Dear Friends,

It has been more than a month since our lives were changed. September 11 has taken a terrible toll.  The size of that toll remains to be seen. The College has responded in a way to make all of us proud.  Students, faculty and staff have banded together and given of themselves in an effort to cope with this tragedy.  Nearly 12,000 of us gathered on the South Mall to participate in a moving ceremony of sympathy and resolve. We are changed but not detained from our purpose-to educate one another and thereby to try to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves. Teaching young people is a wonderful balm.

We have all been touched by the catastrophic actions in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania--some more directly than others. Here on campus, we have been struggling to return to our normal lives while we serve as a source of strength and reason for our students, as well as for each other. I hope this finds you and your family safe and well.


Upcoming events
THE FIRST YEAR FORUM, A PROGRAM OF THE DIVISION OF RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION, has announced that Pulitzer Prize winning author John McPhee is the 2001-2002 speaker. This year, nearly 4,000 freshmen will read and discuss McPhee's book "Encounters with the Archdruid" in class and in online forums. If you are interested in participating in the online discussions, you can find them at http://www.drc.utexas.edu/e306web/forums.cfm. McPhee will read from his book at the Texas Union Ballroom at 8pm on November 8.  This event is free and open to the public.

FIVE OF ENGLAND'S MOST TALENTED ACTORS will be in Austin to present one of Shakespeare's comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oct. 24 through Oct. 27. Actors From The London Stage will perform Oct. 24-26 at 8 p.m. at Austin Scottish Rite Theatre and Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. at the Winedale Historical Center in Round Top, Texas. You can find more information at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/news/releases/20019/actor.html or by contacting the English Department at 512/471-4991.

THE CENTER FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES is presenting "Fantasy: A Scholarly Conference on Play, Peril, Politics" on Nov. 2-3. This event will explore the significance of fantasy, creative thinking, utopic and dystopic imagination in the development of social actions and movements. Detailed information can be found at http://www.utexas.edu/depts/wstudies/fantasyindex.html.

A PHOTO EXHIBIT FROM THE ROMANY ARCHIVE AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER will be on display in the lobby of Bass Concert Hall. The photos of Roma in Greece and the US, by photographers Richard Blau and Cristina Salvador, will be on display Nov. 3-19, with an opening reception on Nov. 3 at 6 p.m. For more information about the exhibit please call 512/471-0640.

TARL LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE
For those of you with an interest in Texas history, you'll be pleased to see a new public education website, Texas Beyond History, that has been launched by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL). The new website can be found at http://www.utexas.edu/research/tarl/tbh/index.html, and showcases information and images about Texas cultural heritage-more than 13,000 years of human history-from Clovis to cotton farmers. For the first time, the public, especially school children and teachers, will have access to the most important of TARL's scientific holdings through online virtual museum "exhibits" and a variety of creative resources including map tools, children's activities, an illustrated glossary and lesson plans. This is the first website of its kind anywhere in the country.

FACULTY
As always, we are very proud of the achievements of our faculty. Here are just a few of the newsworthy announcements on that front.
** CATHARINE ECHOLS, OF THE PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT, has been appointed to serve as a member of the Biobehavioral and Behavioral Processes Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.
** R. J. HANKINSON, OF THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT, has been selected as editor of "Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science."
 You may have also seen several faculty members on national television lately:
** LIZA SHAPIRO OF ANTHROPOLOGY appeared in the PBS series "Evolution" on Sept. 25.
** JULIET WALKER, A NEW PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, was a guest on "Larry King Live" on Sept. 4 to discuss her upcoming book on Oprah Winfrey.
** SUMIT GANGULY, GOVERNMENT AND ASIAN STUDIES, has been on CNN, "Marketplace," "The News Hour," and many international radio and print media discussing the political situation in Pakistan and India.
** HOWARD MILLER, OF THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT, has been awarded the Liberal Arts Council Teaching Award. The recipient of this award, in recognition of excellence in teaching, is chosen by student members of the Council.
** WILLIAM GOETZMANN, AMERICAN STUDIES, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Book Festival on Nov. 17. First Lady Laura Bush is scheduled to present the award to Prof. Goetzmann in the House Chambers of the Texas House of Representatives. You can find more information about the Festival at http://www.austin360.com/local/partners/texasbookfestival/.
** PAUL WOODRUFF, PLAN II AND PHILOSOPHY, recently had two books published, "Reverence" and a translation of Sophocles' "Antigone."

THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST
Our students are making the news as well. The October issue of "Glamour" magazine features RICHA GULATI as one of the Top 10 College Women of 2001. Richa is a Plan II major and a winner of the Truman Scholarship. In addition, Richa and fellow Liberal Arts student ANDREW FRIEDBERG, a Government/Economics/Finance major, were honored as the University's Outstanding Students for this academic year.

We are also very pleased to announce this year's winners of the Larry Temple Scholarship. RICHARD COFER II, History and Government major, and MARGARET PORTER, Liberal Arts Honors, are the recipients of this award. Another recent scholarship winner is FRANCISCO JOSE BENAVIDES. Francisco, majoring in Italian and English, is one of only two winners of a scholarship from the Italian American Foundation.

On Oct. 20, the Texas Exes awarded their Distinguished  Alumnus Awards for 2001 (http://www.texasexes.org/news.php3?id=56), and no less than five of the six honorees hold Liberal Arts degrees:

R. Gordon Appleman (BA '59)
Betty Sue Flowers (BA '69, MA '70)
Ricardo Hinojosa (BA '72)
Joe R.  Long  (BA '51)
and
Jon P. Newton (BA '63)

On the same evening, Prof. William S. Livingston,  Senior  Vice President of The University, Professor  of  Government, former Acting President of The University, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Exes (http://www.texasexes.org/press.php3?pr=4).  This is only the second time that this award has  been made.

Congratulations to each of these distinguished alums, friends, and colleagues.


UT MYTHOLOGY
One of the recurring myths about UT is that the classes are all huge.  Here is the breakdown on class size in the College of Liberal Arts for this semester:

Enrollment	Number	Percent
1-30		936	74%
31-75		170	13%
76-100		51	4%
100-200		55	4%
Over 200	56	4%
Total		1268	100%

We are working hard to reduce the number of classes with more than 75 students, but we are proud of the fact that nearly three-fourths of our classes have 30 students or less.

Let us hear from you.

Richard W. Lariviere
Dean
College of Liberal Arts
The University of Texas at Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/


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