- Hi everyone, I'm Catenya McHenry
and you are joining us on our new March Q&A with Dean Lil.
It is always great to do these and this will be the first time, Lil,
that this will be sent to students, so welcome students.
We normally do these every month and we send them to staff and faculty
but we are so glad to include students this time.
So, welcome, Lil, to the March Q&A.
- Thanks. And I am so glad we're including students this time
and I hope we'll find a way to package that every month and do so.
- Yes, absolutely. Well, let's get to it.
So we have just come off of a wild couple of winter weeks
where we had to shut down for about a week.
A lot of students, as well as staff and faculty,
didn't have basic services,
water, electricity, internet, all of those things.
So, let's talk about first, just within our McCombs community,
who was affected and how we were able to come through that.
- Well, we have the best data from a survey that our MBA program staff
did to those students, where we have more than 500
full-time MBA students and two-thirds of them replied back.
Forty-two percent of the respondents said they lost power and heat
for more than three days.
That's a huge impact and my best friend in Austin,
her sister died in a care home when the power failed
and the care home's generator failed. - I'm sorry.
- So, I know that this event that was Texas wide
had some huge human cost.
And, as a business school, we also try to bring thoughtful discussion
to real world problems and there was just a really excellent
Monday night webinar co-hosted by our energy institute
and the Salem Center for Policy.
Dr. Ross Baldick, Ms. Bernadette Johnson, Ms. Becky Klein, Dr. David Spence,
and Dr. Sheridan Titman, and it's exploring trade-offs
in the Texas energy system.
So, even as we are absorbing the human cost,
we need to be analyzing what to do better and different
and the McCombs school wants to play a role in that.
- Yeah, that's great.
It was really a -- It was kind of scary.
I mean, I think all of us tapped into our survival skills
and what was really incredible was to see just the communities
coming together to help one another
and that was all across Austin, not just at UT.
I mean there were different water distribution stations
set up at UT, but it was incredible
to see the effort across the city.
I mean, I was even a benefit of somebody helping me get water.
It was amazing.
- Right, and we had students in shared housing
and lots of messaging, and of course here on campus,
dorms and the cafeterias stayed open
but it really was a community trying to help each other.
And it wasn't just students affected, it's faculty and staff,
which means we shut down classes not just for the week of the ice storm,
but for the Monday, Tuesday after because we know that
students and faculty were without power, and therefore WiFi,
and dealing with basic needs.
And so, studying and preparing was just really impossible
under those conditions.
So, I'm really glad students felt safe to ask faculty or others,
"What are you doing to accommodate this?"
And instruction from the president and the provost,
in fact we should be reducing deliverables
and pushing off assessments to a reasonable extent.
And I know this week, that means all the mid-terms
that didn't happen last week or the week before
are probably crushing students' schedules
and we're going to get through this.
- Yeah, we are. And I think a lot of us are still recovering mentally, but we're
getting back to normal somehow, and somehow we'll continue to get
back to normal. Can you talk about just how we in McCombs
were able to do that? - Well, one of the more heroic back to
normal efforts I saw was that the MBA programs hosted the third annual
Elevate conference last friday, and it was in person the last two years
but of course Zoom this year. We had more than 900 registrants,
410 unique participants. That is a huge global impact,
just amazing attendance. And this was 3 days after we reopened
campus, and that group of students knows the importance of every Longhorn
belonging here, and we have this exceptional program to help us keep
learning lessons about how to increase every Longhorn being a part of
conversations and inclusion. -Yeah. I just want to say I know you are.
I'm so proud of those MBA students. I was so fortunate to be a part, in some
way, a very small way of the very first conference that was created and
obviously put on by the MBA students. But it was so great.
The students who put it on the very first time, I remember having a conversation
with them about why they were doing it, and one of the things I said was
Well, we didn't want it to see a way that we could make a difference.
Instead of complaining about something, we wanted to see different ways we could
take action, and as you do something about the things we were upset and complaining
about, so it's so great to see it still continuing.
- Well, it's not unique to one program, of course.
It's just, this is the one that's top of mind, because I was so glad to
participate last Friday. - Yeah.
- And we had great corporate speakers and I want to give a shoutout to
Dell Corporation. One of their themes in their session was
who's in the in-group and who's in the out-group for important decision
making, and that's important this week as we're about to--
we're still in and about to be in resuming a conversation about
The Eyes of Texas, and, gosh, the thing I most want to achieve as we resume this
conversation in public, is that this is one large family
of students and staff and faculty and alumni who are all passionate about
the college and the university, and it is within the family that we need
the most resilience for uncomfortable conversations, and I have a lot of trust
that there is enough love in this family that we're going to navigate it together.
- Yes. I think too Lil, it's important to say that the comments of a few don't
reflect the views and positions and the great work that is happening not just
across McCombs, but across the university.
Obviously, more concentrated in McCombs because that's where we both are, but
work on both sides. - Right.
- Work from the students' standpoint of getting an education, and work on the
staff and faculty's side of educating those students.
So I think it's really important to emphasize that the comments of a few
don't reflect the great work that's happening.
- You're right, Catenya. The few voices that might be unwelcoming
do not speak for me or President Hartzell or the College.
I'll fight tooth and nail for everyone that's a member of our family to feel
like they belong here. - Absolutely.
And I think this gives us a chance to talk about the opportunity that is happening
and the wonderful alumni who are excited about
giving and providing more opportunities for students.
So talk about some of those efforts from-- - I'd love to!
- McCombs alumni. - 12 months ago, I was one of the
professors. Your colleague, your teacher.
And in that capacity, I spent more time with students and faculty,
and I'm now the interim dean, so I actually spend more time with
staff and alumni. But it's all part of this family.
And in talking to alums, as you might expect, I get to talk to more of them
who are donors to Texas McCombs. And it's a pleasure because they're so
excited to give back. The people who are helping fund the
excellence and the elite world class education here can afford to educate
their children and grandchildren anywhere.
But most of them came to Texas and saw the transformation that their education gave
them in their personal lives and their careers,
and they want to pay it forward. And if they can possibly be fortunate
that their own children and grandchildren get to be admitted here on their merits,
they're hoping that there is more orange blood in the family.
But whether their children and grand children come to McCombs
or not, these alums want to pay it forward to increase access to kids that
can't afford to be here, or that have other attractive competitive choices.
In the last 6 and a half years, these alumni and friends have given more than
70 million dollars in student support. - And that's just in McCombs, right?
- That's just in McCombs, yes! And it's easy to hook an alum into giving
a scholarship because it's so tangible. Those donors get to be mentors to their
scholars. But we also need alums with a vision to
give to a building or to endow a research fund because we need excellent
facilities and we need impactful research. And the Rowling Hall project cost
nearly 200 million dollars, and alumni and friends funded 60 million of that.
We've already raised 96 million from our alumni and friends toward a
135 million fundraising goal, which represents a third of the entire
project cost. So the enthusiasm, the affection that our
alums have for the faculty, students and staff is just huge.
- That's fantastic. Well, and again, it's important to
make sure that we don't lose sight of the great work that's happening all around,
and all of the exciting efforts that are taking place.
And I think it also speaks to the kind of alumni that we want
to graduate from McCombs. We want students now to give back
and be excited about giving back, to pay it forward as well.
- Right, and to go change the world! - Yes!
- I'm told we have both of internal McCombs students and other UT students
who are getting minors here. More than 800 students getting an
entrepreneurship minor. And whether they start their own
company or whether they're a source of innovation inside a larger company,
these are innovative thinkers, and it starts here,
and it starts at Texas McCombs. - I love that.
And together we are changing the world, I love it.
Well, that's a good place to end it. Thank you so much Lil.
- Hook 'em Horns! - Hook 'em, exactly.
This has been our March Q and A. Thank you so much Lil and thank you
students who are joining us this time on our Q and A.
We will see you next time. Have a great day everybody.