Meet Tai Yona Z Lewis: she’s a human development and family sciences major in the School of Human Ecology. She’s also a speech consultant at UT’s Public Speaking Center, a program operated by the Sanger Learning Center. As a speech consultant, Tai helps students prepare and rehearse their presentations.

Since its inception in 2010, the School of Undergraduate Studies’ Summer Exploration Grant has provided competitive funding to students engaging in summer opportunities for academic and career exploration. This year’s awardees are interested in a variety of academic majors and have found unique ways to gain career experience.

The School of Undergraduate Studies and the Office of Undergraduate Research hosted events across the Forty Acres showcasing undergraduate research and creative projects for Research Week. Our thanks to everyone who participated in the week’s events.

Thanks to a gift from Kimberly and Scott Martin, this year’s Longhorn Research Poster Session offered awards for students presenting research posters. The following students were recognized for their achievements in research communication:

Each year, Research Week showcases an array of undergraduate research projects from across the Forty Acres. Students present their projects and promote the impressive opportunities available at a tier-one research institution.

On Saturday, April 6, The University of Texas at Austin celebrated its 71st annual Honors Day Ceremony, where six students from the School of Undergraduate Studies (UGS) were recognized for their outstanding academic achievement.

The School of Undergraduate Studies recognized a year’s worth of outstanding student writing at the third annual Undergraduate Writing and Research Awards ceremony, held on April 4, 2019. The Center for Skills and Experience Flags and Texas Libraries co-hosted the event at which $2400 was awarded to undergraduates who submitted work in four different writing categories: collaborative, research, critical/persuasive, and creative/reflective.

For the third year, the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) has granted Student Researcher Awards to support two undergraduates as they enrich their current academic studies and develop future careers. The awards allow students to participate in research opportunities regardless of their financial resources.

Guy Raffa teaches his large-format signature course, “Dante’s Hell and Its Afterlife,” for Undergraduate Studies each spring. While studying Dante’s Inferno, students engage with responses to the poet’s enduring vision of Hell in literary, artistic, cinematic, and popular works ranging from Sandro Botticelli’s illustrations, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, T. S. Eliot’s poetry, a 1935 Hollywood movie, a video game, and Dan Brown’s thriller, Inferno.

William Powers led a long and impressive career at The University of Texas at Austin, starting as a member of the UT law faculty in 1977. In 1997 he was recognized for outstanding teaching by being inducted into the prestigious Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He served as dean of the School of Law, and then as president of the university from 2006 until 2015.

On Wednesday, March 6, the School of Undergraduate Studies (UGS) held a banquet to celebrate students in the top 4% of their class. All 119 students on the UGS Dean’s List made a GPA of 4.0 during spring or fall 2018.