Full Circle

Charles “Charlie” Smith III received so much more than a name from his father and grandfather. Through them, he learned important lessons about responsibility, commitment and generosity — lessons now benefiting The University of Texas at Austin. With significant gifts to UT’s College of Natural Sciences, Charlie is honoring his father’s Longhorn legacy and continuing his family’s long tradition of support and caring.

His son, Charlie’s father, experienced great hardship early in life. His parents divorced and moved away from Canajoharie, leaving behind him and his younger brother, Robert, to be raised by two maternal grand-aunts. The sisters earned a meager income at Beech-Nut, a baby food manufacturer and the primary employer of most of the town’s residents. Money to raise their young nephews was tight. Fear of burdening anyone with further financial difficulties led Robert to stay silent about an ear infection — a decision that tragically took the 12-year-old’s life.

Charles Jr. supplemented the household income with janitorial work during his high school years and kept a strong focus on academics — his best chance for a brighter future. Determination to improve his lot brought him to Austin to live with an aunt so he could establish residency and qualify for in-state tuition at UT. After six months, he applied and was accepted to UT, earning a degree in chemistry at a time when just 5.5% of men completed four years of advanced education.

Charlie recalls his hardworking father’s love for UT.

“After graduation, which was followed by three years of military service, my father answered an ad in National Geographic magazine for a job with Pfizer. He was eventually transferred to the Pfizer plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he eventually became plant manager. He worked the first 10 years of his career without taking even one day of vacation,” Charlie recalls. “The very first time he took days off, he took the family to Austin.”

“He showed us the Tower and where he had lived,” Charlie says. “He had a lot of pride in The University of Texas.”

“He sold a few hundred shares once to help purchase a house,” Charlie recalls, “and he would rue that decision later.”

The shares are now worth approximately 100 times their original value.

Charlie is excited to use his inheritance to fund The Charles W. Smith Jr. Graduate Fellowships in Molecular Biosciences. The fellowships enable multiple graduate students each year to focus on their research, make critical discoveries and position themselves as leaders of the future.

David Vanden Bout, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, is grateful for the enormous ripple effect the gift will make as it creates opportunities for new generations of Longhorns and continues the Smith legacy far into the future.

“Mr. Smith’s gift will help us recruit more candidates to the doctoral program,” he says. “The size and caliber of our graduate program strengthens our undergraduate experience and is an important factor for outcompeting the world’s top institutions for new faculty recruits.”

A portion of the gift will be used to advance AI-powered projects through UT’s Texas Biologics, a research center launched in 2022 to develop protein-based vaccines and therapies for infectious diseases, cancer, neurodegeneration, autoimmune disorders and rare genetic conditions. To date, Texas Biologics has led interdisciplinary teams from the College of Natural Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Cockrell School of Engineering and Dell Medical School in collaboration with Texas Advanced Computing Center to help propel therapeutic discoveries from the lab to the clinic, creating far-reaching impacts on both the local and global healthcare landscape.

“There’s a lot of potential in what Texas Biologics is doing,” says Charlie, “and I’m looking forward to supporting that.