The Trinity Perspective | Winter 2021

WINTER 2021

Brain Building Trinity students take on Alzheimer’s research

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Discover passions. Make friends. Serve others. Life on Trinity’s campus is bright, vibrant, and engaging, with countless ways to connect and explore. In classrooms and labs, across campus and residence halls, and around San Antonio, see how Tigers thrive in a challenging and supportive environment overflowing with opportunity to answer questions and question answers.

100+

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115+

18

clubs and organizations

varsity athletic teams

including Greek Life and culture clubs

9 men’s and 9 women’s

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• Biology • Business-Related: Accounting, Analytics, Business, and Finance • Computer Science • Engineering Science • Pre-Medical and Health Professions • Psychology

• Student Government Association • Student Programming Board • Trinity Volunteer Action Community • Trinity Diversity Connection • Trinity University Student Ambassadors • Greek Council

majors, minors, and grad programs

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The Trinity Perspective magazine offers a glimpse into the many ways Trinity University prepares students to lead lives of meaning and purpose. Trinity is known for its stimulating, resourceful, and collaborative environment, filled with students who want an education that instills confidence, inspires curiosity, and ignites change. Flip through these pages to see for yourself!

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THE OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS Trinity University One Trinity Place San Antonio, Texas 78212 admissions@trinity.edu www.trinity.edu/admissions 1-800-TRINITY

Trinity University is a private, residential, co-educational institution in the heart of vibrant, intercultural San Antonio.

Trinity offers its 2,500 undergraduate students a hands-on education rooted in the liberal arts and sciences that integrates conceptual and experiential learning, emphasizes undergraduate research, and develops strong leadership skills.

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above A Costa Rican rainforest right An amphibian found in Costa Rica

Drawn to Nature

Costa Rica program merges biology, art, and culture

by Jeremy Gerlach

This summer, Tate Taylor ’23, Caelia Marshall ’23, and Leah Troy ’23 all signed up for Trinity University biology professor David Ribble’s Costa Rican Ecology program, which takes students on a journey into the world of climate science, studying how temperature, moisture, and other elements affect the distributions and movements of mammals.

While Professor Ribble has been taking students to Costa Rica since 2017, this summer the group added a twist, bringing along Trinity English professor Gregory Hazleton and Trinity art and art history professor Elizabeth Ward to inject cultural and artistic components into the course.

“There are some subtleties between different species of mammals that I can recognize in a heartbeat, but I’m not sure I can explain them very well,” Professor Ribble says. “Thanks to Professor Ward’s art perspective, I have a better idea of how drawing can make you a better biologist.”

This year, the expedition focused on setting live traps, planting cameras to “trap”

animals, and observing small mammals at various locations around Costa Rican forests, coasts, and mountains. The group visited past, familiar locations, while adding new ones to the data collection. Professor Ribble notes that the group, for the first time ever, captured a jaguar on video.

Each yearly trip adds data on mammalian species to a larger set of information on how climate affects the preferred elevation of these populations. And doing this research is no easy feat: Students can hike miles each day amid tough terrain, intense heat, and long hours.

“This is intense,” Professor Ribble says, “but our students really came through well this year.”

Each day, Tate, Caelia, and Leah woke up at 5 a.m. to check camera traps, some of which required a trek up and down mountains, counted critters on film, ate breakfast, took tours, attended lectures, worked on presentations, and enjoyed a bit of down time, then went back out to reset the traps before dinner.

Tate, a biology major, says Professor Ward’s artistic influence was a welcome addition to this science-heavy schedule.

“The art aspect was really cool because we got to learn some observant methods, like using negative space shapes and drawing techniques,” he says. “And art is definitely not my major, so that was a challenge. But it was fun to learn and experiment.”

Leah, an environmental studies major, says she enjoyed Professor Hazleton’s indepth look into the people of Costa Rica.

“Culturally, it was interesting to go to a place different from everywhere else I had experienced. Meeting the people of Costa Rica, that was an experience I might not get again, so I’m thankful for that.”

Caelia, a neuroscience major, says she appreciated the little things about getting to meet new people, instead of just reading about them. “I’ve never been abroad before, so I found it super interesting to ask our tour guides random questions and get to know them one-on-one.” left Neuroscience major Caelia Marshall ’23 enjoyed the culture and people of Costa Rica. center Biology major Tate Taylor ’23 savor the chance to take an artistic approach to biology. right Environmental studies major Leah Troy ’23 appreciated the interdisciplinary nature to the expedition.

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Students in biology professor David Ribble’s Costa Rican Ecology class at Palo Verde National Park.

While the trip was a departure from previous courses in the cultural and artistic aspects, the science also provided some eye-opening—and timely—revelations about the environment.

“We expected the wet season, heavy rainfall, that kind of deal,” Tate says of Costa Rica. “But there was three weeks of drought. It was almost Texas-like dry heat the entire time we were there.”

As the data gathered around expeditions such as the Costa Rican trip continues to amass, Professor Ribble says he’ll have a stronger idea of just how much climate change is affecting the region. And to do that, he’ll continue relying on Trinity’s undergraduate researchers, strengthened by the very interdisciplinary methods unlocked on this 2021 expedition.

Tate says he’s become a better researcher by “knowing the aspects of art and culture that affect biology, because people interact with biology.”

“In Costa Rica, they care about their forests, and there are so many individual people trying to help us study and learn more about the environment and the land around us,” he says.

So, while Tate, Caelia, and Leah might not consider themselves artists, they’ve started considering the liberal arts in a whole new way.

“It’s easy to get pigeonholed into just focusing on science in some classes,” Leah says, “but programs like this help us broaden and enhance our view. The truth

is, whatever you end up doing in life—science or art—there’s more that goes into it than just the science or just the art. You have to be able to understand how your knowledge weaves together from different places, and how that makes it stronger.”

It’s easy to get pigeonholed into just focusing on science in some classes, but programs like this help us broaden and enhance our view.

– Leah Troy ’23

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Brain Building Trinity engineering laboratory takes on Alzheimer’s research

by Jeremy Gerlach

It is really cool to get out of the pre-med shell and have these experiences working with engineers that I might not have had otherwise.

– Carson Koch ’22

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If building central nervous system tissue from scratch sounds difficult, that’s because it is.

But that’s what engineering science professor Dany Munoz-Pinto, along with a lab of student researchers, are attempting to do. This is part of a vital effort into understanding key elements in the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which affects the central nervous system.

Patients with AD have a difficult time donating the type of brain tissue needed for research, which slows down the development of successful treatments. So, Professor Munoz-Pinto’s team is attempting to build their own artificial tissues.

“We are combining a bit of material science, chemistry, biology, and stem cells,” he says. This type of multifaceted work takes a multi-talented team of students.

Luckily for Professor Munoz-Pinto, Trinity University is the perfect place for this type of collaboration.

Meet Carson Koch ’22, a neuroscience major on the pre-med track, Anna Gonzalez ’23, an engineering science major, and Meagan McKee ’24, an undeclared (but aspiring) engineering science major.

Carson, Anna, and Meagan start their workdays by coming into the lab each morning, checking the plates where the cells are growing in vitro, then proceed through their daily tasks. The group changes the medium the cells are resting in, splits cells onto more plates, and encapsulates cells in hydrogels. The team has gained valuable experience using equipment such as a confocal microscope, which takes fluorescent images of the cells.

Using these images, the group performs an initial evaluation of the biological responses of central nervous system cells to different hydrogels.

Carson says this work is helping improve his adaptability. Working with two engineering science students, Anna and

above Meagan McKee ’24, an aspiring engineer, at work in Trinity’s Center for the Sciences and Innovation top right Anna Gonzalez ’23, an engineering science major, works in the Munoz-Pinto Lab. bottom right Carson Koch ’22, a neuroscience major on Trinity’s pre-med track, studies a research sample under a microscope.

Meagan, has given him a fresh perspective.

“It is really cool to get out of the pre-med shell and have these experiences working with engineers that I might not have had otherwise,” Carson says.

Anna says she is glad to push outside her comfort zone as well. “It’s been great hearing Carson tell us all about the neuroscience involved in this research, while Meagan and I have taken about one biology class,” she says. “This has been such a great experience for what I want to do in the future—research and development in biomedical engineering. That is the biggest thing for me.”

Being in-person—and hands-on—carries its own challenges, Meagan says, such as learning to do painstaking, technical work without making a mistake. “This experience has been so great, working in the biosafety cabinet, learning how to keep your plates sterile,” she says. “There is just so much hyperawareness you have to have of where your hands are, and that is super important for the work we are doing.”

All stress aside, Meagan says the experience of being in-person in Professor Munoz-Pinto’s lab is an incredibly supportive one. “Dr. Dany just gives us so much advice throughout the day,” she says.

“We joke about how many turns a conversation with him will take. He has definitely given us all the sales pitch on going to grad school, as well as so much general advice beyond ‘Do not touch that, you will contaminate your sample!’”

The Alzheimer’s Association and Alzheimer’s Texas have been supporting Professor Munoz-Pinto’s research program. In addition to this support, each member of Professor Munoz-Pinto’s team has received some form of scholarship or financial aid that has been a vital bulwark of their experience.

As a McNair Scholar, Anna received support for 10 weeks of summer research in the form of stipends and housing, as well as year-round academic support.

Carson is grateful for his Murchison scholarship. “Without that, I would not be

here at Trinity to do all this research over the summer,” he says. And as a Semmes Scholar, Meagan gets full tuition to study a STEM subject at Trinity.

Thanks to these sources of support, Professor Munoz-Pinto says Trinity is well positioned to assemble strong teams of student researchers in the future. “My laboratory has always been interdisciplinary, because the research we do needs to have elements of chemistry, of engineering, and a lot of biology,” he says.

Professor Munoz-Pinto points to the building itself that houses his laboratory, the Center for the Sciences and Innovation, as being “designed in a way to help all subjects collide. My office is close to my good friends in chemistry, biology, and neuroscience. I have students in the chemistry department and the neuroscience program that can contribute to engineering. It is always good to have a chemist, a biologist, or a neuroscience major look at the problems faced by an engineering student, and vice versa.”

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Professional Pipeline Thomás Peña ’22 secures not one, not two, but three internships with Dell Technologies

by Molly Bruni

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Thomás Peña ’22 can confidently say he worked with someone on every single continent—well, maybe not Antarctica—during his internship this past summer.

Thomás spent the summer interning with Dell Technologies, working on network optimization projects within the supply chain of the company. With his team of two other interns, he optimized the process of getting Dell products to customers, “whether it was individual boxes with one laptop or for businesses with thousands of laptops,” he says. His team would examine shipping rates for carriers in more than 40 countries, reoptimizing their thresholds based on the weight and dimensions of the boxes as well as the distance between the packing site and the customer.

graduate school. He then plans to return to Dell full-time after graduate school.

“I think it’s crazy how everything is in line already for the next two years,” Thomás says. “Now that I am two internships in and one in the future, I think it’s probably one of the greatest opportunities ever in terms of widening my experience and my perspective within my actual field that I want to work in. I’ve been able to use my skills within business analytics, data science, and finance, applying them to real-world problems within technology.”

I’ve been able to use my skills within business analytics, data science, and finance, applying them to realworld problems within technology.

– Thomás Peña ’22

With a double major in business analytics and technology (BAT) and finance and a minor in data science, Thomás has now completed two internships with Dell that bookend the beginning and end of the company’s supply chain. His first internship with Dell in Summer 2020 focused on procurement, which is toward the start of the supply chain.

Thomás will return after graduation for yet another summer internship, this time as a graduate student intern, with Dell before going to graduate school for his master’s degree in business analytics. Originally from Roma, Texas, Thomás is part of Trinity’s McNair Scholars program, which helps first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented college students prepare for

The Next Generation Thomás joined Dell as part of the Dell Scholars program, a highly selective program specific to sophomore students who self-identify as Black/African-American and/or Hispanic/Latinx. Thomás and his Trinity classmate were two out of just 12 students selected globally for the program’s inaugural cohort in 2019.

The Dell Scholars program begins developing students early in their academic career—between their sophomore and junior years—and gives them two summer internships instead of just one. If all goes well, the students are then offered a fulltime job at Dell after graduation. Throughout the process, students are also given scholarships, technology, and mentorship with C-suite executives at Dell.

Thomás has spent the past two years recruiting more Trinity students into the

Dell Scholars program. He saw his efforts pay off with the 2020 class of Dell Scholars, as three Trinity students were selected to be part of the program.

Thomás thinks back to when he looked into the Dell Scholars program himself.

“I had never known anyone who worked in tech. I don’t have any family who works in this industry at all,” Thomás says. “So, I didn’t see myself within this industry.”

But, he saw the contact information on the flier was for a recent alumnus, Starjjil Shelvin ’19, instead of an anonymous name or number. They began talking, and the rest is history. He now wants to give back and help other students the same way Starjjil helped him.

“I think my motivation for that was thinking about when I was a sophomore and my hesitancy initially,” Thomás says.

“Let me be the middleman—rather than a sophomore speaking to a professional, they can have that peer to peer discussion.”

A Reputation in Recruiting Starjjil is part of a team of young Trinity alumni who recruit Trinity students not only for the Dell Scholars program, but also for junior year internships and full-time post-graduate jobs. This team is just one of the benefits of Trinity being a core recruiting school. In 2019, Trinity was selected for Dell’s shortlist of “core partner” universities in its supply chain division. Core partner universities have dedicated teams of alumni within Dell who recruit specifically from their own school for internships and jobs that applicants, otherwise, would have to apply for externally.

“Your most recent Trinity graduates are helping create that pipeline from Trinity to Dell,” Thomás says. “That comes with the perks of being a recruiter school, that students have direct access to these opportunities.”

It also helps that Trinity students are sure bets when it comes to hiring.

“A lot of Trinity students have a reputation when they go to Dell,” Thomás says.

“Every Trinity student always does exceedingly well. I think it shows you the power of Trinity professors and the curriculum.”

As Thomás returns to Dell this coming summer, here’s hoping he can finally cross Antarctica off his list.

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Rising in the EAST Two recent grads selected for prestigious Critical Language Scholarship Program

by Madison Semro ’21

Recent Trinity University graduates Ryanna Chouman ’21 and Shannon York ’21 spent last summer participating in the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program in Chinese, a prestigious program that includes intense language study and opportunities in cultural exchange and diplomacy. The program selects only 600 graduate and undergraduate students per year, and Ryanna and Shannon are only the fifth and sixth Trinity students to receive the award.

Ryanna and Shannon spent every day of the program sharpening their Chinese skills in intensive language classes while also learning about Chinese culture. Due to the pandemic, Ryanna did her program remotely in Texas, but Shannon traveled to Taiwan to complete her program.

Ryanna, a Chinese language and international studies double major, was drawn to the CLS program after working with the U.S. Department of State beforehand through a virtual internship conducting research on international civil society.

“I really loved the environment I was involved with at the state department,” she shares. “I felt really appreciated for all my ideas I brought to them—it was very open. And I got to use my Chinese skills all the time.”

Ryanna says her experience abroad was foundational in her development and preparation for the CLS program. For five months, she studied in Beijing, China, speaking only Chinese for the duration of her stay.

“Every single day, I was in five to six hours of classes, and my peers and I were all under a 24/7 language pledge where we weren’t allowed to speak a word of English until we went home,” she says.

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Ryanna Chouman ’21 (center) studied abroad in Beijing, China.

“While that was challenging at times, it was really impactful for my Chinese language development and appreciation for Chinese culture, history, and politics.”

She hopes all Trinity students get to have that kind of study abroad experience.

“It will truly change your life, being able to understand a culture that is so different from your own and making genuine connections with friends around the world,” Ryanna explains. “It’s totally changed the direction of my life, and I witnessed it do the same for lots of Trinity students.”

Studying abroad is a requirement for all Chinese language majors, and it’s just one of the ways the East Asian Studies at Trinity (EAST) program prepares students for opportunities such as the CLS program.

Students can also conduct undergraduate research through EAST as well as take interdisciplinary classes that focus on East

Asian languages, cultures, and societies.

“It’s so often at Trinity that I feel this kind of connection between my classes, even if they have nothing to do with each other,” Ryanna says. “Sometimes there’s strange areas of overlap that you never would have expected, and I love to think about that when writing papers and preparing homework for class.”

If you ask the EAST program’s codirector, Stephen Field, the program’s large size does not make it any less personal and individualized for students. “When students join the program, they feel like they have a family, and they stay in this family from the very first course they take at Trinity until, well . . . forever,” he says.

Explore Campus

Visit gotu.us/visit to review all options and register.

We welcome all prospective students to attend a Trinity In Focus open house, one of our daily campus tours, or a virtual Trinity In Focus panel of faculty, staff, and students. These experiences provide an excellent opportunity to explore campus, learn about our community, and find out more about the admissions process and financial aid options.

Daily Visits: Most Mondays through Saturdays

Upcoming Trinity In Focus Events: Sat., Feb. 19, 2022 (virtual and in person) Mon., Feb. 21, 2022 (in person)

(including Spring Break!)

Dates and formats are subject to change based on current coronavirus safety guidelines.

Application Deadlines APPLICATION DEADLINE

DECISION NOTIFICATION

Financial Aid Application DEPOSIT DEADLINE

Early Decision I (binding)

Nov. 1

Dec. 1

Feb. 1

Early Action

Nov. 1

Dec. 15

May 1

Early Decision II (binding)

Feb. 1

Feb. 15

Mar. 1

Regular Decision

Feb. 1

Mar. 15

May 1

Apply now at

There’s still time to enjoy the rest of your senior year! Apply early, know early.

At Trinity University, applying Early Decision is recommended for students who, through diligent reflection and research, identify Trinity as their first choice and commit to enroll if admitted. To assist in your decision-making process, we encourage you to review the benefits, myths, and advice at gotu.us/earlydecision.

If you’re ready to take advantage of the expert faculty, beautiful campus, and first-rate resources and opportunities at Trinity, apply today via Early Decision II and receive your admissions decision and scholarship eligibility by Feb. 15.

This program is a binding agreement.

Students are ethically bound to apply Early Decision to only one school and will be expected to attend if offered admission.

trinity.edu/apply

To ensure you are considered for the full array of financial resources available, Trinity recommends submitting your financial aid forms by your corresponding admissions application deadline.

Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Trinity’s school code is 003647. studentaid.gov CSS Profile Trinity’s school code is 6831. cssprofile.collegeboard.org

Apply for Specialized Scholarships Trinity offers these scholarships that require separate applications: • Storer & Tillman Scholarship for Developing Christian Leaders: a need-based award for student servant-leaders (Dec. 1 deadline) • Baker Duncan Fine Arts Scholarships: awards for students with special talents in art, debate, and theater (Feb. 7 deadline) • Music Scholarships: awards for students interested in continuing involvement in vocal or instrumental music (Feb. 27 deadline)

Find more information at gotu.us/meritaid.

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9:1 student-to-

QUICK FACTS

faculty ratio 97% of faculty hold doctoral or terminal degrees

Private, residential, co-educational, undergraduate-focused Founded in 1869 6 minutes from San Antonio International Airport Located in America’s 7th largest city

6

minutes from downtown San Antonio

125 acre campus

located in a residential neighborhood

2,582

undergraduates from 49 states and 48 countries A D M IT T ED S TUDENT P RO FILE Fall 2021 Entry Term

3.75

31.8

1407

3.6–4.0 grade average

30–34 mid 50%

1340–1480 mid 50%

average GPA

Follow us on social media! @trinityuniversity

@Trinity_U and @TrinityU_Admiss

/trinityuniversity

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www.trinity.edu

average ACT

average SAT