The Trinity Perspective | Winter 2017

WINTER 2017

Helping Hands Tigers aid communities in need

When I was working at Trinity, I discovered my passion in life, which is public service. I entered a pretty naïve 18-year-old, and I left inspired about the world with a good sense of ethics, integrity, and the intellect required to do well. n SAN ANTONIO MAYOR RON NIRENBERG ’99

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. Oh, and we may throw in our favorite restaurants around town for you to check out while visiting our 125-acre campus.

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Bright Ideas

By Carlos Anchondo ’14

Trinity students spend Alternative Spring Break 2017 replacing green lightbulbs, painting walls, and spreading gravel in New Orleans An almost inaudible squeak escapes the joints of a step ladder as its rubber feet sink into a plush living-room carpet. Natural light does its best to permeate the half-closed blinds.

“We’re replacing these bulbs, right?” asks Susan Griffith ’19, climbing the steps. With three methodical twists, she unscrews the old bulb, replacing it with a new, energy-efficient model.

This was Griffith in mid-March, volunteering in New Orleans as a participant on Trinity’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip. On their first service day, the 12-person group joined local nonprofit Green Light New Orleans to install compact fluorescent bulbs in area homes, the start of 40 volunteer hours logged over the five-day visit.

This was the first taste of service for Trinity ASB in the Crescent City, where the diverse

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group of students came to explore the theme of environmental justice. Site leaders Austen Hall ’16 and Pooja Bollampally ’17 organized the five service days to investigate this topic. Students also explored the French Quarter, the Garden District, and the Uptown/Carrollton neighborhood on the sixth day after their service concluded.

Amani Canada ’20, an environmental studies major from Houston, applied for ASB because she missed her previous volunteering experiences with groups like the YMCA. With Green Light New Orleans, Canada liked how close the organization was to the people it served and how the nonprofit used in-person visits to educate about climate change. Canada shared this observation at one of the daily reflections Hall and Bollampally facilitated.

Reflections were a core component of the trip

due to Scott Brown, Trinity’s assistant director of experiential learning, who oversees ASB programming and service learning opportunities.

“Through reflection, I wanted students to become more confident in expressing themselves and their ideas while also listening to others’ perspectives and life experiences,” says Brown. “Ultimately, I wanted students to gain a deeper awareness of themselves, each other, and their ability to be effective leaders in their communities.”

In addition to Green Light New Orleans, ASB also served with The Green Project, Groundwork New Orleans, and the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development.

Bollampally and Hall selected each of these nonprofits and were responsible for the coordination of each visit.

Service is supposed to be work. There are parts that can be fun, like the sense of camaraderie and accomplishment, but what’s important is how service benefits a community.

Hall, a recent AmeriCorps Public Ally who was partnered with Trinity, says he learned adaptability and group management skills as a trip leader. Like Bollampally, he stresses the importance of daily service reflections, an “intentional” step taken to ensure that the trip was a learning experience.

“Students were able to bring theoretical knowledge from the classroom and connect that to the experiences they were having in New Orleans,” says Hall. “We had conversations about the social and economic dynamics of the city and about confronting our own privilege.”

Griffith, a history major from Concord, N.H., participated in ASB “to gain an appreciation of parts of society separate” from her life. Griffith says service changes your perspective on a place, how you interact with it, and even the neighborhoods you visit.

“Service is supposed to be work,” says Griffith.

“There are parts that can be fun, like the sense of camaraderie and accomplishment, but what’s important is how service benefits a community.”

Each evening, ASB participants shared their perspectives on service at dinners hosted by Trinity alumni living in New Orleans. Steven Rueb ’88, vice president and director of government and municipal trading at Dorsey & Company, was proud to welcome students into his Uptown home. Rueb and his wife, Tisha, prepared a New Orleans-style feast complete with crawfish, shrimp, a Doberge cake, and other delicacies.

Rueb, an economics major, called ASB a “wonderful opportunity” for Trinity students to “see the fabric of New Orleans in a more real way.”

“Trips like this are a tribute to the type of academic institution that Trinity is and the students that it attracts,” says Rueb. “These

are individuals willing to stretch themselves and look for opportunities to experience something different.”

Trinity has a long history of Alternative Spring Break trips, sending students to locations such as Georgia and Dominica. Trips are designed to be student-led and affordable, with the trip costs subsidized through alumni participation and free lodging. See footage of the 2017 trip at gotu.us/nola.

This fall, Pooja Bollampally ’17 began a master’s program in public health with a concentration in social and behavioral sciences at Yale University. Also this fall at Yale, Austen Hall ’16 began a Ph.D. in philosophy.

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Called To Serve Trinity Tennis clears debris, while fellow Tiger athletes pitch in after Hurricane Harvey

By James Hill ’76 and Jeremy Gerlach

When Hurricane Harvey ripped through the Texas coast in late August 2017, leaving a trail of death, devastation, and debris, Trinity University Men’s Tennis put down their racquets and put on their work gloves.

Sixteen members of the tennis program, led by head coach Russell McMindes ’02, piled into a van in early September and headed 165 miles from campus to Aransas Pass, a coastal community outside Corpus Christi, Texas. Residents of Aransas Pass, like Houston and many other Texas and southeastern U.S. locales, were hammered by the Category 4 hurricane and needed help clearing tree branches, broken signs, and massive amounts of debris from their yards.

The trip hit home for tennis players Lars Wiik ’21 and Clark Rivers ’18, who both hail from the

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Houston area, where several of their friends have been affected by flooding and storm damage.

“When I heard we were going to Aransas Pass to help, I got pretty excited,” Rivers says.

“I’m from Houston, so I’ve been through a few hurricanes myself—I know how much people need help when these disasters happen, just because of the devastation that occurs.”

At Aransas Pass, the scope of the disaster became clear.

“All these street signs, street lights, were just torn up from the ground,” Rivers recalls. “Trees uprooted, roofs caved in, people had no power,

The trip itself wasn’t about us.

It was trying to offer aid and assistance to the residents who were desperate. It was an eye-opening experience.

no electricity, no water—it was devastating.”

“The damage was so bad, a lot of the people couldn’t even walk through their yards,” Wiik adds.

So, the team got to work. Under careful supervision from McMindes and other volunteers, the group chainsawed trees apart and hauled heavy trunks and branches off dozens of properties. At a local church, the team unpacked truckloads of supplies donated by team members and other Trinity and San Antonio community members.

The team does a service project every year, McMindes says, and already had a service event scheduled for that weekend. When Harvey hit, the team decided to shift focus to the disaster recovery.

“The trip itself wasn’t about us,” McMindes

says. “It was trying to offer aid and assistance to the residents who were desperate. It was an eye-opening experience. There were swarms of mosquitoes. As hard as that day was from a labor standpoint, we got to go home. Those residents are living in it.”

Assistant men’s tennis coach George Rivers is from Tomball, Texas, located in the Houston metropolitan area. Over the years, he has “ridden out” some hurricanes, and is aware how much people depend on each other in those circumstances.

“I knew the position those people were in, and how frustrating it is,” George Rivers says.

“There was a lot of damage, and there is only so much you can do by yourself.”

Trinity’s men’s tennis team wasn’t alone in

the hurricane recovery effort. Many other Trinity coaches and students found ways to help the areas affected by the hurricane.

Quin Patterson, Trinity’s Athletics equipment manager, organized a donation of sports apparel headed for the University of Houston. Head women’s basketball coach Cameron Hill ’99 and assistant men’s basketball coach Ross Burt ’06 provided shirts and sweats to Patterson, with other coaches contributing, too.

“It was a total team effort,” Patterson said.

“Obviously, the people in Houston needed the items more than we did.”

While the Trinity women’s golf team devised a creative fundraising drive titled “Holeing Out for Harvey,” Tiger Volleyball collected donations on behalf of the Texas Diaper Bank and San Antonio Food Bank at a tournament in September.

The team gathered diapers, baby formula, shampoo, and non-perishable food items outside of Calgaard Gymnasium, and inside, the team raised $500 for the Greater Houston Community Foundation, according to assistant volleyball coach Aly Lilley ’09.

Lilley hails from Beach City, Texas, near Baytown, on the Gulf Coast. She knew hundreds of people who were affected by the hurricane directly and was proud of Trinity’s student-athlete community.

“Our student-athletes were willing to move things around in their schedules to help,” Lilley says. “We put the fundraiser together in a 24-hour period. Our athletes step up when they need to, and work hard to support communities related, and not related, to our student body.”

The group effort across Trinity Athletics didn’t surprise Wiik and Clark Rivers.

“We’re a family here at Trinity,” Wiik says. “All the guys, Coach McMindes, they kept making sure I was doing okay, asking about my family.”

Rivers says he has no doubt that other Trinity teams would provide the same level of support, should another disaster occur in a different area.

“Everyone here is super tight,” Rivers says. “When stuff like this happens, we grind it out together.”

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Acevedo demonstrates the mechanics behind the Butterfly Project, a VR experience that examines the viewpoint of immigrants inside a U.S. immigration detention center.

Another View

Andrea Acevedo ’18 can walk through walls—virtually speaking.

Acevedo has created a virtual reality (VR) space called the Butterfly Project that allows viewers to explore inside a replica U.S. immigration detention center,

Trinity student creates virtual reality experience exploring U.S. immigration detention centers

By Katie Middleton ’18

putting them directly in the shoes of tens of thousands of migrants being held by America’s immigration system.

“Immigration is a hotly debated and complicated political topic,” Acevedo says.

“When discussed, the narrative is told by politicians or non-immigrants, but the actual first-hand difficulties that migrants face are not always talked about.”

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Acevedo and communication professor Aaron Delwiche partnered to create the VR experience. Acevedo’s creation (below) takes viewers inside a “dog pound” holding cell for immigrants in custody.

A VR user gets a glimpse of a U.S. immigration detention center holding cell, filled with thermal blankets used by immigrants.

Acevedo partnered with communication professor Aaron Delwiche to create the VR experience, where viewers participate in an immersive simulation of immigration detention centers, revealing the difficulties and conditions that refugees encounter when entering the U.S. That is only part of the issue Acevedo and Delwiche are exploring.

“When immigrant stories are told, they tend to present audiences with the role of a far detached observer rather than a participant,” Delwiche says. “We are hoping to change this.”

Funded by the Mellon Initiative, the Butterfly

Project uses the virtual reality platform High Fidelity to create virtual environments. These environments elevate the connection to the story by giving viewers an opportunity to step into a space and experience a location found inside an immigrant detention center. Modeling off images of real detention centers such as the South Texas Family Residential Center, Acevedo and Delwiche have created 3D virtual replicas of rooms in an existing U.S. immigration detention centers. The rooms are interactive areas where viewers can choose to walk inside holding cells, read and listen to first hand accounts from former detainees of the detention centers, and pick up items.

One of the rooms created for this project was a small detention cell inside of the Eloy Detention Facility in Eloy, Ariz. “We found approximate dimensions of the rooms using objects, such as the bed, and people that were in the picture, as measuring tools and recreated an approximate 3D model,” Acevedo says. Before viewers can step inside, they are presented with a virtual board that shows them the 2D reference image and educational text with information on the location.

“I hope the 3D models serve as a supplement to traditional writing and journalism,” Acevedo says of the project.

A communication major with experience in gaming design, Acevedo is excited by the opportunity to use virtual reality software in a non-gaming context. “This summer has consisted of learning how to use programs I was unfamiliar with, like Maya, Substance Painter, and High Fidelity, and combine that with existing knowledge I acquired from my web design, graphic design, and game design classes,” Acevedo says. “It was very satisfying to see it all come together.”

This project evolved throughout the summer, and Acevedo hopes to continue building the narrative this year. In time, she wants her VR program to feature more than just a chance to tour a building.

“A big goal of mine is to tell the entirety of one person’s journey and give people the opportunity to follow that person and learn about how and why they undertook this journey,” she says. “There is so much more to the story.”

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You really understand how important this type of work is. These people, they can’t wait any longer—and we can help them right now.

Taking the Plunge Service event connects Trinity students with San Antonio residents who need home repairs

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By Jeremy Gerlach

Christiana Ellard ’19 remembers having a few nerves while she was perched on a rooftop full of holes.

As a Trinity first-year, she’d barely moved into her dorm room before heading out to the San Antonio Plunge, a five-day service event that whisked her and about 60 fellow students off campus and into the San Antonio community.

There, she’d be tasked with piecing a local resident’s roof back together, even though Ellard had never done any home repairs, didn’t know a soul on campus, and had no idea what she was getting into.

“I was nervous about the unknown,” Ellard recalls of her first Plunge in the summer of 2015.

“But once I got to meet my peers and the residents we were helping, those nerves didn’t last long.”

Each year, Tigers are split into smaller groups on the Plunge—each group, a mix of of firstyears, sophomores, juniors, and seniors—repairs

a different house. The event is sponsored by Trinity’s Chapel Fellowships.

“This trip is a phenomenal opportunity for first-years to build a solid foundation before beginning their college experience,” Ellard says.

“You find yourself becoming a leader, too.”

First-year Plunge participant Dani Moses ’21 found her independence on the Plunge.

“Trinity’s campus can feel sheltering—and that’s a good thing—but taking the Plunge means literally plunging into the community,” Moses says.

Moses’ group replaced drywall, flooring, and cabinetry for a grandmother whose house was missing segments of walls, ceilings, and floors.

The woman even had to fight off rats and other pests climbing through these holes each night.

“You really understand how important this type of work is,” Moses says. “These people, they can’t wait any longer—and we can help them right now.”

As future waves of Tigers—from first-years like Moses to juniors like Ellard—decide whether to take the Plunge, Ellard notes that the off-campus service event echoes what happens to students during their four years at Trinity.

“Everyone might begin by taking the Plunge as strangers,” Ellard says, “but we leave as a family.”

Admitted Tigers can apply in May to be a part of the Plunge at gotu.us/theplunge.

Visit Campus Trinity In Focus open house programs are open to all prospective students and their families. This program is an excellent opportunity to take a comprehensive look at our campus and learn about our curriculum, application process, and financial aid options.

Financial Aid Application Trinity recommends submitting your financial aid forms by your corresponding admission deadline. To be considered for the full array of resources available, submit the following applications by

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017 Saturday, Jan. 20, 2018 More info: gotu.us/tif

Feb. 15, 2018.

Trinity Admission Application Deadlines APPLICATION DEADLINE

N OT I F I C A T I O N DEADLINE

DEPOSIT DEADLINE

Early Decision II (binding)

Jan. 1

Feb. 1

Mar. 1

Early Action II

Jan. 1

Mid-Feb.

May 1

Regular Decision

Feb. 1

Early April

Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)

Trinity’s school code is 003647.

CSS PROFILE Trinity’s school code is 6831.

May 1

OTHER SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION DEADLINES: Storer & Tillman Scholarship for Developing Christian Leaders

Semmes Distinguished Scholars in Science Award

Fine Arts Awards

Our most prestigious scholarship, this award is for students who

Trinity’s fine arts departments

intend to major in a STEM field and provides a full-tuition scholarship

offer merit awards for students who

This scholarship is open to students

and a $5,000 research stipend to engage in undergraduate research.

demonstrate exceptional talent in

who demonstrate financial need and

Submit your application for admission and the application for the

art, music, theatre, or debate. Each

a commitment to developing their

Semmes Distinguished Scholars in Science Award. Students must

department has their own audition,

leadership skills in the context of

be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and apply by our Jan. 1 Early

portfolio, interview, and application

their faith. An application is required.

Decision II or Early Action II to be considered for this award.

requirements.

APPLICATIONS DUE: JAN. 1 More info: gotu.us/storertillman

APPLICATIONS DUE: JAN. 1 More info: gotu.us/semmes

APPLICATION DEADLINES VARY More info: gotu.us/fineartsawards

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9:1 student-to-

QUICK FACTS

faculty ratio

125 acre campus

located in a residential neighborhood

97% hold doctoral or terminal degrees

Private, residential, co-educational, undergraduate-focused Founded in 1869 10 minutes from San Antonio International Airport Located in America’s 7th largest city

2,430 undergraduates

from 48 states and 65 countries 10% international students

77% live on

A D M I T T E D S T U DE N T P ROF IL E Fall 2017 Entry Term

campus

7

minutes from downtown San Antonio

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