The Trinity Perspective | Summer 2019

SUMMER 2019

A Rising Star

Trinity student overcomes family tragedy and lands job with Dell

150 Years of Showing Our Stripes For 150 years, Trinity University has been redefining the liberal arts, giving students the chance to find more than just strong career possibilities. Tigers, fueled by an enterprising spirit, set out to discover how their true calling can impact the entire world.

Rewind a century-and-a-half to meet brothers Robert and Stephen Munger, Trinity entrepreneurship’s pair of patron saints. The Munger boys were thrown a curveball early on in their lives, as their father became incapacitated during their college days. Their family needed them to come home and care for the farm and cotton gin operation.

Robert and Stephen used the skills from their school days to revolutionize the cotton industry.

They created a new cotton gin machine that required no manual labor. Ridiculed for this idea by their neighbors, the pair spent decades pitching their idea to cotton companies to no avail. So, they started their own company in 1885, which would eventually become the Continental Gin company, the largest cotton gin manufacturing operation in the U.S. Flash forward to the present day, and Trinity’s enterprising spirit has carried forward in this same daring fashion. Entrepreneurs have created billiondollar snack food companies, built powerful data models to improve international agriculture, and driven San Antonio’s booming tech and startup scene.

Our alumni become mayors, U.S. senators, and international leaders. Tigers are changing the face of healthcare, law, engineering, entertainment, computer science, and just about every career field you can imagine. And regardless of of the path they choose, all Trinity alumni share one outcome: They become part of a community of lifelong learners.

The Trinity Perspective magazine is produced quarterly. Through these pages, explore the many facets of life at Trinity University and get to know the students, faculty, and staff who call Trinity home. With the vibrant city of San Antonio as a backdrop, discover the many benefits and opportunities our community has to offer. We invite you to read these pages to explore some of the many ways we make a great education possible, then visit our 125-acre campus to see it firsthand.

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ABOUT TRINITY Trinity University is a private, residential, co-educational institution with an undergraduate focus. So, what does that mean? It means that we focus on YOU—connecting you with the best possible resources, caring faculty members, committed staff members, and other world-class students destined to have a positive impact in our community.

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A New KIND of Entrepreneur KIND CEO Daniel Lubetzky ’90 uses market forces for good

By Jeremy Gerlach

Daniel Lubetzky ’90 doesn’t have time for labels.

Businessman, pacifist, innovator. All true, but incomplete parts of the whole story.

Write off Lubetzky, founder and CEO of $3-billion giant KIND Snacks, as just another billionaire wading into political speech, and you’ll miss his lifetime of dedicated social activism. Dismiss him as an idealistic college student who wrote his senior thesis on solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, and you’ll forget his Jewish-Mexican family has endured both the Holocaust and multiple migrations across the globe.

And don’t get him started on labels like “public” and “private” sectors.

“My brain doesn’t function in silos of, ‘Can I do this as a business, or can I do this in a nonprofit world?’” Lubetzky says. “I think about the problem that I’m trying to solve, and then my brain starts tinkering with, ‘How can we do this in a creative way?”’

At Trinity, Lubetzky learned to do more than use market forces: He learned to use them for good. And so if you’re going to call him anything, call him a social entrepreneur.

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One of the things that I benefited from the most while I was at Trinity was combining two seemingly different topics and then finding ways to create value by deploying business forces for social good.

A lifetime of kindness This philosophy isn’t a gimmick. Nor is KIND the only way Lubetzky makes a global impact: He’s lived his entire life figuring out ways to change the world for the better.

Born in Mexico City in 1968 as the JewishMexican son of a Holocaust survivor, Lubetzky immigrated to San Antonio at age 16 and enrolled in Trinity University a few years later. “[My dad] was a Holocaust survivor, and a man who, in spite all of the horrible stuff that he went through as a kid, he remembered not just those horrors, but also the kindness that helped him survive through those days, and how he was liberated from a concentration camp. He lived the rest of his life trying to make people’s lives kind,” Lubetzky says.

At Trinity, Lubetzky wanted to find a way to realize his father’s dream of a kinder world. He started with an unlikely pairing of academic interests: economics and international relations. Lubetzky combined the study of economics and business

with a passion he had towards resolving the ArabIsraeli conflict. Fueled by provocative questions and personal attention from his professors, as well as a liberal arts curriculum that pushed him to think outside of conventional political structures, Lubetzky started to think, “How can business have a positive role in bringing neighbors in a conflict region to work together, and to prevent conflict and make money rather than war?’”

“And the theory that I conceived while I was here at Trinity is that, as people interact with one another in the business world, under the right conditions, it can shatter cultural stereotypes,” Lubetzky says, “and it can help people humanize one another.”

Actions speak louder Like many Trinity graduates, Lubetzky says he was eager to test his theory in the real world. He ultimately founded PeaceWorks, a company that aimed to unite Egyptian, Palestinian, and Israeli food producers as part of the same assembly chain for various products. The business

became a success and remains in operation to this day. He has also gone on to launch other civic-minded organizations and businesses, such as the OneVoice movement, which aims to promote dialogue between moderate Israeli and Palestinian influencers, and Empatico, a free video conferencing platform designed to connect classrooms around the world for students ages 7—11.

And with his hands in so many positive initiatives, this is precisely why Lubetzky doesn’t like labels like “nonprofit” or “corporate activism.”

“Sometimes, your creativity becomes a business with a social purpose. Or, sometimes, there is no market mechanism or product or service to sell, and it becomes a nonprofit,” Lubetzky says. “But in the days of social entrepreneurship, sometimes it’s kind of like a hybrid in the middle. Using business to advance social good, if you can figure out a way to use market forces and tackle a social challenge, is really valuable.”

Building future entrepreneurs And Trinity, Lubetzky says, is the perfect spot for entrepreneurs to find their place in this world.

“One of the things that I benefited from the most while I was at Trinity was combining two seemingly different topics and then finding ways to create value by deploying business forces for social good,” Lubetzky notes. “And I think any time you do interdisciplinary studies, any time you combine things that people are not expecting to combine, students are going to have the opportunity to connect the dots and create things that haven’t existed before.”

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Being a first-generation student, this was all new.

To be honest, it was kind of scary.

A Rising Star Trinity first-generation student-athlete overcomes family tragedy and lands job with Dell

By Nicolette Good ’07

Starjjil Renale Shelvin ’19 goes by “Star” around Trinity’s campus—a stand-out name, fitting for a stand-out senior. Hit by family tragedy as a teen, the student-athlete leaned on his ambition, work ethic, and drive toward excellence to make it through.

Because of that determination, Shelvin is walking into a job at Dell headquarters in May after graduation.

When he was just 15 years old, Shelvin unexpectedly lost his father to pneumonia. The tragedy set him, his mother, and his two older siblings on a difficult path.

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Above: Shelvin works in an engineering lab on Trinity’s campus.

Left: During a Trinity football team meeting, Dell vice president Mike Owens surprised Shelvin with a fulltime job offer.

“It took a big toll on me and my family,” says Shelvin, from Katy, Texas, about his father’s passing.

Shelvin’s father was the family’s sole provider, and the abrupt financial instability and housing insecurity necessitated his family split up to stay afloat. Shelvin moved in with another family to finish his high school diploma. To help make ends meet, he took on whatever retail and service jobs he could while attending Morton Ranch High School, all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA and lettering in football and wrestling.

“I kept pushing through—I wanted to do whatever I could and make my dad proud,” Shelvin says.

That grit and perseverance was apparent when Trinity head football coach Jerheme Urban ‘03 visited Shelvin’s high school on a recruiting visit.

Shelvin’s academic and athletic performance made him an attractive recruit to many colleges: His perfect GPA was coupled with four years of playing center on the football team and finishing

second in his weight class in wrestling at the 2015 state championships. But Shelvin knew at Trinity he’d get a stellar education and could pursue engineering science, while still playing really great football. Shelvin was a defensive tackle on Trinity’s team.

Still, stepping foot onto a university campus was not going to be a breeze.

“Being a first-generation student, this was all new,” Shelvin says. “To be honest, it was kind of scary. You can’t go ask your mom, or your dad, or your grandpa—they haven’t done it before.”

In February 2018, Shelvin attended a career fair on campus armed with a handful of resumes, thinking he might hand them out to engineering firms. That’s why he initially passed by a table for Dell, the multinational computer company.

“I passed up the Dell Technologies table at first, thinking it was all computer science-specific, but that’s not the case,” he says. “There are so many areas you can delve into.”

One of the individuals at Dell’s table that day

was Mike Owens, the vice president of digital transformation for Dell’s global operations team.

As an engineering science major, Shelvin was not an obvious recruit for Dell’s supply chain organization. Supply chain new hires at the multinational computer technology company tend to study business, supply chain, analytics, or related subjects.

What he did have, though, was integrity, drive, and the ability to get results. Owens recognized this in Shelvin and invited him to participate in a summer internship in 2018, where, of course, his star shone brightly. So bright, in fact, Owens decided to offer Shelvin a full-time job. He surprised Shelvin in front of his football teammates with the good news.

Shelvin will join Dell as a sustainable sourcing lead following commencement in May 2019. When asked what excites him most about his upcoming prospects, Shelvin continues to dream big.

“I want to make history in my family,” he says.

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#2

in Texas for highest median salary for graduating students

89%

of graduates employed or accepted to graduate school

#2

in Texas for undergraduates who go on to earn Ph.D.s

Ahead of the Curve

Our graduates leave our red-brick campus eager to make their mark in the world, fueled by their hands-on experiences in the classroom. Meet some of our young alumni who are already showing their stripes.

Lara Bahr ’10 POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJOR

Earlier this year, Lara Bahr got to hold an Oscar in her hands and know she was part of the process of making the award a reality. She is an entertainment lawyer at Sony Pictures Animation, part of the team that worked on the Academy Awardwinning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

A student-athlete at Trinity and a world traveler, Bahr was initially interested in sports agency work and shifted her focus once she realized how closely sports and entertainment aligned. “The law is similar in most parts of the world. It brings people together in that way,” she says. “I wanted to take my passion for all things global and transform it into legal work.”

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Brandon Smalls ’17 NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY DOUBLE MAJOR

For the last year, Brandon Smalls has worked with the College Advising Corps as an adviser, helping underserved high school students in San Antonio prepare for college. “My students are my favorite part of this job,” he says cheerfully. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s a special kind of feeling you get when you watch someone become a stronger self-advocate for him/herself and you know you had a part to play in that.” Recently, Smalls helped one student raise his SAT score by 310 points in under three months.

Kristin Raja ’10 ENGINEERING SCIENCE MAJOR

Kristin Raja is taking her commitment to leadership to the ends of the earth— literally—after being chosen as a Homeward Bound participant. Raja is a corps officer

Chris Garagiola ’15 C O M M U N I C AT I O N M A J O R

for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Chris Garagiola was driving cross-country when he got the call that

Administration, serving at the Channel

would propel his career forward: He was being offered the job as the

Islands National Marine Sanctuary. She was

lead broadcaster of the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the Double-A affiliate

recently selected for a prestigious year-long

of the Minnesota Twins. After broadcasting Trinity football games

program that equips women in science,

with a single video camera, Garagiola became the first announcer

engineering, mathematics, and medicine

for Trinity’s Tiger Network live streaming service, which broadcasts

with leadership skills. After meeting in

athletics and special events to a worldwide audience. After Trinity,

Argentina, the 100 women in this year’s

he interned with the Cincinnati Reds and the Melbourne Aces—and

program, including Raja, will travel to

now, he is the voice of the Wahoos minor league baseball team,

Antarctica at the end of 2019.

broadcasting all 140 games of the season.

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(Wo)man to (Wo)man Coverage Mackenzie Knoop ’15 and Megan Julian ’13 manage social media for competing NFL teams

By Molly Bruni

Their teams may face off against each other, but it’s all smiles between Megan Julian ’13 and Mackenzie Knoop ’15. Both women help run social media for two NFL teams: Julian is the social media coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers, while Knoop is the social media producer for the New England Patriots.

Knoop explains that the two positions complement each other. The social media coordinator and producer brainstorm ideas together, then the producer creates the content, such as hype videos, while the coordinator strategizes the content’s rollout on social platforms. So while the women may not be on the same sideline, they have a strong understanding of each others’ roles and can offer each other support.

Knoop and Julian actually used to root for the same team—the San Antonio Spurs, where together they coordinated social media for the basketball team. And the similarities don’t end there: Both women graduated from Trinity with majors in communication and minors in sport management, which Knoop says perfectly set them up for careers in sports communication.

And, Knoop explains further, it wasn’t only their degree programs that affected their career trajectories: The people behind the programs made all the difference. During her sophomore year, Knoop suffered an injury that put an end to her tennis career. Feeling lost and floundering for a purpose, she approached Jacob Tingle ’95, director of Trinity’s sport management program,

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for advice. Tingle pointed her in the direction of communication and sport management, a combination he thought would work well for her.

He was right.

“He’s the reason I work in the sports industry,” Knoop says. “The advice he always gave me was to go out and do things, because it’s a process of elimination, finding out what you love to do.”

So Knoop began exploring the sports industry through hands-on experiences both in the classroom and the real world. She took a summer course with Jennifer Henderson where she created a real-life marketing plan for the Spurs, which Knoop savored because “it wasn’t just sitting in a classroom.” And Tingle helped Knoop secure her first internship, where she worked with San Antonio Sports. That internship, she says, taught her that she “learned she loved to work in sports.” From there came a slew of other sports-related internships, including a

Having a group of people like Dr. Henderson and Dr. Tingle, who were able to get to know me and help me figure out what else I loved outside of tennis, sculpted my professional career and helped me become a better person.

“life-changing” public relations internship with Spurs Sports and Entertainment under Tom James ’90, which eventually led to the job with the basketball team post-graduation.

“Not being able to play tennis anymore was really hard for me when it had been my life for so long, and having a group of people like Dr. Henderson and Dr. Tingle, who were able to get to know me and help me figure out what else I loved outside of tennis, sculpted my professional career and helped me become a better person,” Knoop says. “Trinity, for me, was just about the people and the experiences.”

Interested in becoming a Tiger?

Apply Early!

Applications open for first-year students applying for the Class of 2024 on JULY 1, 2019 via Apply Texas or the Coalition Application and on AUGUST 1, 2019 via the Common Application.

Visit Campus It’s important to take the time to visit the college campuses you’re interested in. There’s no better way to get a true sense of what it’s like to be a student. We encourage you and your family to visit Trinity University—meet the people, try the food, see the sights, and explore our beautiful campus and sunny San Antonio.

The Office of Admissions is open Monday through Friday (excluding major holidays) for tours and information sessions. We’re also open most Saturdays during the academic year and have some special visit programs throughout the year. Register for all visits at gotu.us/visit.

The College Search An experience for the whole family The college search is a fun and exciting time for students and families. Students get to celebrate their academic and

Open House Events:

Summer Visits:

Trinity In Focus programs are open to all prospective students and their families.

This is an excellent way to discover the many opportunities available to students who study and live at Trinity University.

Campus Tours and Info Sessions: 10 a.m. to Noon.

Monday–Friday beginning May 1, 2019

UPCOMING DATES: June 29, 2019 September 21, 2019 November 16, 2019 January 25, 2020

co-curricular accomplishments and reflect upon their experiences as they chart their journeys forward. Here at Trinity, we appreciate the significance of the college search experience, and it centers on you.

Throughout this process, we encourage future Tigers to discover new interests, grow existing passions, and become empowered citizens of the global community.

Seek support from your friends, family, and parents along the way. They can help you with your essays, be another set of eyes, ears, or taste buds on a campus visit, and guide you through the tough decisions that come along with the many opportunities in your future.

Resources for parents and families are available online at gotu.us/parents.

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9:1 student-to-

QUICK FACTS

faculty ratio 98% 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

2,480

125 acre campus

located in a residential neighborhood

from downtown San Antonio 6 minutes

Follow us on social media!

LeeRoyTheTiger @TrinityU

@Trinity_U or @TrinityU_Admiss

/trinityuniversity

/trinityuniversity

www.trinity.edu

undergraduates from 47 states and 63 countries 8% international students A D M IT T ED S TUDENT P RO FILE

3.67 average GPA

A- grade average

Fall 2018 Entry Term

30.6

1370

29-33 mid 50%

1300 -1440 mid 50%

average ACT

average SAT