was implausible.

OC: Can you give us an example of tone you have created in your work?

GL: I made a short film called “Breezeway” just out of school and it premiered at Sundance a year after I graduated from the center. It is a comedy about a guy trying to quit smoking. And it is done in the tone of ‘50s educational films: having fun playing with that black and white old schoolroom footage about play nice on the playground, or drive safely, or duck and cover. So it was heavily influenced by that tone and we filmed it in black and white as well.

OC: What were your impressions of James Michener?

GL: On his 90th birthday, I was selected to speak representing the students because I gave him these cool cards as a thank-you gift and he liked them. I always like older people, and I always ask what they feel is important in life. Michener said, “Standing up for what you believe in,” which I think is lovely.  Later in the program, I had come a long way as a writer, and had experienced this interesting phenomenon. Basically, it’s that you have this cornucopia of ideas about things to write, and there’s no possible way you could even begin to execute them all because there’s not enough time. So I thought: Michener is going to tell me the secret. And we were sitting down at this picnic table outside in a professor’s backyard when I asked, “So Mr. Michener, when you have all these ideas about things you want to write, and there are too many to do them all, how do you go about picking just one?  He looked at me and said, “Very painfully.” And that was it. I said I was hoping for advice and he said that’s all the advice I have. He read something by every single person in the first class, and met with us individually. He read a script to a film that I made while I was at UT before “Breezeway.” It was kind of a Western noire that did well too. He had some great feedback. He had obviously read over it carefully and he was concerned. He wanted us to learn to be disciplined and to work hard.

OC: What were the classes like at the center?

GL: We all had two disciplines: a primary and a secondary from screenwriting, fiction, drama and poetry. There were group classes at the beginning, and later we worked on our thesis one-on-one with a professor. So the first year we’re doing a lot of writing workshops with ten students and a teacher. You come in with an idea and you come back with your first five pages that you share with the group. You get feedback and you continue however far you get with that piece. I think that you have to learn how to process feedback. I would say the act of writing itself and my own work were more important to me than getting feedback. I also think that people’s feedback can just be wrong. You have to be careful about that because you’re a fledgling writer and you’re working on an idea that’s just forming — it’s malleable and some people could give you feedback that would make you take it in a direction that is their thing, but not yours. The writer Michael Ondaatje, who wrote “The English Patient,” came and spoke to us and he said he never discusses any of his stuff with anyone until it’s done, because it’s too fragile.

OC: What have you done since graduating from the program?

GL: I sold one script, a wedding comedy called “Cake.” I’ve written for a British sketch comedy show, and I’ve written things that I’ve directed — that’s always been my main focus. I’m a writer/director guy, rather than a write-for-hire or director for other people’s stuff. “Vanishing of the Bees” will be released in August and September and will be on Cable and Netflix in the fall.  It will probably play in Austin at someplace like the Drafthouse. We’re sorting all that out now.  And short films have a great life online. There’s Funny or Die, a comedic site that gets tons of traffic where I’m  going to put my short film “Breezeway.” Maybe it will get five million views. Short filmmakers are in a better position to have their work seen since I’ve been out of school. “Breezeway” is 12 minutes which is a little longer than most that are online, but my “Death of a Minor Character” is a minute long, and is intended as a viral Web film.

OC: Who is your favorite filmmaker and what is your favorite film?

GL: I like Stanley Kubrick, the Cohen brothers, Werner Herzog, and Errol Morris, a documentary guy.  “2001: Space Odyssey” is my favorite movie of all time. It was so powerful, transcendent and sublime. The meaning is so profound and it’s also just so gorgeous.

OC: Who is your favorite author and what was your favorite book?

GL: I like T.S. Elliot, Wallace Stevens for a poet and I like “The Great Gatsby.” I like Russian literature: Anton Chekov, J. Stritesky and Leo Tolstoy. Tennessee Williams. I’m not a crazy reader – some people read so much – but I’ve always been a reader.

OC: What are your future plans?

GL: The main thing is releasing this documentary, “Vanishing of the Bees.” Ellen Page from “Juno” is narrating. So I’m just focused on that. And then it would be nice to do another comedy after doing all this serious environmental stuff. So I’m going to be writing, probably getting back into the fiction world.

Joseph Skibell

Hometown: Lubbock, Texas

Joseph Skibell

Education: The University of Texas at Austin, Plan II

Summer school at Yale and a stint at the University of Chicago

Career: Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University, Novelist

Genres: Primary-Screenwriting; Secondary-Fiction

Our Campus: When did you know you wanted to write?

Joseph Skibell: I knew I wanted to write in high school. It all came about because I liked Bob Dylan and I read his biography that said he had read all of John Steinbeck as a kid. So I decided to read all of Steinbeck, and I remember thinking I could never be a writer like Steinbeck because I didn’t know how to clean a horse or build an engine. Then I read Voltaire’s “Candide” and thought I could actually write a book like that.

OC: How much of your work is autobiographical and how much is imaginary?

JS: My new novel actually has a lot of historical figures in it like Freud and Dr. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, so a lot of it is actually biographical. I’m not so comfortable with self-revelation so it’s easier to write about your own life if you’re giving those aspects of your life to a fictitious character. It’s a difficult task to figure out how much about your own life you want to reveal to potentially thousands of strangers.  The protagonist in my second novel seems to have more in common in his outer world with me than the other characters. In a way I feel much more similar in an inner way to the protagonist in my new novel. But you’re distorting things — to put it into fiction is to make it artificial. So anything you use from your own life isn’t reliable history because of the demands of the plot. These days, I’m actually trying to write a memoir about a trip my daughter, Arianna, and I took to visit three guitar makers. I’m 49 and she’s 18, so we’re on the same trip, but she’s looking forward to her future and I’m heading into middle age and starting to look back.

OC: How do you choose what to write?

JS: I have a lot of ideas, but really the hard thing is to find a general aggregate of concerns that are meaningful to you. If you didn’t really care about what you were writing in terms of it having meaning to your own life, then you could write every day and it wouldn’t matter. So that’s the problem, finding the ideas that you can spend years of your life working on.

OC: What have you done since graduating from the program?

JS: I’ve published three novels: “A Blessing on the Moon” (1997), “The English Disease” (2003) and “A Curable Romantic” (2010). I have a book contract for a nonfiction book about the tales in the Talmud. I’m working on a dual-memoir with my daughter, and I teach in the creative writing program at Emory University, where I direct the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature.

OC:  How do you teach and inspire your students?

JS:  In my experience, you give them five concepts about storytelling and their writing improves overnight between stories. The problem is that all of our stories are through screens and nobody sits down and tells people their stories. So part of my role is to get people interested in telling stories, listening to stories and thinking in terms of narrative. You break them quite easily of their unconscious bad habits and they immediately become much better writers. I think anybody can write creatively, it’s just to whom is that activity meaningful? Anyone can do it. To do it and have it be meaningful to you is another question.

OC: What do you miss most about The Michener Center?

JS: The great thing about it was having a community of fellow writers there to work with who were thoroughly committed, thoroughly immersed and not competitive. Everybody wanted everybody to do well. Having the support, the nurturing and the love of this community of people who were your peers, mentors and supporters was really a wonderful experience. The relationships still to this day are important to me. It was a life-transforming three years. I came in as screenwriter and left as novelist. Jim Magnuson was instrumental in helping me get a publisher and an agent.

Alex Smith

Alex Smith

Hometown: Missoula, Montana

Education: University of California-Berkeley, English and Film Studies

Career: Filmmaker,  Screenwriter, Creative Director of the University of Texas Film Institute, Senior Lecturer/RTF Michener Center for Writers

Genres: Primary-Fiction; Secondary-Screenwriting

Our Campus: Who influenced you most in your time at The Michener Center?

Alex Smith: There is a way to deal with material that is more analytical than critical. The way the novelist John Coetzee ran his workshop was hugely instructive and influential for me — not only as a teacher, but as a way of looking at people’s work. With him you could never tell whether he liked or disliked something. He was always asking: what is this thing, what is it trying to be and how can we help it get there. So there was never judgment about its value. It was all about the object and what it needs to do to get where it wants to be. We had a guest poet, W.S. Merwin, and I snuck into his craft workshop because I wasn’t a poet. He had three rules or ideas about being a writer that I still utilize: Memorize the poems you love so they are a living thing in your head, watch animal behavior because it’s very pure and you can learn a lot about existence, and words are poems — meaning a word itself is a poem and unlocks a lot of meaning. So as a writer you need to be able to utilize your toolbox which are words — understanding the derivation, the usages and the meanings of words is key.

OC: What were your impressions of Michener?

AS: He read a story of mine and what amazed me about him was that he was so connected to maps of the world. I told him I was from Montana and he opened up an atlas of America to Montana and as I was talking, he ran his hands across the state of Montana. When I mentioned I had been in Scotland for a year in college, he opened up another map to Scotland. His books are all about place and it was fascinating to see that deep inside him — that he needed to connect with me via place. And I’ll never forget that.

OC: Do you think it is possible to teach someone how to write?

AS: You can’t teach talent but you can teach craft. And I learned a lot of tools through the various teachers I had, as well as some of the students.  There’s a lot of bonding that happened with my fellow Fellows, and we would not only have class together, but some of us formed a first novel group where we would meet and cook each other dinner and discuss writing and the writing life. And that was really great and I miss that. If you’re open as a student, you start to realize that people who’ve been writing for a long time have a pretty deep knowledge of the craft of writing. And genius doesn’t just flow from your fingertips. There’s a lot of work, a lot of dead ends and a lot of failures to get to the discoveries and solutions.

OC: What have you done since graduating from the program?

AS: Since leaving the center, I’ve worked steadily as a professional screenwriter. I’ve written nine or 10 screenplays for various film companies like Disney, Columbia, HBO and Fox Searchlight. I also wrote and directed a feature film called “The Slaughter Rule” that premiered at Sundance in 2002 starring Ryan Gosslin and David Morz. I recently produced the feature film “Dance with the One.” I’m trying to make another film this summer, an adaptation of “Winter in the Blood” by Native American author James Welch. I also wrote a TV pilot for FX called “Crazy Mountain,” a contemporary Western.

OC: How did your work change during the course of your time at the center?

AS: My screenwriting has become a lot more rounded and accessible. What has really happened is that the  screenwriting world has changed a lot since the mid ‘90s as far as making a living as an independent screenwriter. It’s much harder now. I’ve had to learn to write screenplays for a bigger audience — what I first wrote was pretty rarefied. So I’m figuring out ways to put the universal into the specific. The funding — private and professional — for independent filmmaking has gone away. The studios are only making films based on pre-existing intellectual properties like toys, game shows, or bestselling comic books and novels. So as a screenwriter it is much more difficult to find places to get your stuff made.

OC: Do you have a writing ritual?

AS: The main ritual is one big cup of coffee that I nurse while I’m writing. I shut down all my electronics, like the phone and the Internet, except for my computer. I read poetry before I write often to get me into a more lyrical dreamscape. When I’m on a deadline, I try to go from sleeping to writing without reading the paper or looking at e-mails or anything that could infect the writing. I found that when I do that, those things seep into the work. I try to go from a subconscious to a conscious state. I find for myself, the poetry helps with screenwriting because it is about condensing everything down to its essential value in a line of poetry and screenwriting is the same way because you need a lot of economy in a script.

OC: What are your future plans?

AS: My brother and I are developing a new TV series that we’d like to find a home for in the vein of “X-Files.” And I hope to continue with UTFI to help students learn how to make feature films by making them with professional guidance. I’m the creative director and teach screenwriting and directing courses. They also created a UTFI course cycle that takes the project from script to screen and I teach all those courses as well.

OC: What do you miss most about The Michener Center?

AS: I’m lucky that I live here and I sometimes teach in Dobie House, so I get to see the wonderful staff and faculty a lot. But I miss my classmates. I’m in touch with quite a few of them. We all bonded and grew a lot and it was a very formative period in my life as far as becoming a professional writer. That sense of wonder — I miss that.

Bruce Snider

Bruce Snider

Hometown: Columbia City, Indiana

Education: Indiana University, English

Career: Currently the 2010 James Merrill House Fellow, and will be the 2011 Amy Clampitt House Fellow next spring

Genres: Primary-Poetry; Secondary-Playwriting

Our Campus: What was the most important lesson you learned at the center?

Bruce Snider: One of the biggest things I got from the program was the sense of community. This is something that a lot of writing programs don’t talk about, that the writing life is very much a solitary life. You spend a lot of time by yourself and in your head — and it’s full of rejection and self-doubt. One of the most valuable things I left the program with was the relationships with faculty, mentors and the other writers who were engaged in the same thing I was.  A lot of those friendships have continued to sustain me since I left. I began to understand and see the importance of having and sustaining relationships with other writers who are engaged in the same thing. When you’re work is going well, you have a writer friend whose work is not going well and you can support them, and when your work is not going well, vice versa.

OC: Who inspired you most at the center?

BS: There were several – Naomi Shihab Nye has such a tremendous and generous spirit as a teacher and a writer. She brought into the classroom this sense that we were all engaged in this much larger conversation. She was the sort of teacher who would always bring things to class. She would bring in food, journals and poems she came across that she wanted to share. There was just this tremendous sense of giving, generosity, passion and excitement about what you were doing. I have tried to keep some of that spirit alive since I left. So being in the presence of such a generous spirit is something I thought – even then – I really need to learn from. I had many wonderful teachers: David Wevill is somebody I worked with whom I loved. Tom Whitbread, who I worked with in literature courses, was funny, smart and really did close readings of literature in ways a lot of teachers don’t anymore.  He was old-fashioned while a lot of literary critics today are very theoretical — they approach literature from the point of view of a particular theorist. His approachd to work was as a reader. We looked at Wallace Stevens’ poem “Sunday Morning” and really talked about it line by line. That was something from a writing point of view that was very valuable, that kind of close study and attention.

OC: What were your impressions of Michener?

BS: For some reason I didn’t meet with him at his home. They sent him a copy of a story that I had written in class, he read it and he asked to sit with me at a Christmas dinner. So I sat with him and he talked to me about my story. He was very generous and kind and I remember he compared it to Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice,” which was a story I wasn’t familiar with at the time. He said he thought I had what it took to be a writer, whatever that meant, but coming from him I took that to be very promising. The thing that he said that I really remember was that he knew he had been lucky — that not every writer has his book turned into a musical by Rogers and Hammerstein. And again this goes back to what I think is such a tremendous quality of the center — he felt that as a writer who had achieved such success, and such monetary success, it was his profound responsibility to give back to other writers.

OC: What have you been doing since leaving the center?

BS: I had a unique experience: I graduated and worked for the center for about six years. So I got to know a lot of writers in other classes and I got to be a part of helping to continue the degree plan and advising. I was the graduate coordinator, so I coordinated advising and admissions. I got to sit in on the selection process. So it was very useful for me to see how these things work, to get to know so many more writers, and to meet a lot of the great visitors. Then I got a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford for two years, which was about the time my first collection of poems called “The Year We Studied Women” published. I taught as a Jones Lecturer for two more years at Stanford, and then I came back to teach in UT’s English department for a semester. I went back to teach at Stanford and the University of San Francisco. This semester, I’m the writer in residence at the James Merrill House for six months in Stonington, Conn.  I’m finishing up my next book called, “Paradise, Indiana.”

OC: Do you have a writing ritual?

BS: I’m pretty disciplined about writing regularly, I don’t wait for inspiration to strike. It rarely does, unless I’m sitting there. So for me it’s about giving inspiration the opportunity to strike by being disciplined about showing up.  I don’t really have a huge writing ritual. I just make time to write. And sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.

OC: How much of your work is autobiographical and how much is imaginary?

BS:  My work is pretty autobiographical. It’s based on my life, but there’s also some invention and it’s poetry so you change certain things for form.

OC: Do you ever get writer’s block?

BS: Writer’s block is a fear of writing something bad.  You feel like you don‘t have anything good to say, but the truth is that’s the process of writing. You have to let yourself write some of the bad, the pedestrian, the trite things that are in most of our heads to get to the things that are more surprising, revealing or interesting. So I don’t really suffer from writer’s block, but I let myself write bad things. You give yourself permission to write the bad stuff. And in doing that, some of my writing days feel like a bit of a grind, but that’s ok, that’s part of the process. And my experience has always been that if you stick with it, you will eventually stumble into something that is more interesting.

OC: Do you think it is possible to teach someone how to write?

BS: There’s a Buddhist saying that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. So it sounds a little like that in the sense that as writers we all learn to write often by reading other writers. So I would agree that we all have a certain inherent ability to write, and some of us have more natural ability than others. It’s like anything else you do in life, you have a set amount of talent, but then you really can learn to use what you have to its fullest extent, whatever that is. We can all become better writers, even if we can’t all become great writers. The path to becoming a writer has in a lot of ways become institutionalized in writing programs like the Michener Center’s. But in a lot of ways, they do the same things that writers have always done: Writers have always shared their work, and read and discussed other writers. So it formalizes it and makes it a more concentrated and quicker way to cover more ground because you have a teacher who has prepared a syllabus and set out goals for you to think about and learn from. And you have this great period in your life when you can focus on your growth as a writer.

OC: Who is your favorite poet? What is your favorite poem?

BS: I have so many favorite poets. I’m living in the James Merrill House, so I’ve been reading a lot of James Merrill’s work and being very moved and excited by it.  I’ve also been reading a lot of Elizabeth Bishop. There is a poem that is a touchstone for my work — it’s a poem by the poet Richard Hugo called “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” and it’s a beautiful poem. I’m writing a lot about rural landscapes, I grew up in a small town and it’s a poem about a small town. He captures so beautifully this mix of melancholy, loss and beauty — the really complicated relationships that you can have to places and I think I relate to it so much because I come from a small town. You see yourself or you see your own experience of it in a way. I also love “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman.

OC:  What do you miss most about the center?

BS:  The Michener Center is a remarkable program. James Michener’s gift, his legacy, is profound and will continue to affect and influence the lives of writers for many years to come. The great thing about the program is that the ten to twelve people admitted every year are on full scholarship support. So you have no other responsibilities, other than to attend classes and focus on your work and on your growth as a writer. It’s remarkable in part because it helps avoid the kind of competitiveness that often exists in other writing programs. There’s a whole staggered level of support. I think it’s so nice in this program that everyone comes in recognized the same, so that people can really relax and not feel semester after semester that they’re competing with each other for funding. And it allows that community to form bonds that are crucial to most of our growth as we continue — and also for our sanity, because I’m a believer in that.  And also I think that the people who run the program are remarkable, in particular Jim Magnuson and Marla Akin. Marla is a phenomenal administrator and has really contributed to the growth and the vision of the program as much as anyone.

At first glance, Associate Professor of Anthropology Chris Kirk has a typical professor’s office complete with rows of filing cabinets, a desk caked with paperwork, framed diplomas, shelves bulging with books and a lunch packed in Tupperware. Upon closer scrutiny, Kirk’s office reveals characteristics unlike other professors’: posters depicting lemur species, a primate-themed calendar, a “happy folder” containing thank-you notes and, most importantly, an oversized check for $25,000 leaning modestly against a wall.

Chris Kirk

On April 12, the Friar Society presented Kirk with the Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship, a $25,000 award granted to a tenured or tenure-track undergraduate professor at UT each year. It is the University’s most prominent award for undergraduate teaching excellence and serves two purposes: $21,000 supplements the recipient’s salary and $4,000 provides for research funding.

“I know for a fact I am not the best teacher at UT,” Kirk said. “It’s a very humbling experience for me because it makes me keep in mind my colleagues, who I know to be excellent teachers, who haven’t had the good fortune of winning a Friar award.”

In February, students nominated more than 100 professors for the award, and the Friar Society’s membership ultimately decided on the winner. The Friar Society, which recognizes those who serve the campus in extraordinary ways, is an exclusive committee composed of upperclassmen selected by Friars. The Friar Society is a place where students who are likeminded meet and tackle problems, said Noble Kuriakose, sociology and religious studies senior and co-chair of the fellowship. The Society’s Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship is a way for students to give back to undergraduate professors. There is a thorough evaluation process in which Friars speak with references and students and observe classes, said Zuhair Khan, business honors finance and history senior and co-chair of the fellowship.

“The gradation is so fine between the excellent teachers,” Khan said. “If we could, we’d give out 20 of these things.”

After observing Kirk’s introduction to physical anthropology class in March, a Friar sent Kirk a special thank-you e-mail.

“I thought: There’s no way I’m going to win the Friar award this year because that’s the biggest award out there, but this [e-mail] is really nice,” Kirk said. “I’m going to print this out, and I’m going to put it in my [happy] folder.”

Little did Kirk know that he was on the brink of receiving an even bigger thank you.

Kirk was surprised with the award during his introduction in his physical anthropology class.

“Fifteen minutes into my lecture, I was so into australopithecines and teaching, that [the award] was the farthest thing from my mind,” Kirk said.

After a loud knock, the door swung open, and Friars toting balloons and flowers, reporters, colleagues and a trumpeter playing “The Eyes of Texas” flooded Jester auditorium. Initially, students were equally taken aback by the commotion, but gave him a standing ovation after the grand production, Kirk said.

Despite the fanfare, Kuriakose said the presentation should not overshadow the hard work professors do to deserve the award.

Kirk graduated from UT with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1995 and earned his doctorate in biological anthropology and anatomy from Duke University in 2003. Kirk teaches three undergraduate anthropology classes (two of which result from his own ideas), leads one-on-one courses for honors theses, compares fossil primate teeth, works on micro-computerized tomography scans in the E.P. Schoch Building, and cleans and prepares fossils at the Pickle Research Campus. Kirk said his focus on sensory systems has taught him valuable teaching lessons.

“Different students are engaging with course material using different sensory systems. Educators call these ‘learning modalities,’” Kirk said. “In order to learn a piece of information, some people need to hear it in their mind’s ear. Some people need to visualize it in their mind’s eye. Some people need to touch it with their mind’s fingers.”

Photo Marsha Miller

By turning his classes into “multimodal experiences,” students learn with deeper and faster comprehension, Kirk said.

In addition to Kirk’s teaching method, students are drawn to his energy.

It is impressive and almost exhausting being engaged by his liveliness, Khan said in reference to Kirk’s evaluation day.

For Kirk, however, this ability comes naturally.

“It is hard not to get an electrical charge from getting up on a stage in front of 220 students,” Kirk said.

Anthropology and psychology senior Elissa Ludeman signed up for Kirk’s introductory anthropology class her sophomore year.

“All it took was that first lecture, and I was completely taken with both the field and Dr. Kirk’s teaching style,” Ludeman said. “His enthusiasm and charisma during lectures are nothing short of infectious.”

Ludeman and Parham Daghighi, anthropology senior, took all three of Kirk’s courses.

“He’s got one of the most flamboyant styles, but in the best possible way. He’s loud and has a lot of motions, but he’s not fake at all. His knowledge of the subject matter is immaculate,” Daghighi said.

Kirk knows that if the excitement is contagious, the information will stick with the students. He has learned over the years that level of interest is critical to learning.

“It’s not a business. Students aren’t paying you a fee for a service. Students are paying you for the opportunity to learn something,” Kirk said.

Kirk’s manner of helping students extends to his annual fieldwork in West Texas, where he takes students who are passionate about physical anthropology. Kirk said that the $4,000 in research money will be used for four more years of fieldwork, as a way to pay back society for its generosity.

“In the course of a day at the field site, he explained the evolutionary history of Leptoreodon to us, gave us a debriefing on the geologic history of the canyon, taught me how to tie down lines so my tent didn’t fly away in the night winds, told a joke and then a ghost story, then breaks out cookies for the wind-burned and cold crew,” Ludeman said.

Despite his heavy focus on fieldwork and research, Kirk said that he did not expect to win, given the fact that he has only been teaching at UT for seven years.

“I don’t know a whole lot about the Friar Society’s criteria, but apparently the number of years you’ve been teaching isn’t one of them,” Kirk said.

Kuriakose said that though some Friar Society awardees are toward the end of their long careers, the society felt the need to recognize Kirk for his incredible impact in seven years.

“This award is for undergraduate professors who show extraordinary skill and extraordinary passion for their job, and I thought that from having known him all that time, he was the perfect candidate,” Daghighi said. “He seemed to fit the bill.”

The Carnegie Foundation classifies UT as a RU/VH Research University for its very high research activity. Kirk said that it’s encouraging for him to see how many excellent teachers are at a research-intensive university.

“You want to be at a school where your professors are at the forefront of that research,” Kirk said. “It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the central mission of the University of Texas is to educate.”

Kirk’s students, however, never lose sight of that fact.

“I have never known a professor to not only have such great teaching talent but to also reach out to his students in the way the Dr. Kirk does,” Ludeman said.

Although Kirk is only seven years into his career at UT, he already has the future in mind.

“Nothing would make me happier than to be here at UT, have a 50-year career and retire [as] an old doddering professor,” Kirk said. “You know, it’s my dream job.”

Imagine this: you are a four-year-old, and someone sets a marshmallow on a table in front of you. The person then gives you two options:  eat the marshmallow and receive instant gratification or leave the marshmallow untouched with the promise of receiving a second one when 20 minutes is up. What would you do?

Ross Otto, psychology graduate student, and Bradley Love, UT psychologist.

This study on delayed gratification, conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the ’60s, paved the way for modern day research on short-term satisfaction and long-term benefits conducted by University of Texas psychologist Bradley Love and psychology graduate student Ross Otto.

Mischel’s study found that children who could successfully forgo the marshmallow and wait a few more minutes to have two, were actively engaged in distracting themselves by covering their eyes or looking away. On the flipside, the children who focused on how great it would be to eat the tasty treat immediately, ended up eating the marshmallow. This idea, the more you pay attention to gaining immediate satisfaction, the worse your ability is to make optimal decisions in the long term, was the engine behind Love and Otto’s study.

The results of their study entitled “You don’t want to know what you’re missing: When information about forgone rewards impedes dynamic decision making,” appeared in the February edition of the journal Judgment and Decision Making.

When Otto and Love began conducting their study they sought to prove that when given more information about forgone rewards, people are more likely to make poor choices in the long term. Both Otto and Love use the “Friday night” example to illustrate this.

Say you have a ton of research papers to grade, and you need to stay in on a Friday night to get them finished and back to your students in a timely manner. To add insult to injury, your spouse goes to a party. Although you made the right choice to stay in on that specific night to grade papers because you will be happy you did so in the long term when your spouse comes back and tells you how great the party was, you make up your mind to go to the party next time, and you will, and you do — even if it means putting your students’ grades on hold a little longer.

The same works for the adult version of the marshmallow study. Say someone places a big, moist slice of chocolate cake in front of you. But, you’re on a diet. The long-term option to abstain from eating it would further your goal of health and weight loss. But the short term option to eat the slice of chocolate cake, which would set you back in the long term, would be immediately rewarding. What would you do? Say you abstain from eating cake, Otto said, which would be optimal for your health in the long term and someone tells you, ‘oh, that cake was good.’

“We found that when you compare people who don’t get that information [that the cake was good] and they only see the outcomes [of their choice] versus people who saw the outcomes of what they chose and didn’t choose — the extra information actually hurts people in their ability to optimally decide.” Otto said.

It was these delay of gratification scenarios that Otto and Love simulated in their study. Seventy-eight participants — all undergraduates from the University of Texas — were asked to sit in front of 17-inch monitors armed with two choices: option A or option B. Over the next 20 minutes, participants were asked to make approximately 250 choices.

“It’s about linking a bunch of decisions together and getting behaviors to sequence correctly,” Love said. “ It’s about sticking with a plan and making the right choices repeatedly to get from point A to point B.”

The test went like this: option A and option B appeared on the screen. There was a point value to accompany each option. One of the values was slightly less than the other. Over the long term, if the participant consistently chose the higher option, they lost point values in the long term. If they consistently chose the lower option, which gained value over time, they won in the long term.

The participants were not told ahead of time the reasoning behind the values, they were simply asked to choose option A or option B and figure out for themselves which choice benefitted them most in the long term. At the end of the study their points translated to money, which the participants walked away with.

There were three conditions tested in the study, with 26 participants assigned to one of the three conditions. The first group was known as “No Foregone Rewards.” Otto said this group had only one source of information, which was the payoff, or point value, that resulted only from the option they chose. The second group was known as “True Foregone Rewards.” These participants were presented with the payoffs, or values, for both the option they chose and the option they did not choose. The last group was known as “False Foregone Rewards.” Love and Otto decided to trick this group to make the short-term option appear worse in order to determine if people were using information in the way that Love and Otto predicted. They return to the “Friday night” example — only this time, when you ask your spouse how the party was, they say it was horrible.

Otto said you would think that if you got this false information, that the party was bad, that you would continue to make the positive decisions, such as staying in to grade papers, which would benefit you in the long run. But, it turns out that people do not and are more apt to make poor choices, like going out to the party, the next time.

What they found is that when people receive more information — positive or negative — about their previous decisions, they actually make poor choices in the future. Typically, more information given to people would be considered positive. But Love and Otto found that when people were given additional information about what could have been in the study, they performed worse when choosing between short- and long-term rewards.

Love and Otto were not surprised by the results.

“What surprised me if anything, was how strong the results were,” Love said. “How bad people were when they were given information about forgone rewards.”

Otto and Love have plans to expand their study. In a play on Mischel’s marshmallow study — where the only children to successfully forgo the treat were distracting themselves — they will track people’s eye movements using a camera that follows the pupils and position information based on where people are looking..  They have already collected the data for the eyeball tracking experiment, said Otto, so now it is only a matter of sifting through the results.

Former professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin John Tate was named the 2010 Abel Prize winner by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for his lasting impact on the theory of numbers.

Photo Marsha Miller

Throughout his academic career, both as a student and a professor the branch of mathematics called number theory especially fascinated him. Tate said number theory is too complicated to explain in a simple manner; the best definition from Planetmath.org states that number theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with the study of the integers, and of the objects and structures that naturally arise from their study.

He would prove to be exceptionally influential in this field, and was immortalized when mathematical ideas were named in his honor:  the Tate module, Tate curve, Tate cycle, Tate cohomology and the Tate trace.

Nils Christian Stenseth, the President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, announced Tate’s most noteworthy title the Abel Prize Winner and recipient of close to one million dollars on March 24. Awarded since 2003, the Abel Prize recognizes exceedingly influential advancements made to mathematical sciences. When asked his reaction to the award, Tate said, “At first there was disbelief, but I realized it seemed too elaborate to be a hoax.  Then I was very happy, and felt lucky, and glad to live long enough to get it.”

Other honors include the Cole Prize in 1956, the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the American Mathematical Society in 1995 and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2002. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris and an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society.

Tate’s advanced academic career commenced miles away from both Texas and Norway in the halls of Harvard University. Tate was admitted to Harvard University where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics under the Conant program that granted admission to only two students from each state. He earned his doctoral degree from Princeton University and promptly returned to Harvard where he taught for 35 years.

In the summer of 1989, Tate left the east coast for Texas when he accepted one of the Sid Richardson Chairs in Math at The University of Texas at Austin. Preparing for the Texas heat, Tate said he was pleasantly surprised to find it bearable and instead enjoyed inexpensive restaurants and light traffic. Although he retired last summer, he taught advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in algebra and number theory for nearly 20 years. Tate said the aspect he most enjoyed about being a professor was that teaching a subject allowed him to learn it better, which sometimes spurred new ideas, and he liked that his job helped him keep in contact with young people in his later years.

Tate’s decision to become a professor was an easy one because he could earn a good living by doing what he most liked to do: think about math. It is not only a position that he enjoyed but also one that allowed him to positively influence generations of students studying mathematics. “After moving to Austin from Harvard, Tate’s presence was a critical force in the ongoing creation of our mathematics program,” William Beckner, the Chair of Mathematics at UT Austin, said. “[He posseses] a sharp mathematical intellect, [and he is] warm and generous in sharing both mathematics and life.”

Tate said his interest in math was sparked in his childhood. “The fun of doing math is akin to the fun of solving puzzles, even more fun because somehow mathematical discoveries are more fundamental — solutions to puzzles made by God, if you will, not by man,” Tate said. “But, God doesn’t give you the puzzle.”

Despite his impressive professional achievements, Tate said his greatest personal accomplishment does not relate to his strides made in math. When asked to choose, he said, “Both of my parents died young.  I never thought I would live to be 85.  In this I have succeeded.”

Tate currently resides in Cambridge, Mass. with his wife, where he keeps his mind and body active by hiking in the mountains and studying math and reading. He will attend the award ceremony on May 25 in Oslo, Norway with a substantial group of family and colleagues. He said his wife, three daughters and their husbands, five grandchildren and a cousin-in-law will accompany him to the event. The Chair of Mathematics at UT Austin Bill Beckner will also attend the ceremony.

Although the award carries a generous cash reward, Tate does not seem to dwell on the financial prize. When asked what he plans to do with such a heavy purse, he said, “It’s too early. No plans yet.”

April 24 through May 1 was National Infertility Awareness Week and according to the National Infertility Association 7.3 million men and women are infertile, which breaks down to one in eight couples. University of Texas Associate Professor in the College of Pharmacy John Richburg knows this all too well. He is at his desk at 7 a.m. every day before most of his colleagues, working sometimes until 7 p.m. to answer the questions about human infertility.

John Richburg

Richburg is a toxicologist whose specialty is finding out how exposure to environmental agents affects male fertility, specifically during puberty. In the summer of 2009, he was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research how or if phthalates, the chemical compounds found in plastic that allow them to be flexible, induce the death of germ cells, the cells that ultimately develop into sperm in the male testes.

Richburg said phthalates are not covalently bonded into plastic, which means they can leach onto the food or product that comes into contact with phthalate-containing plastics, thus ending up in human bodies. Because of the ubiquitous contamination by phthalates in the environment, he said all humans have certain levels of phthalates in their bodies.

Richburg suggests exposure to phthalates during early childhood or fetal periods of life is more likely to result in infertility, an effect that is often not evident until adulthood, than exposure as an adult.

“If your doctor took a blood sample from you, she would with 100 percent certainty be able to measure levels of various environmental endocrine disruptors using the appropriate lab tests. Women who are pregnant are exposing their developing fetuses to these compounds,” said Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology who studies how disturbance of the neuroendocrine system by environmental factors result in aberrant reproductive functions.

Gore said an organism undergoes its most rapid changes during fetal development, and at that time both male and female reproductive systems are vulnerable.  During this period certain organs and tissues, including reproductive systems and the brain, are formed and develop their potential to function later in life. In the case of reproductive systems, the organization of the gonad in the fetus enables it to have the capacity to produce the proper gametes — sperm or ova — and hormones including testosterone and estrogen in adulthood. If something perturbs this organizational process during the fetal stage, the organism’s ability to perform these functions may be permanently compromised.

Richard L. Corsi is the ECH Bantel Professor of Professional Practice in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at UT, where he researches the sources, physics, chemistry, human exposure and control of indoor air pollution.

Corsi said there are several ways phthalates get into the human body: ingesting them after they have leached from plastic bottles, absorbing them through contact with our skin, absorbing phthalates that exist in air as gases by our skin oils that then transfer them through the skin, and inhaling them.

Richburg, who earned his bachelor’s degree in toxicology from Northeastern University in Boston, his doctoral degree in toxicology from Rutgers and a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University, admitted he was never interested in this area of study when he was in school. As a graduate student he was very interested in cell signaling and what happens when the line of communication between cells is disrupted, which led him to neuroscience. However, another neuroscientist and friend Kim Boekelheide, Richburg’s mentor at Brown, was looking for a postdoctoral student and introduced him to the many similarities between cells of the nervous system and of the testes.

Although researchers have known about the adverse effects of phthalates on male reproduction since the ‘50s, Richburg said that research specifically evaluating the negative influence of phthalate exposure during early sensitive periods of male reproductive development was not widely studied until the late ‘90s. In fact, the lab he worked in prior to coming to UT in ’97 was the first to describe the cell signaling mechanism by which the testicular germ cells are triggered to undergo death after phthalate exposure.

Currently running his own lab at UT, Richburg considers himself a director for the most part. Three graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow currently perform the research in his laboratory. He said the students conduct most of the experiments and form independent ideas as their knowledge and experience grows.

“Research never ends,” Richburg said. “Every time I ask one question we do a little bit of research and we find ten new questions that come up. I guess the goal is to really understand where do we need to be protected from this chemical.”

The trouble with this research is that plastic is a very useful substance — it improves people’s quality of life and is cheap to make. So people must decide if that is worth the damage it does to their bodies, Richburg said.

“The goal is not to outlaw every chemical that comes along, because outlawing one harmful chemical just seems to cause three more to spring up,” he said.

It is only when people understand how a toxic agent works that they can make a rational decision about exposure levels and banning them from products. Some phthalates are not harmful, and the most harmful phthalates have already been outlawed from children’s chew toys and food canisters.

“My work is important and the reason why I enjoy it and the reason why students come to my lab is because not only do we study cell biology but it has human health implications and impacts,” Richburg said.

Imagine the interior of a condo that is completely white during the day: white walls, white furniture, white appliances. As the sun begins to set, the same walls and furniture slowly change to shades of blue, pink and purple until the white disappears. Photo Jordy Wagoner

University of Texas’ Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professor in Architecture Anthony Alofsin uses LED lighting to create such an effect. The LED bulbs last for 50,000 hours and they generate virtually no heat making them “tremendously energy efficient” and “very dramatic,” he said.

Looking like he could double for a theater professor, Alofsin was dressed in an entirely black slim-fitting – but not tight – ensemble wearing  bright red, perfectly rectangular reading glasses for the interview for this article. He leaned casually in the chair behind his desk upon which sat a first-edition copy of Frank Lloyd Wright’s biography from Wright’s own collection.

Before Alofsin joined UT in the early ‘90s, there was not a doctoral program in architecture. In response to a directive from then-Dean Hal Box, Alofsin set about on the seven-year process of creating the program. “He [Box] believed that one of the future strengths of this [architecture] school was in advanced research,” Alofsin said. “So to do that well and compete with the best schools we needed to augment our advanced research.” One of the best ways to increase a school’s research is to have a doctoral program. While the architecture school initially focused mostly on architectural history, Alofsin said, the school now also has strong historic preservation and sustainable design components.

Nancy Kwallek, the Gene Edward Mikeska Chair for Interior Design at UT, works with Alofsin and said he is not a fan of medioctrity — that he pushes himself to the highest standard and expects the same from everyone else.

Alofsin has taught a variety of courses relating to the history of architecture in his 22 years at the University, but has recently concentrated mainly on undergraduate design studio classes and one class devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright. Alofsin is internationally recognized as one of the leading authorities on Wright. Alofsin’s teaching philosophy is threefold: Teachers are supposed to love their students as best they can and look out for them to the best of their ability while the students are in their care; professors are supposed to have something worth professing; and professors should always set a high standard in teaching critical and analytical thinking, which will help students deal with the world outside the 40 acres.

“As a studio professor, he is very patient and encouraging,” Melynn Mayfield, a student who completed design V, said. “He really helps you to achieve your goals and teaches you new methods to use to reach them.” Mayfield said she believes Alofsin really cares about his students because he schedules regular meetings with them to discuss their progress in the class.

Alofsin said that while he loves his students and does everything he can to assist them, he does not coddle them in the classroom. “I’m not really the indulgent type,” Alofsin said. “I don’t make things easy, I probably make things hard, but they’re doable.”  His style is suitable for a professor with 10 years of graduate education: a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and both a master’s degree in philosphy and a doctoral degree in art history from Columbia University.

Alofsin also owns an Austin architecture firm that was founded in 1990. Every year, he works on only two or three houses so he can spend plenty of time personally interacting with the residents to learn their style. As for his style, Alofsin said he has always been interested in a rational system that uses modules and proportions. He also strives to integrate landscape with all of his buildings and takes a complete analysis of the site before starting a project. “Everything is a function of the land itself and where it’s [the building] located — the breezes, the sun, the shade and all of those things,” he said. “When I think about the physical object, I’m also thinking about all of the ground around it and how people relate to the landscape.”

Alofsin designed and built his own house, which was featured in “Architecture, “Better Homes and Gardens Building Ideas” and “Professional Builder,” around a courtyard with a pond full of water lilies. The project, which is a mixture of typical Texas, Pompeian and Japanese architectural styles, took slightly more than a year to complete, from design to execution. Alofsin chose one of Austin’s highest points for the location with the idea that it would be a tranquil and meditative place where he could nurture his other passions, gardening and writing. He was thrilled to build on a virgin piece of land that had never been built on. “Maybe the Indians camped on it, but maybe not,” he said.

He said such an opportunity would be impossible in Europe, among other places, where every square inch of ground has been covered.  America is one of the few places left with land untapped, so he made sure to keep a lot of native trees on his property.

Alofsin has published numerous books on architecture and has also recently dabbled in writing a fictitious memoir called “Halflife” about a 35-year-old man searching for the meaning of life through the reflection of the people and places he has known.

Also a voracious reader, he is currently reading a series of Swedish mystery novels and the works of a young Japanese novelist who writes dark, violent stories about Japanese teenagers.

In 2007, Alofsin was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire where he spent five weeks in the company of painters, filmmakers, poets, composers and other writers. At Macdowell he stayed in a studio within a stone chapel built in 1916 where he slept on a cot and had his lunch delivered in picnic baskets. “I loved the atmosphere,” he said. “It was a very primal experience.”

When asked about his creative process, Alofsin said that sometimes writers just have to go for it and get started on a project. “You can’t wait for all the research and everything, you just have to leap in because there are all these psychological issues in creative work that everyone creative has to deal with,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve written you can always face the risk of writer’s block.”

In his desire to live a simple life, Alofsin spends a lot of time thinking about what he is doing and what he intends to do. He is contemplating two new books. One is on the “McMansion” look and how that architecture works. He said the book would explore why people become absorbed by the marketing mechanisms of the housing industry and end up purchasing houses without understanding what they mean to them. The other is a fictional and semi-autobiographical book about what it was like growing up in Memphis “in the old days.”

Photo Ann Choi

Our Campus: Tell me about your first job at the Portland Press Herald.

Doug Warren: Where I went to school — and this is going back a ways because I graduated in 1975 from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. — I, like many students at that point, since I was an English major, had no idea what I was going to do. I thought I’d like to write, so somehow I got a job through a connection to my father. A guy my father knew, knew another guy who got me a job as a reporter for the Portland Press Herald. Actually it was more like I was self-employed because I was a freelancer and I covered a vast area of Western Maine, which is the state that I grew up in. From my apartment kitchen, I had my little Smith-Corona and I had little pieces of carbon paper, remember that? And so what I would do is go to meetings or to events or whatever was happening in that area at the time and I would type up my little story, put it in an envelope and take it down to the drugstore. The driver who brought the afternoon paper would drop off the Evening Express, pick up my envelope and drive back down to Portland, Maine. My stories would show up in the paper the next day. I did that for about a year and that was all I could take in a town with no bars, no women and not much else going on either. So I took the GRE and did very badly. At that point they took pity on me and realized I was either going to move or lose my mind. So the Portland paper brought me downtown where I continued to be a reporter and did some editing too. And that was my first real newspaper job. Mostly, I was working 6 p.m to 2. a.m. Somehow, I managed to be not only the editor, but also the rock music critic. But, working those hours most days put a crimp in the amount of music I could go see because I was always at work.

OC: Are there a lot of concert venues in Maine?

DW: Oh yeah! There was a lot going on then. I could tell you stories — like the time I went to the movie theater with Elvis Costello. I’ve also seen Liv Tyler naked.

OC: What?

DW: Well Liv’s mother, Bebe Buell, was a friend of mine. She lived in Portland at the time I was the music critic. She was a Playboy Playmate and used to be Todd Rundgren’s girlfriend. She was a glorified super groupie. I came across her when she wanted to launch her own singing career, so I wrote some stories about her and she started singing around town. We got to be good friends, so I’d go over to her house and there was this little baby who was supposed to be Liv Rundgren because supposedly she was Todd Rundgren’s daughter — that’s what I knew her as. I never saw him, but he would send her money. Well as you know, years later, it turns out that it was actually Steve Tyler’s daughter. So Bebe would be there bathing Liv and I’d be there talking. It was not much to see back then, but she was there.

OC: What about Elvis Costello, how did you meet him?

DW: Bebe continued to have these affairs with people and at one point she was dating Elvis Costello and he came to town to visit her. She and I were still pretty good friends so she wanted me to meet him. He did not want to meet me because I was a journalist, but she arranged for the three of us to see “Superman 2.”

OC: Where did you go from Portland?

DW: So it turned out to be a miserable job in Bridgton, Maine but turned into something that was a good gig for me in Portland. And then after five years there, I got a job at The Miami Herald, packed up, and moved down to Miami to be with a woman who dumped me after two months of being there. I’ll tell ya, the experience I had in Miami was the best. Miami is a great news town. The Miami Herald was a great newspaper and a lot of the people I worked with are top editors at papers all across the country.

I spent five years there and that was long enough to let The Boston Globe know that I exist, so in 1986 I got an offer to be a copy editor at the night desk, even though I’d been a city editor or assistant city editor at Miami. And I worked there for 21 years as an editor and writer.

OC: Would you say there’s any particular formula to follow to be a good journalist?

DW: It’s funny because I had no real journalism training before I started doing it. I had a passion to write, which is really what I wanted to do, so I followed that in the only way that I could really think of doing it. It was either that or sit in a cabin somewhere trying to write some great novel, which still doesn’t work out. So that was my passion, but I also had a passion for curiosity. There were a lot of things I was interested in that I wanted to find out about and write about.

OC: What are you reading?

DW: I’m reading a biography about Satchel Paige, the famous pitcher, right now. I’m mostly interested in people, which comes from the passion for curiosity that I’ve had and has sort of driven me — which is weird because in some ways I’m kind of shy and don’t really like being at parties. If there’s another person’s life I can find out about, or if I can get somebody to do a good interview so that you can find out about them, that’s satisfying to me.

OC: Who are your favorite types of people to interview?

DW: Well, that’s interesting. There’s a variety — clearly, the people who are willing to talk about themselves. I find the people I relate to the most are the ones where the interview becomes not so much a series of questions, but a conversation or a dialogue, so that you really feel like you’re on the same wave length and really communicating. And it’s hard because it’s an artificial situation — you’re having a conversation with a person you may have never met before or know nothing about — or you know about them, but you don’t know how they relate to things. For example, I did an interview with David Byrne, lead singer of the Talking Heads. He was great, I love him. This was probably 30 years ago. He’s odd, but he’s really nice — at least he was to me. I met him in New Hampshire, did a bit of an interview in a hotel room where he and the rest of the band were going to be playing that night. At 6 p.m. we were done and I said, “ What are you doing?’ And he said, “I don’t know.” So I said, “Well, why don’t you come with us?”  So we went to this great seafood restaurant in Portsmouth, N.H. He sat with us and we had a great time. We had a really enjoyable conversation. He’s very smart and on top of new trends. He’s still an artist that I admire and follow.

OC: Is there a particular environment that you like to write in?

DW: I used to write out everything in long hand. How’s that for being old school?  I did have that Smith-Corona to bang things out on, but now we live in Northwest Austin and we have a canyon behind the house. My desk is set up so its not facing out the window because I’d never get anything done — but it’s off to the left. I have a Mac and I just sit there and bang stuff out. It’s nice to be able to look outside and see something different. This is not my favorite environment, “He said gesturing to his closed-in, miniscule office.” I like the environment to be controlled and familiar. I’m not really good at sitting in the back of my car with a laptop and banging something out anymore. I don’t even like going to a coffee shop. I like to be in my place and have it not be too loud.

OC: How are you liking the transition from reporter to teacher?

DW: I found it really difficult to begin with. I hadn’t been in a classroom for over 30 years. When I started doing it, I hadn’t taken a class and no one told me how to prepare or what to do. I had some material that the professor I’ve been filling in for, Rusty Todd, left me and I’ve found that to be somewhat helpful.  But I also found out very quickly that obviously I was going to have to come up with something on my own. I’m still really thankful to the students who were in that first class I taught because if they had turned on me I would’ve just crawled out of the room, and then probably crawled out of the CMA building and then just kept going. I knew that I knew stuff they would need or that would be helpful for them to know, but how to get that across to them was kind of foreign to me at the beginning.  People seem to like it and get the information. I’m in my third semester now and I’ve kept a fair hunk of the stuff I came up with that first semester.

OC: Did Rusty Todd give you any advice before you started?

DW: The good advice he gave me was that I would have to make it my own. He left me stuff, but you can’t teach someone else’s thing.  It became clear very quickly.

OC: What are your thoughts on The Daily Texan?

DW: I’m trying to get them to think radically, do things differently and figure out why people are doing the things that they’ve been doing the same way all this time when really they need to be thinking about doing things very differently. Students can be fairly conservative, at least these days. I’m just challenging them to think differently. There are no rules, nothing’s written down, there’s no stone tablet, so it’s all sort of in people’s minds. I’m telling them that now is the time if they’re going to try something. I’m trying to change the look and the thinking behind what goes into the look. We really have to change the way we do stories. It’s not just enough to think of story ideas and put in a photo assignment.  They need to think about the type of stories they’re doing and how they can do them in a variety of different ways —video, sound, photography and interactivity between them and the reading audience by publishing quizzes and votes on stories.

OC: Did you have a mentor?

DW: The first one I had was a guy name Mickey Wiesenthal who was an old, heavy smoking, enormously fat, very funny, extremely knowledgeable guy in Portland. He set me straight on a lot of things in Portland. I could have stayed in Portland, it’s a destination place, my family is there and there are a few people still there now. I could’ve stayed, but Mickey told me, “Get out of town if you’re going to be a real journalist. You can’t just sit here at this level of journalism for the rest of your career.” He really thought highly enough of me to think that I could do something, so off I went.

As Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies for eight years and chair of Slavic and Eurasian studies for four years, Garza is no stranger to talking with students about their language learning experiences. Fed up with the disappointment in the lack of language proficiency evident in many of his undergraduate students at the end of their language studies, Garza knew the way students traditionally learn one of the 34 languages taught at the University needed to change.

“That frustration, about spending that much time on task, and not being able to do something with it, is something we don’t tolerate in too many of our disciplines,” Garza said.

The seed for the Texas Language Center sprouted in a consortium called the Language Policy Advisory Committee, formerly known as the Language Pedagogy Advisory Committee. The group consisted of language specialists from all eight language departments at UT who consulted with Senior Associate Dean Richard Flores, head of the LPAC , about how to improve the language program at the University.

By spring 2008, the committee was looking at recommendations in a Modern Language Association report. The last big recommendation found in the report expressed the need for a language center to “develop a forum for the exchange of ideas and expertise among language instructors from all departments.” Thus, the idea for the Texas Language Center was born.

“2008 was still what I would call good times at UT,” Garza said. “We were hiring a lot, we were expanding, we were teaching 35 languages at UT on a regular basis — I was really pleased.”

Then came summer of ’09, when talk of budget cuts began to circulate. Already operating on a slim budget, liberal arts was faced with a tough decision because the Texas Language Center was still not fully operational. Amidst the rumors of budget cuts, Garza was in talks about leaving his post with Slavic languages to assume the new role as director of the center. When budget cuts came down, cutting the language requirement was the first thing put on the table as a potential way to save money.

“It’s true, if we got rid of the language requirement, we would save a lot of money, we would also gut a lot of what liberal arts stands for,” Garza said. “So there was an outcry here [in liberal arts].”

Talks of cutting the language requirement eventually fizzled out, but misunderstandings about the language center did not. The development of the center which happened during a time when the dean’s office wanted to cut the language requirement bred skepticism about the center. Before the center’s opening in fall 2009, rumors were still swirling that the language center might somehow cause the undoing of UT’s entire language program.

“There was no question, we were viewed, in my opinion, from the outset, as an extension of the dean’s office,” Garza said. “We were created by the dean’s office, but we weren’t created as an extension of the dean’s office. I’ve spent almost all of this year trying to undo that perception.”

The Texas Language Center officially opened Sept. 1, 2009. It is not an official University department — it has no faculty and it does not offer courses or degrees — but the center does have a large number of affiliated faculty who teach language. But Garza said they are only affiliated to the extent that they receive the newsletters and bulletins sent out by the center.

“The Texas Language Center is here to help the language arts mission in the College of Liberal Arts,” Garza said.

So what exactly does the Texas Language Center do?

To Orlando Kelm, associate director of Business Language Education, one of the most important tasks of the center is to share information across various language departments at UT.

“Traditionally language departments live pretty independently from one another — great ideas from one department don’t always get passed on to other language departments,” Kelm said. “TLC serves as a sort of clearing house.”

One of Garza’s main goals for the Texas Language Center is to move beyond the way language is traditionally taught, especially since languages are playing a more important role than ever in 21st century economies. Right now, while UT’s language requirement differs from college to college, there is a two-year language requirement  for liberal arts, which Garza said is considered to be on the high end by other universities.

A two-year introduction does not help the student achieve the amount of proficiency needed to get a job Garza said. So the center is exploring ways to intensify the language experience at the University.

“So that in that two-year period, we can actually get more useful material out to our students, and to try to make it more effective so they can actually do more with the minimum requirement we offer,” Garza said.

This would mean changes in the way students traditionally learn languages. Garza believes class time should involve face-to-face interaction utilizing the language, rather than learning grammar and vocabulary from a textbook for 50 minutes. All of the grammar and vocabulary would be relegated to a computer program, which students would learn at home in order to dedicate more time to speaking the language in class.

These new intensive courses are being taught on a new cycle called the “six, six” model. “We will do six hours for one semester, six hours for a second semester,” Garza said. “The student will understand when she comes in, that she is in for a lot of work outside of class.”

Since the Internet offers material in every language in the world, it a resource at the students’ fingertips. Garza said he wants students reading online newspapers and participating in foreign language social networking sites in languages they are studying. The idea behind this is to immerse students in the language as much as possible right in their own dorm rooms.

The idea is to get the student to move beyond simply fulfilling a two-year language requirement. The center wants students to leave their language program with a language proficiency that enables them to have careers in other parts of the world.

“We are going to do all that we can to try to give you an immersion experience in a year that would fulfill the foreign language requirement, but actually get you to a functional level of proficiency that we think means something in a foreign language learning environment,” Garza said.

This means enticing students before they even arrive on UT’s campus their freshman year. Garza hopes to place younger students in upper division language classes, and get them more interested in language by offering study abroad opportunities if they fulfill certain requirements. Garza also hopes to implement courses on contemporary culture and cinema that students can utilize when they go abroad.

All of this work serves one ultimate goal: for graduating Longhorns to be hired by professional organizations because they can move to another country and function there as a result of the language program at UT. Garza said UT is moving past simple tourist knowledge of languages toward professional competence.

“The fact of the matter is thanks largely to the Internet and to a shrinking world because of the opportunities and availability of travel, and the ability to connect with our partners abroad, ” Garza said. “And to be part of that world, in my view, simply requires knowledge of language that goes beyond the traditional — to getting where students can really do something about it.”

It’s a thrilling film to watch, and one gets a sense of a personal touch behind every frame.  This may be because it’s the first feature-length production from the University of Texas Film Institute, a unique program based in Austin that provides a more holistic experience of filmmaking than the average RTF class. “We’ve developed over 30 student-generated screenplays, and we chose this script based on it being the one that was the strongest from a storytelling point of view, and also something that we could make with our resources,” Alex Smith, the creative director of the UTFI and the film’s producer, said. “It was a combination of a beautiful story and something very cinematic that appealed to us.”

The UTFI functions as a long lesson in filmmaking for multiple students, covering every aspect of producing films from screenplay to portions of a final feature film. Students submit feature-length scripts at the beginning of the process, which are then narrowed down to a smaller cache of workable material, and each subsequent semester of students handles a different aspect of production of select portions of these scripts, from shooting scenes, to editing, to even making the film’s main titles. Along the way, students are guided by mentors and professionals with experience in making films. “We flip the model,” Smith said. “Instead of having students work as production assistants on professional movies, we have the professionals mentor them as they make [the students’] movie.”

The process not only serves as a long form exercise in filmmaking, but also as a way to instill confidence in student filmmakers.  For screenwriter Smith Henderson, who co-wrote the film with Jon Marc Smith as an adaptation of Marc Smith’s novel “Every Lost Girl”, the experience was nothing short of thrilling.  “For me to be able to take my first script that I tried to write and get a movie out of it … what schools do that?” Henderson asked. “Where do you get to do that? Nowhere. That’s kind of incredible.”

Michael Dolan, the film's director, is a UT Michener Center for Writers alumnus.

It’s fortunate that Henderson and Marc Smith’s script was given serious consideration, because without the gung ho attitude permeating the UTFI, “Dance With the One” may not have been made.

Michael Dolan, UT Michener Center for Writers alumnus, directs the film, which is a fantastic exercise in the escalation of tension. The story follows Nate (Gabriel Luna), a young Mexican-American pot dealer who wants nothing more than to escape with his girlfriend (Xochitl Romero) from his deadbeat father (Gary McCleery) and enroll his brother (Mike Davis) in a good school. Ever since the tragic death of his mother, both brother and father have been in a downward spiral of grief and rotten behavior, and Nate simply wants out. He works out a deal to hold premium drugs in exchange for the money he needs to accomplish this goal, only to be thwarted when the merchandise is stolen. What follows is a desperate search for the drugs, where each decision gets worse, eventually leading to bloodshed. “At the core it’s a beautiful story about loss,” Smith said. “It also captured a slice of Austin that really has yet to have been documented.”

Smith’s assessment is spot on. “Dance with the One” posits that beneath the veneer of Austin’s image as a laid-back town of college students and aging hippies is a layer of grit that people aren’t always willing to talk about. Most of the film appears to take place east of the highway, with occasional shots of the skyline looming in the background. Nefarious activity in Austin is often swept under the rug, or confined to geographic areas that some regard as “the wrong side of the tracks.” “Dance with the One” serves to humanize the people behind the mug shots that appear on the seven o’ clock news. We see a family damaged by the loss of a loved one, not the faceless perpetrators of crime. “It’s about people who either sink or swim,” Henderson said. “And the family in the film has definitely not made it. They’re sinking.”

The film is successful due to its commanding acting by every major player, especially Gary McCleery as Nate’s grief-stricken father. Henderson and Marc Smith’s writing visits familiar territory in terms of a crime story, but they add a unique take by making their characters so believably human. Each character has unique personality, something often absent from the typical drug thriller. Also, the film looks fantastic. For a movie funded largely by generous donations, various benefactors and University money, the photography is impeccable. It draws all of the terrible summer heat into the frame, making every drop of sweat visible, adding fantastically to the film’s intensity. All of these things are good, but the most important influence on the quality of the film is the community behind it.

“This is all generated out of UT, out of this sea of students,” Smith said. “Out of 50,000 students there’s got to be stellar talent in all of these weird areas of filmmaking, and we’re trying to identify and gather them.” Of all the people that worked on the film, Smith estimates that 90 percent were affiliated in some way with UT, a fact represented visually in the film’s credit roll where every person’s name involved with both the film and UT appears in burnt orange. Students were involved in all aspects of production from acting, to crew work, to editing. Not one person showed up late on set or balked at the prospect of working 12-hour days. “You’d see people getting excited about each other’s work,” Henderson said. “I don’t know how many people came up to [myself and Marc Smith] and said, ’Look at this set we just finished, isn’t this exactly what you pictured?’ And yeah, we were blown away.”

The product of all of this collaboration is a unique, well-made, entertaining film. “Dance with the One” is the ultimate result of the ambition of a community of people working together to create a piece of art, which ultimately reflects the collaborative nature of the medium itself. It’s a quality that really shines through in the film. The presence of a cooperative community of writers, actors, technicians, students and mentors is so indelibly infused with the film that one cannot help but feel as if they are watching a labor of love on screen. “It wasn’t some kind of Hollywood thing coming into town to use Austin and then head out of town,” Henderson said. “It’s about Austin, and it was created here. The idea is that it’s homegrown so that it grows the home.”