From the Ground Up

A state as vast as Texas must contend with myriad environmental issues. Water quality and shortages, damage caused by invasive species and the impact of population growth all affect the people and the land itself. But with the wealth of bright students, researchers and scientists found at The University of Texas at Austin, solutions are within reach. Steve Winn, B.S. ’69, thinks it’s time to act on the environmental concerns facing Texas and beyond and has provided UT researchers with a very good place to start.

Steve and the Winn Family Foundation have given UT a remarkable gift: access to more than 1,000 acres near Dripping Springs and the financial backing to build a state-of-the-art field research station onsite. The Hill Country Field Station will be the seventh facility in the Texas Field Station Network, joining Brackenridge Field Laboratory, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Marine Science Institute, McDonald Observatory, Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station, and the White Family Outdoor Learning Center.

“Field stations are a crucial element in understanding ecosystems and how they’re changing,” says Steve. The Hill Country Field Station will offer a biodiverse living laboratory that includes savannahs, creeks and grottos. Here students and faculty researchers will have the opportunity to study the environment, test theories, and ultimately develop solutions that will change the world.

First Steps

Steve knows how important initial steps are toward reaching goals. In 1965, he left his home in Dallas to study electrical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. In those days, that was as close as the University offered to a degree in computer science, his true interest. He faced the problems that plague freshmen: homesickness and financial issues. “My parents paid my $500 tuition and drove me down to UT one time. I had to hitchhike back at breaks. They were not helicopter parents,” he recalls. As for staying afloat, it was a challenge Steve met with characteristic grit. “I discovered this treasure in empty Coke bottles. You could sell them for two cents each, so just about anything I could do to scrape by at UT, I was doing.”

After graduation, Steve put his education to work at Computer Language Research, a tax and compliance software company his father had begun. In 1998, the father-son team sold the company for $325 million, giving Steve a launchpad for further entrepreneurial ventures. That same year, Steve founded his own company, RealPage, a property management software company. He eventually landed on the Forbes List, earning an 8 out of 10 in the “self-made” category.

Steve’s success in business can be attributed in part to his father’s advice — “If you’re riding a horse and the horse stops walking, get off the horse” — and to an early IBM computer game that shaped his entrepreneurial acumen. In his teens, Steve, with his father, spent countless hours playing a game that challenged them to run a company by allocating funding to marketing, production and other categories. The computer then provided a quarterly report based on the players’ decisions, giving them a chance to tweak the variables as they aimed for success. That game sharpened Steve’s capacity to analyze patterns and improve on past decisions. He is hopeful researchers at the Hill Country Field Station will take a similar approach to the serious business of conservation efforts.

Restoring the Land — and Hope

The Hill Country Field Station will give UT researchers and students — particularly those in the College of Natural Sciences — the opportunity to gather hands-on data and have meaningful learning experiences beyond the classroom. “Long-term access to protected spaces allows scientists to tackle the most pressing ecological and hydrological problems of our time and lets students experience learning about natural resources in ways they carry with them over a lifetime,” says David Vanden Bout, dean of the College of Natural Sciences.

The field station will also provide students and researchers with a chance to test theories as they gain insight into possible solutions. It is a living laboratory where real-time experiments can help them monitor developments in our changing environment. “Effective adaption is going to require the best knowledge and facts that can be gathered, and that takes research in the field. We’re going to test different approaches to restoration,” says Steve. “For example, there are inexpensive ways to restore land that will eliminate the invasive species of grass that have crowded out the biodiversity of grasses we need. When we do that, we will see birds come back, insects come back — these are things that will happen through well thought-out scientific restoration plans.”

Communication will play a pivotal role in the Winn family’s vision for the future of the Hill Country Field Station, and collaboration beyond the College of Natural Sciences is part of the master plan. Students from the Moody College of Communication will gain valuable experience by translating scientific findings into information aimed at the general public.

“Outreach becomes mission critical,” says Steve. “Research is not going to make a difference unless you can communicate findings to the rest of the world at scale.”

Part of the Winn family’s outreach efforts include hosting schoolchildren at the property’s 1.5-acre working farm — a fully organic facility that uses bio-intensive agricultural methods. There, the students can participate in harvesting crops and preparing healthy meals. “We hope this will be a place that inspires children and young adults to better understand the importance of diverse ecosystems to the sustainability of our planet and the life we enjoy here,” says Steve. “I am a huge believer in the ability of planetariums, museums and educational institutions to capture imaginations at a time when young minds are most open and help change the direction of people’s lives.”

The Hill Country Field Station isn’t the first of the Winn Family Foundation’s gifts to UT. Steve has supported the construction of the Cockrell School of Engineering building, provided McDonald Observatory with funds needed to build the giant Magellan telescope, given research grants and much more. As a proud alumnus of UT, Steve remembers where he came from while he continues to keep a firm eye on where the world is headed.

“I am optimistic technology will solve environmental problems once enough capital is directed into the solution,” he says. “Capital is a scarce resource, so allocating where it’s going to produce the most benefit for humanity is critically important. What starts here is going to change the world,” emphasizes Steve, “and I trust The University of Texas to invest in our youth and to invest in research.”