Phillip Dubov
Plan II Alumni Newsletter: December 2010
Plan II Honors Program
Volume 5 December 2010
From the Director's Chair
Dr. Michael Stoff
Dear Alumni and Friends,
It’s been a busy December for Plan II. Our students have finished their final exams and seniors have submitted their theses. We’ve watched a few of those seniors walk across the stage of the Erwin Center in commencement exercises for the College of Liberal Arts. The rest of them will have to wait until May.
We’ve also taken Plan II on the road for another of our 75th anniversary kick-off events. So far we’ve visited New York, Washington, DC, and now Los Angeles, where Alan and Karen Weil hosted a lovely reception at their beautiful home in the hills overlooking LA. Nearly forty alumni and friends attended and heard an update on Plan II from me and a wonderful talk from Professor Michael Starbird on the keys to success in life. We can’t promise that we’ll soon be visiting a city near you unless you live in Houston or Dallas, where we have receptions slated for mid-January and mid-February. But we do hope that you’ll visit us in March 2011, when our big 75th anniversary celebration and reunion will take place.
We’ve set the stage for the two-day event. It will be filled with all sorts of opportunities to continue your education, become reacquainted with the campus, meet old classmates, and make new friends. Keep your eyes peeled for details. Registration will begin in January. You’ve undoubtedly heard the news of Austin Ligon and Pan Lamsam’s $200,000 challenge grant to Plan II to continue helping our students study abroad. Using their original $1 million gift we’ve sent between 130 and 160 students abroad each of the last four years and have established two of our own study abroad programs, one in Rome and the other in Costa Rica. We will finish spending that money this year as the terms of the original gift dictated. The Ligon-Lamsam challenge now allows us to extend our support and our programs for years to come, but we need your help to do that. Alumni and friends from all over the country have begun making donations, large and small, to match the new gift. We hope you will too.
Happy holidays to all and best wishes for a healthy, joyous New Year.
75th Anniversary News
Registration Begins in January
Registration for the 75th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion will begin on January 10, 2011, at 10am, CST. Seating is limited, so register early to secure a place.
The cost of registration will be $125, which will cover the following:
Friday, March 25th: Check-in, Tours and Refreshments Check-in/Meet & Greet Refreshments Complimentary Gift Bag & Goodies Professor's Box Lunch Campus Tours Joynes Literary Room Readings Moonlit Campus Tour
Saturday, March 26th: Plan II in a Day Breakfast Voltaire's Coffee Reading Groups Model Classes (limited seating) Luncheon Honoring Former Directors Meeting of the Minds Discussion Physics Circus Farewell to Friends Refreshments Currently the schedule, including the participating professors is still tentative, but by the time registration opens, we should have all the details in place. For now, you can check out the tentative Schedule Page.
For the convenience of our participants, we have reserved a block of rooms at seven area hotels. These hotels--which vary in price range and location—can be found on the Hotel Page. The number of rooms is limited and varies by hotel. These rooms have been set aside on a courtesy basis and are not intended to accommodate all participants.
For any questions or concerns, you may call or email the Alumni Liaison, Phillip Dubov at [email protected] or 512.471.2960.
Plan II Alumni & Friends
Plan II is on the road! In November, we went to Washington D.C., where James McBride, '61 was our host, and Austin Ligon, '73 generously agreed to sponsor the catering for the event. In December, we made it out to sunny Los Angeles, where Alan Weil ‘70 and Karen Weil were our hosts and Terree Bowers, ‘76 helped sponsor the catering.
We will be out on the road again next year. Houston is our next stop, on Thursday, January 13th. Please join Plan II Director Dr. Michael Stoff and Government professor Sean Theriault for a brief talk and catered reception. Leslie Blanton, '76 and her husband Jack Blanton Jr. will be our hosts.
Dr. Stoff will be there to give you all the news about the upcoming 75th Celebration and Reunion. Professor Theriault will make a brief presentation and take questions.
Place: Houston Date: Thursday, January 13 Time: 5:30 to 7:30 pm Location: 3347 Chevy Chase Drive Houston, TX 77019
RSVP for the Houston Reception
Read more about Plan II Alumni & Friends
Alumni Profiles
Austin Ligon '73 University of Texas at Austin alumnus and CarMax founder Austin Ligon and his wife, Samornmitr “Pan” Lamsam, have committed $200,000 to the Plan II Honors program over the next four years to support students studying abroad and encourage other alumni to support the cause as well. “Studying abroad had a transformational impact on my life,” says Ligon, when the Ligon-Lamsam fund was first created. “It opened my eyes to the fact that my perspective on the world was just one tiny little portion of the ways in which the world could be viewed.” Read more about Ligon
Alumni Awards and Honors
Three of the four University of Texas alumni selected by the Texas Exes to receive the 2011 Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award are Plan II Honors alumni. The Texas Exes inaugurated the award in 1980 to recognize young alumni who are 40 or under and who are distinguished in their fields and have demonstrated a continuing interest in The University of Texas and the Texas Exes. Daron Roberts, BA ’01 (Plan II Honors & Government), is an assistant secretary coach for the Detroit Lions, Inc. Roberts also recently started a non-profit named 4th and 1, which balances football training with PSAT prep, professional development, creative workshops and life skills classe. (See special article in ESPN Magazine.) Roberts also earned a Master of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School (2004) and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School (2007).
Veronica Vargas Stidvent, BA ’96 (Plan II Honors), JD (Yale), is a lecturer and program director for the McCombs School of Business new Department of Business, Government and Society and program director of the Hispanic Leadership Initiative. She was formerly the director of the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Stidvent was the first director of the Center for Politics and Governance at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
Shaarik Zafar, B.A. ’97 (Plan II Honors), J.D. Law, ’00 is the deputy chief of the Countering Violent Extremism Group at the National Counterterrorism Center, where he plays a leading role in the U.S. Government’s efforts to deny international terrorists the next generation of recruits.
All four alumni will be honored at a ceremony to be held at the Alumni Center during the May, 2011 commencement. See the Texas Exes site for more about the Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award or to see a list of former recipients.
Read more about these Outstanding Young Texas Exes
Louise Epstein '80
Louise, founder of Charge-Off Clearinghouse and a former Austin City Council member, has been named entrepreneur-in-residence in the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship at the McCombs School of Business of The University of Texas at Austin.
"Louise continues a tradition we've established at the university to link our research expertise in innovation and creativity with real- world entrepreneurship practice," said Thomas W. Gilligan, dean of the McCombs School.
Read more about Epstein
Faculty Awards and Honors
James Vick
Mathematics professor James Vick was named the 2009/2010 Plan II Honors Chad Oliver Teaching Award Recipient. The Plan II Chad Oliver Teaching Award is presented each year, at the Plan II Commencement Convocation, to a Plan II professor for excellence in teaching. The recipient is chosen entirely by a committee of students on the basis of student nominations.
A professor of mathematics at UT Austin since 1970, Jim Vick served as the associate dean of academic and student affairs in Natural Sciences for twelve years and as the vice-president of student affairs for the University of Texas for sixteen years.
Read more about Vick (scroll down halfway on the Plan II commencement page)
Alumni Updates
Laura Anderson ‘09
Bananarchy, a food trailer that sells chocolate dipped bananas that are rolled in a variety of toppings, won Most Veggielicious honors at this weekend's Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival. Laura is a co-owner of Bananarchy.
Read the article here
Sofia Avila '03
Here is a wonderful article from the Austin American Statesman about Sofia and her sister Victoria. This is more testimony to the diverse opportunities that Plan II grads can and do create for themselves Read the article here David Djang '92 Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa 1992-94. Now a nuclear medicine physician. Married, with two great kids in Seattle, WA.
David Gracy II, ‘63 David has written a book: "The State Library and Archives of Texas: A History, 1835-1962". The Texas State Library and Archives Commission celebrated its centennial in 2009. To honor that milestone, former State Archivist David Gracy has taken a retrospective look at the agency's colorful and sometimes contentious history as Texas's official information provider and record keeper. In this book, he chronicles more than a century of efforts by dedicated librarians and archivists to deliver the essential, nonpartisan library and archival functions of government within a political environment in which legislators and governors usually agreed that libraries and archives were good and needed—but they disagreed about whatever expenditure was being proposed at the moment. David B. Gracy II is the Governor Bill Daniel Professor in Archival Enterprise, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin; a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association; and a Certified Archivist. Eighteen years after beginning his archival career in the Texas State Archives, Gracy returned as Texas State Archivist (1977–1986). Read more about Gracy
Mark Holt ‘72
As a writer (AKA JoeDonCarlosW) who masquerades as a runner/pediatrician, I want to be the 1st (and maybe last?) P2Dude to serve as an unofficial advocate for P2P (Plan 2 Press)--the best of the wurst that P2Dudes & Dudettes have to offer in TexLit.
I have always felt that there was--and never will be--a more luminous, gawky, phoney-and-yet-authentic-in-a-Franny-Jeevy-way time in my life than those goofball days I spent bumbling/stumbling and realing through P2. From Irwin Spear's very special tummy (scarey yet strangely comforting) to Wick Wadlington's attempt to make sense of Lear's power parenting in the peripheral midst of a somewhat Cheezily organic SDS rally on the hallowed crete of The Mall, we lived in a special time whose twisted, cynical yet naïve lifecycle is repeated each September. So here's to the P2P--unofficial, unapproved, unexpurgated, and definitively unfunded. The only rule to which there are no exceptions: if you Tweet, or ReTweet, you will dye a slow magenta-tinted hairy death at my all-time favorite salon of Beauty & Revlonic Excess--the Curl Up & Dye. Blog on.
Christine Hoff Kraemer ‘00
I'd like to announce the publication of a collection I co-edited, which emerged out of a conference my colleague A. David Lewis and I organized at Boston University in 2008.
I received my PhD in Religion and Literature from Boston University in 2008. Since then, I have been pursuing a multidimensional career path, including serving as an instructor and department head for Cherry Hill Seminary, which provides graduate-level distance education in ministry for contemporary Pagans.
Jon Lasser ‘93
I'm an associate professor at Texas State University-San Marcos in the School Psychology Program. I recently co-authored, with my wife Illysa Foster, Professional Ethics in Midwifery Practice (published in 2010 by Jones & Bartlett). We have two daughters (Sage, 13, and Jasmine, 18). Jasmine is a Plan II freshman!
Matt W. Turner '83 Just hit 50. Survived a wonderful mid-life crisis in which I finished a book I'd been working on. Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of our Common Natives was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009. It's been well received and that's been deeply satisfying.
By day I'm a market researcher and writer in the Communications Office of the McCombs School of Business at UT. In off-hours I'm a naturalist, free-lance writer, and Netflix junkie. I live with my partner and two imaginary shelties in south Austin. I continue to try to grapple with the 'big questions' about life that Plan II so encouraged, and have found, after all these years, that they are still the most fruitful.
Piraye Yurttas ‘01
I recently became engaged. I am getting married in New York City on Feb 5 and in Istanbul on March 19. I'd be happy to give you more information if you want to run an announcement. I have stayed in close touch with Trevor Baca, also a Plan II alum (cc'd here). Trevor and I have been engaged in a musico-scientific collaboration that has spanned two years, three states, and two continents. He is now a full time doctoral student in composition at Harvard University, after a decade long career in the tech start up world of Austin. When we began our collaboration, I was a decade long student of biology (doctoral at the time) and am now a biotech start up entrepreneur in New York City.
I moved back to NYC to found Celmatix Inc
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