WE'RE TEXAS IMPACT VIDEO
The University of Texas at Austin
Office of the Vice President for Resource Development
Music
BILL MOYERS
We're dancers, and daughters, and heroes. We're students, and neighbors, and friends. We're small towns, and big cities; we're Texas. We are stewards of the public trust, where greatness is not measured by accomplishments, but by those whose lives we touch. We are an institution of higher learning driven by a higher purpose. We are strength in numbers and a celebration of the individual. Our spirit to explore, create, and discover is matched only by our spirit to help, heal, and transform. We are The University of Texas at Austin.
We realize the abundance of clean water is fundamental to life itself. By conducting research to preserve and restore this most basic resource, we're Leadership.
BOBBY MCKNIGHT
Our biggest problem, as far as ranching goes, is without the rain we don't grow enough forage, and you go several years with that and finally you just run out of forage and you can't feed cattle economically enough to make it last so, as a result, you cut your herds down. Finally your inventory gets so low where it can really get tough.
DR. SCOTT TINKER, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF ECONOMIC GEOLOGY
The beauty of water is it is replenished, but if we withdraw it more quickly or use it more quickly than we replenish it, the budget doesn't balance. Just like your checkbook, and that's when there's an issue with it.
BOBBY MCKNIGHT
If you miss your late rains, it can make for a long year.
DR. SCOTT TINKER
The research that goes on here is critical to every citizen out there in the world.
BOBBY MCKNIGHT
Of course we're on about a ten-year drought. A lot of people are comparing it to the fifties, a lot of people say it's worse. I don't know, but it's the worst thing I've ever seen.
DR. SCOTT TINKER
The results that we have come up with impact life, everyday life, and there are a whole lot of folks at The University of Texas who are working on these issues because they matter.
BOBBY MCKNIGHT
We're hoping it'll rain and maybe we'll produce enough grass to sustain our operation.
DR SCOTT TINKER	
How are we going to use that resource and manage that resource so it's there for my kids and their kids to come?
BILL MOYERS
Groveton, Texas is rich in character and values. And for a group of fifth graders, it's also rich in literary, historical, and artistic treasures. By expanding a child's resources for learning, we're Discovery.
GIRL #1, GIRL #2
This is a mouse, this is a keyboard, and this is a computer.
DR. URI TREISMAN, DIRECTOR, CHARLES A. DANA CENTER
The Internet can play an extraordinarily powerful role in the lives of children.
GIRL #3
I'm gonna look up information about a painting.
DR. URI TREISMAN
It enables children to work with people in other parts of the world. What is most important is that the accident of where a child goes to school does not affect the kinds of intellectual challenges that they can take on.
GIRL # 1
I found a famous painter named Frieda Kahlo.
DR. URI TREISMAN
Accessing The University of Texas on the Web is very easy, and children as young as four and five quickly figure out what we have in our intellectual storehouses.
GIRL # 3
When I look in here I can find a lot of interesting things.
DR. URI TREISMAN
We want children to understand that there are no limits to what they can do. We want to stoke their passions and expand their horizons. And to do that requires that The University of Texas have a presence in every corner of the state, that we be useful to teachers in every school. The University of Texas is the path for children to realize their dreams.
BILL MOYERS
Solutions to environmental issues are elusive. But we pursue them with vigor because these issues affect people's lives. By developing environmental solutions, we're Responsibility.
DR. RICHARD CORSI, CIVIL ENGINEERING
Air pollution is the one type of pollutant that people are exposed to continuously. The risks associated with air pollution are much greater than all other types of pollutants.
BEVERLY STEIMKE
Certain days are definitely worse than others. You can tell when the pollutants are worse on certain days because you tend to make a lot more of those calls.
DR. RICHARD CORSI
Air pollution is the one form of pollution that knows no boundaries, and oftentimes it's very difficult to predict where the air pollution's going to go. So it has a great human toll, not only in the United States, but around the whole world.
BEVERLY STEIMKE
Actually, I do think about it because I have asthma myself, and so I am constantly wondering what's the weather gonna be like today, is it gonna set me off?
DR. RICHARD CORSI
A tremendous increase in asthma is another example. In the United States there's a growing base of scientists who believe that's because of air pollution problems.
BEVERLY STEIMKE
Having cleaner air would make my job easier. Just because it's a bad thing, I can't not go to work.
DR. RICHARD CORSI
Research done at The University of Texas at Austin has had a major positive impact on understanding the nature of air pollution in Houston, and helping the state of Texas try to come to grips with what they have to do to improve that air quality.
BEVERLY STEIMKE
It's nice knowing that there are people out there who are working on cutting down on the pollution in this city.
BILL MOYERS
Breakthroughs in the medical sciences are accomplished through small achievements that collectively lead to extraordinary advances. In the realm of medical sciences, we're Individual Opportunity.
DR. CHRISTINE SCHMIDT, BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
The University of Texas at Austin is definitely a leader in many fields, and especially in biotechnology and bioengineering. Our bottom line is we are problem solvers. We're working on basically trying to create therapies to aid nerves to regenerate. And we're focusing on nerves that might be in your hands or legs, but ultimately we're interested in nerves in your spinal cord, for example.
MIKE HAYNES
My name is Mike Haynes. I am the supervisor of St. David's Wheelchair Sports and Fitness Program. We're helping people keep their bodies in condition, so that if some modern miracle or technology does come through, they have the physical ability to be able to use it.
DR. CHRISTINE SCHMIDT
Creativity is a real underpinning of our research. We have to be creative in our approaches and how we try to come up with biomedical therapy to aid people. And the ways that we're doing that is we're trying to create various scaffolds or materials or plastics that are implantable that we can use to actively communicate with the neurons and encourage them to regrow and repair themselves. Ideally, what we would like to do is find solutions that will not only impact people locally, but impact people around the world.
BILL MOYERS
We all benefit from the context history provides. The Mayans had lost the keys to their written history. By doing the research to retrieve them, we're Learning.
(VOICE OF) DR. LINDA SCHELE
History is a changing relationship between the events of the past and living people. Our relationship to the past is under continual change, but without that past we don't know who we are.
DR. JULIA KAPPELMAN, ART & ART HISTORY
Oh, yeah, I'm proud to say that I am a part of the Linda Schele legacy. There are two great contributions she made: one that she made to the people in Guatemala and Mexico, the Mayan people, and what she gave them were the tools to begin to read their own traditions, their oral historic traditions. She gave them back their history. And so the repercussions of working with the Maya were incredible, because it not only was empowering them, but it was empowering us as a people, as a culture, as a university to understand fully the power of historical traditions.
MAYAN PEOPLE
Toll yo my yo. [translates as "We are Mayan."]
DR. JULIA KAPPELMAN
By looking at what the classic Maya did, by looking at how they structured their imagery and wove powerful political statements through hieroglyphic texts into this artwork, you can use those tools to look at our own culture. In other words, these tools that seem somewhat esoteric or distant are in fact very powerful ways to understand our own society. And I think that's one of the things that students and the people who are involved with these pre-Columbian programs get from the kinds of efforts that we make here.
BILL MOYERS
The next generation is facing new challenges in a world that is changing faster than we can imagine. And by developing new knowledge to meet these challenges, we're Freedom.
MALE VOICE # 1
I have begun to do things differently for myself and for my family.
MALE VOICE # 2
We're thinking of having kids and one of the things we wonder is, you know, do we want to bring kids into a world that may not have the stability we knew growing up.
DR. EDWIN DORN, DEAN, LBJ SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
To understand the role of the university in the United States, what you have to understand is that America invented the future. We're the only society that believes that tomorrow is going to be different than today and in fact ought to be different than today. Not just in terms of economic growth, or technological progress, but in terms of the way we relate to one another. Universities are crucial to helping us manage that transformation. It's in universities, such as UT, that we develop, and test, and store, and transmit the new knowledge that a new generation needs to meet the challenges. It's American universities -- The University of Texas in particular, because of its size, because of the mass of intellectual resources that it's able to marshal -- that are at the core of transforming this state, this nation, and influencing the rest of the world.
BILL MOYERS
We are a place from which understanding and new knowledge flow. We're the energy, drive, hope, and intelligence to seek new answers for everyone. We're thinkers, we're doers, we're dreamers, we're Texas.
We're Texas Impact Video, Page 1