The Ransom Center’s donor-funded fellowships support humanities research projects that require substantial on-site use of the center’s manuscripts, rare books, film, photography, art, and performing arts materials.

The scholars, a third of whom will be coming from abroad, will use Ransom Center materials to support projects with such titles as “The Texts of Tennessee Williams: A Study of the Playwright in Manuscript and Print, 1957–1963,” “For Love and Money: Victorian Women Photographers in and Beyond the Studio,” “African London,” “Robert De Niro’s Method: Acting, Agency and Authorship in the New Hollywood (1967–1980),” “How to Revise a True War Story: Tim O’Brien’s Fiction and the Process of Textual Production” and “Beautiful Chaos: Music, Pantomime, and Freedom in the French Enlightenment.”

“Support of scholarly research is a primary goal of the Ransom Center,” says director Thomas F. Staley. “With what has become one of the largest fellowship programs of its kind, we encourage scholars from around the world to make new discoveries about the writers and artists who have shaped our culture.”

The fellowships range from one to three months in duration, offering $3,000 per month. Travel stipends and dissertation fellowships are also awarded. With the exception of those selected for dissertation fellowships, fellows are postdoctoral or independent scholars with a substantial publication record.

Donors include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Hobby Family Foundation, Dorot Foundation, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and others.

With the support of the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Department of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering leads the nation in preparing future engineers for professions in energy-related fields.

“The ExxonMobil Foundation is a key partner for excellence at UT,” says Bill Powers, president of the university, who accepted this year’s ceremonial check at an event honoring the foundation’s contribution. “ExxonMobil’s employees and retirees and the foundation’s generous matching funds have made a huge difference on our campus.”

Including this year’s matching gift of $1,190,993.25 — the foundation’s largest by more than $100,000 — ExxonMobil and the ExxonMobil Foundation have given the university $50.5 million, more than any other corporation, through a range of programs over 36 years.

UTeach Natural Sciences, a new way to prepare secondary science, math, and computer science teachers, is another ExxonMobil beneficiary.

A majority of ExxonMobil’s UT philanthropy benefits students and programs in areas that reflect the diverse backgrounds of the company’s personnel.

“We’re proud to be helping educate the energy industry’s future workforce in areas ranging from engineering, geosciences, and natural sciences to business, law, and public affairs,” Powers says.

In addition to its matching gifts, the ExxonMobil Foundation’s recent philanthropic support of the university includes grants to the Migrant Student Graduation Enhancement Program; GeoFORCE Texas, which prepares high school students for geoscience careers; and UTeach Natural Sciences, which prepares secondary science, math, and computer science teachers.

University Co-op President George Mitchell

In what has become a spring tradition, the University Co-operative Society and The University of Texas at Austin awarded the University Co-op George H. Mitchell Student Awards for Academic Excellence on May 2.

Each year the awards acknowledge undergraduate students nominated by their professors for recognition of their hard work and extraordinary contributions to their fields of study. With a $20,000 grand prize and combined prize total of $41,000, seven awards were presented this year at the 13th annual ceremony.

The grand prize winner was astronomy/Plan II Honors senior George F. Miller, who graduates this month and will begin work on a PhD at Harvard in the fall.

Three other undergraduates — Seth Whitsitt, physics; Ramu Kharel, Asian studies; and Ryan Truby, biomedical engineering — won the second prize and received $5,000 each. The three winners of the $2,000 awards were James W. Salazar, biomedical engineering; Jillian Owens, religious studies and Plan II; and Jean Nava, sociology, mathematics, and economics.

Past winners of the Mitchell Awards are already helping to change the world, and this year’s nominees are well on their way. Illustrating the magnitude of the students’ work, the selection committee recommendation for one of the finalists states:  “…This method advances biomedical science by allowing doctors to better differentiate diseased regions from normal tissue, and it provides a valuable new tool to noninvasively diagnose and characterize pathologies such as cancer by enhancing their imaging and detection.”

Founded in 1896 by William J. Battle, a professor of the Greek language who later served as president of the University from 1914 to 1916, the University Co-op fulfills its 116-year old mission as a non-profit corporation by returning all profits to its owners — UT’s students, faculty, and staff. Since 2000, the Co-op has given more than $32 million to UT in the form of gifts, grants, and rebates.

The chair is the first initiative paid for with earnings from the Longhorn Network.

President Bill Powers allocated $1 million in proceeds from the network to create the chair. A $1 million matching gift from an anonymous donor will endow the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) program. Giunta founded CLAVIS in 2009 and currently serves as director.

Professor Andrea Giunta has been appointed to the newly established chair in the College of Fine Arts created with funds from the Longhorn Network.

“The University’s geographic and cultural proximity to Latin America – along with decades of focus on this area – has made us the American academic authority on the region,” Powers says. “Increasing our understanding and appreciation of the rich and diverse artistic life of Latin America is a key component of this larger sustained concentration. I’m delighted that Professor Giunta will be leading us to even greater heights in this area.”

The endowed chair was created to help the Department of Art and Art History rise in national prominence, retain outstanding faculty in Latin American art history and consolidate the University’s long-standing distinction as one of the leading research and teaching institutions in Latin American art history and criticism.

“Professor Giunta is one of the world’s leading authorities on modern and contemporary Latin American art,” says Douglas Dempster, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “She brings great distinction to the University’s extensive faculty and special collections in Latin American Studies.”

The $1 million endowment to the CLAVIS program will fund student scholarships and fellowships, visiting scholars and artists, and student travel. CLAVIS brings together scholars, museum and library professionals, and collections in Latin America, the United States, and Europe to outline a complex vision of Latin American art and its evolving modernity.

“The outstanding resources available at The University of Texas at Austin provide CLAVIS with a home site that could not be more privileged in terms of its potential to consolidate and renew Latin American art studies,” Giunta says.

In 2008 Giunta also co-founded the Permanent Seminar, an arena for presentations and joint debate. By using the Permanent Seminar and CLAVIS, Giunta has sought to build a nexus of initiatives for the study of Latin American art by reaching out to other programs across the country, as well as within Texas between The University of Texas, Southern Methodist University, and Rice University.

Giunta is also working with Mari Carmen Ramirez, curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, to forge relationships between the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) and CLAVIS to combine University of Texas students’ research practices and the ICAA archives.

Earnings from the Longhorn Network are also being used to establish academic chairs in Philosophy, Physics, the Texas Program in Sports and Media, African and African Diaspora Studies, and Mathematics.

For more information, contact: Leslie Lyon, College of Fine Arts, 512 475 7033.

Nick and Viveca Serafy with sons Paul, Clayton, Jason, and Niko, standing, and daughters-in-law Lauren and Jenna.

By Jamey Smith

For Brownsville’s Nick and Viveca Serafy, giving to the University is about more than improving its programs. It’s also about making those programs more accessible to area students who would not otherwise be able to take advantage of them.

That’s why they support the Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program.

“We hope our gifts to UT help kids from the Rio Grande Valley fulfill their dream of becoming a Longhorn,” says Nick Serafy, BA ’78.

The Serafys continue a family tradition by directing their support through a foundation that was started by Nick’s late parents. His father, Nicholas T. Serafy, Sr., BA ’49, MA ’51, graduated from the University with the skills and resolve to establish a successful medical laboratory. His mother, Michigan graduate Jean Serafy, was a musician and educator who began her teaching career in 1946 at UT and went on to establish and chair Texas Southmost College’s music department.

Nicholas and Jean met in Austin, says Nick, and if not for the University, “a World War II veteran from the Rio Grande Valley probably would not have met a pianist from the Midwest — so I guess it would be safe to credit UT with more than my education.”

While his parents pursued their careers in Brownsville, Nick expanded his horizons a few hundred miles north as a microbiology major on the Forty Acres. His student days included working for the University News and Information Service when it was based in the Littlefield Carriage House. He relished the excitement of being at UT during running back Earl Campbell’s epic Heisman Trophy-winning season.

But above all there are the fond memories of conducting research in the cramped but industrious spaces of the Experimental Science Building. That building has since been razed to make way for the Norman Hackerman Building, part of a block of cutting-edge facilities that includes the Moffett Molecular Biology Building, Neural Molecular Science Building, and recently renamed Larry R. Faulkner Nanoscience
and Technology Building.

The Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program will provide a number of $10,000 renewable scholarships to Valley residents who demonstrate financial need and show excellence in academics, leadership, and community service.

Today Nick is president and CEO of the business begun by his father, Proficiency Testing Service, Inc., which services about 26,000 laboratories in the U.S. and another 2,000 abroad.

He is excited about the work being done in his discipline at UT, and, as new generations find their scientific calling each academic year, hopes some of them will arrive as Rio Grande Valley Scholars.

“The identification of pathogens in the clinical laboratory is moving away from culture-based identification to molecular diagnostics,” he says. “The research that students are able to perform in these buildings should not only prepare them for molecular diagnostics; they may be involved in developing new techniques for identifying pathogens and other microorganisms.”

While continuing the philanthropic work of the Serafy Foundation, Nick has stepped up his UT involvement in recent years as a member of the University Development Board. His and Viveca’s four sons attended other universities, but the first two, Niko and Paul, while not being Longhorns, at least married well — Jenna Vaughan, BS ’05, and Lauren Smith, BS ’08, respectively — and hope remains for the other two.

“Jason and Clayton are not married yet, so there’s still a chance that they will also find UT graduates.”

Alumni and friends of the University have invested more than $150,000 in the Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program, toward an endowment goal of $600,000, to bring the Valley’s best students to UT. When completely funded, the endowment will support full scholarships for up to three students a year. In the meantime, the first scholar can be selected once the $200,000 threshold is reached.

Learn more about the Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program.