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School is back in session on the UT Austin campus, and it’s far from business as usual for students and staff in a newly consolidated department.
Programs with decades of history on the 40 Acres — including Mexican American and Latina and women’s, gender and sexuality studies — are no more.
The punishing heat only makes sweeter that refreshing feeling of jumping into the river to cool off. But bacteria levels in Texas waterways bring a risk with the cooling reward.
Have you been playing KUT’s Summer Reading Bingo? Join us at a party this week to celebrate, talk about the books you finished and pick up a prize!
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano School is back in session on the UT Austin campus, and it’s far from business as usual for students and staff in a newly consolidated department. Programs with decades of history on the 40 acres, including Mexican American, Latina, Latino, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies are no more. How that consolidation happened and which programs could be next. Plus, the punishing heat only makes sweeter that refreshing feeling of jumping into the river to cool off. But bacteria levels in Texas waterways bring a risk with that sweet cooling reward. We’ve got more about those stories coming up on today’s show.
Laurie Gallardo Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano And we’ve been championing reading over the past few months with our Summer Reading Challenge and Recommendations. This week we’re having a party to celebrate all that reading. We’ve got the details up next, right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. I’m your host, Jerry Keconnell. It is Monday, August 24th. Thank you for tuning in. We are under an extreme heat warning in the Austin area until seven o’clock tonight. After that, we will immediately be back under a heat advisory until at least Wednesday night. Today’s forecast high is 106 degrees, 105 tomorrow. Please be safe out there. UT students are back in class today amid some major changes to academic departments on campus, particularly liberal arts programs. Some ethnic and gender studies departments no longer exist. Others have been consolidated and downsized. Other changes may still be ahead. Lily Kepner has been covering the changes for the Austin American Statesman, where she is the higher education reporter. Lily, it’s good to speak with you again.
Lily Kepner Thanks for having me.
Jerry Quijano So a lot of changes have been happening to UT’s liberal arts programs. The biggest we have been following is the consolidation of ethnic and gender studies programs into this new department of social and cultural analysis. Can you remind us what led up to this?
Lily Kepner Yeah, absolutely. So the big backdrop is in 2025, lawmakers passed a law called Senate Bill 37, and that was a big higher education reform bill that basically gave faculty less control over what was being taught and who was being hired and regents who are appointed by the governor, more control. Around the same time, UT hires a new provost, William Inboden, and they announced that they’re going to look into core curriculum. And they announced that they’re going to look at all their programs for, I think President Jim Davis said, breadth and balance. So in February, they announced the ethnic and gender studies programs for distinct departments are going to be consolidated into this new department of social and cultural analysis. And in academia at large, you don’t really see a department of this name very often. And I think New York University has one. With this name, but it’s not very common. And so faculty were really concerned that this consolidation was really a way to close these departments and then slowly consolidate the program offerings more and more. And as I reported on Friday, there was just a proposal sent by the College of Liberal Arts to the provost, William Inboden, suggesting that UT should cut the LGBTQ minor and the race. Indigeneity and migration major, and the proposal to cut the LGBTQ minor was not approved by faculty, was not looked at by the chair before it was sent as a recommendation.
Jerry Quijano Well, you have a really in-depth story out today where you spoke with former heads of many of these departments as well as faculty members. There was a lot to go through. What were some of the three lines that you found in your reporting?
Lily Kepner Yeah, so it was really important to me to look into what these departments were, because even though the programs as of right now are still all being offered, not being a department hides a lot of their visibility. So now if you look up women’s gender and sexuality studies and click on the UT link, it’ll reroute you to the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. So a lot the history that used to be on these websites is really hard to find or not there on UT servers. So I spent the past few months talking to you know founders of these departments, faculty within them, students, and the big through lines of all of them is that these are really robust departments that students fought for and advocated for. And they did so at a time that UT was becoming more diverse for the first time in its history in the 60s. So the loss of these departments, even though they’ll exist in the consolidation, not having those departments is definitely a loss that faculty and students are feeling.
Jerry Quijano Yeah, your story mentions how important the Civil Rights Act of the 60s was to kind of diversifying the student body here on UT and therefore diversifying the studies that were done here on the campus. You spoke with Martha Cortara, I believe is her name, in regards to the Mexican American Latino studies. And it seems like she made an impact back in her time, but was still in contact with many of the students who were working with that department to this very day.
Lily Kepner Yes, absolutely. She said that she and other founders of the Center for Mexican American Studies, which was that first version of the department, have always really been in contact with UT leadership and that there’s been this really close symbiosis between the departments and the community. A lot of the research is local and directly about what’s happening in Austin. A lot the resources that these departments create are for the community, And so the community is definitely… Feeling these losses and worried for the future, but that also means they’re paying attention and they wanna talk to the president, they wanna put pressure on the university to protect these important fields of studies.
Jerry Quijano Something you also reported about last week, UT said it was replacing its interim college of liberal arts, the dean for that school. What is the backstory there? How long have they been without a permanent dean there?
Lily Kepner Yeah, so back in 2024, then UT president Jay Hartzell did not renew the contract of Ann Stevens, though she wanted to stay on as dean. And there has not been a permanent leader since then. Ann Stevens stayed out the rest of that academic year. Then we had interim dean David Sosa, who’s a philosophy professor step in. And now we have Daniel Brinks, who was involved in a lot of the consolidation, and it comes from government. But he’s still an interim leader, too. So. That was interesting to me because UT has launched a national search for this position and has theoretically been wanting to find a permanent replacement since October 2024 when they stopped renewing Ann Stevens’ contract. So the instability of not having a stable leader for the College of Liberal Arts as it’s going through so much change is definitely notable to me.
Jerry Quijano All right, that is Lily Kepner. She is the higher ed reporter at the Austin American Statesman. We’re gonna have a link to her latest reporting in today’s show notes. Lily, thank you for your time.
Lily Kepner Thank you.
Jerry Quijano All right, and a quick note, KUT journalists are University of Texas employees. Editorial decisions are made independently by the KUT newsroom and Austin Signal. University leaders do not review or approve KUT’s news coverage. Meteorological summer is coming to an end this month, but our run of brutal heat is far from over. That’s sending some folks to their nearest body of water to cool off, but you may want to check bacteria levels in that water just before you jump in. A new report from the environmental advocacy group Environment Texas found that in 2024 and 2025, more than half of almost 400 water monitoring locations in the state exceeded safe levels of E. Coli on at least one testing day. Joining us now is Luke Metzger, Executive Director of Environment Texas. Luke, welcome to the show.
Luke Metzger Thanks, Jerry. Good to be on.
Jerry Quijano So your report was looking at fecal indicator bacteria in Texas waterways, where did this data come from and what stood out to you?
Luke Metzger It came from both the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is our state regulator, which collects data from various entities around the state, as well as Austin Watershed Protection, which has even more robust data set for the Austin area. And what stood out is that this is a continuing problem. We know that, for example, here in Austin, many of our creeks have been considered impaired for fecal bacteria for decades. So that’s not a surprise. But the fact that it just continues to be a problem, not just in some of the creeks that we might think of as being less than clean, say Waller Creek or other things which persistently have problems, but also some popular swimming areas. So for example, the Blanco River down near San Marcos, we found that three of the five testing locations found potentially unsafe levels of fecal bacteria, at least once. And that’s, of course, a very popular swimming, river, paddling, fishing. We also found, you know, Lady Bird Lake here in Austin that one of the 17 times it was tested had potentially unsafe level of fecally bacteria.
Jerry Quijano I’ve got to imagine that there’s probably some level of E. Coli bacteria consistently present in waterways, so can you give us a little context? What is the threshold for health risk that this report was using?
Luke Metzger Yeah, what we use is the Environmental Protection Agency’s beach action value level, and so they basically have a very conservative standard that determines if fecal bacteria over a certain amount that that could expose at least 32 of a thousand swimmers to get sick. Um, and so that, that means that if you are exposed, you know, to um, high levels or, you know, levels that are, uh, that are elevated of fecal bacteria. It doesn’t mean for sure you’re going to get sick, but there’s a risk that some people are going to, get sick and overall health researchers estimate that millions of Americans get sick every year. Um, you know, with, you, know, eye and ear infections, gastrointestinal illness, rashes and other things. And so it’s something that, um, we need to be real cautious of.
Jerry Quijano You mentioned Lady Bird Lake, that is one body of water that people are not supposed to swim in, but the Blanco River is one that people will find themselves in quite often. How concerned should folks be before making a visit out there?
Luke Metzger Well, what we recommend is, we know that fecal bacteria levels will spike immediately after a rain when the rain will kind of create storm water that picks up human and animal waste and rushes them into our creeks. And so you generally want to wait 48 to 72 hours after a rain before you go swimming. If you have a cut or an open wound, better not to swim then. But if you do, you know, cover it. Otherwise, we’re encouraging people to swim. It’s just one of the things that makes life great in Texas. Some are wonderful swimming holes and bearable during these hot temperatures. People should go swimming, but be cautious.
Jerry Quijano Alright, is there anything else about the data that stood out to you, or any other word of advice for people heading out to the water?
Luke Metzger Well, I think the key thing is that this is a solvable problem. This isn’t something that we just can’t fix. We know that much of the problem is coming from leaking sewage pipes or overflows of sewage systems when it rains heavily. So for example, last year. More than 115,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into a creek after a sewage overflow. That is preventable. If we invest in upgrades to our wastewater infrastructure, we can solve that. One good news is that last year, Texans voted for Proposition 4, which invested about $20 billion in water infrastructure. That money mostly is gonna be used to create new water supplies, but it can also be used to clean up water. And so we’re urging our state lawmakers to invest in making sure not only that we have new supply, but that we keep the water we do have clean and safe for us to swim in.
Jerry Quijano All right, that is Luke Metzger. He is the executive director of Environment Texas. We’ll have a link to their report in today’s show notes. Luke, thank you for your time. Thanks, Jerry. And thank you out there for tuning in to Austin Signal on this Monday. We’ve got more for you that’s coming up and it’s right after this break.
Nammy Sirur You’re listening to Austin Signal. I’m Nammy Sirur, creator of the live storytelling event Accent Unmuted. There are over 120 questions on the US citizenship test. For storyteller Johanna Hosking Pulido, one question brought her face to face with an impossible choice, her religious convictions or her new country.
Johanna Hosking Pulido Spring of 2006, I decided to move to the U.S. For one reason, love. I was young and naive, and I really didn’t know that marrying an American, it also meant marrying the U-S immigration system. So, um… I waited for over a year in Mexico just to get my first appointment to get a spouse visa. And then came five years of paperwork, fingerprints, checks for amounts of money that made my stomach drop, FBI clearances, a series of vaccines that I never even heard of given to you all at once while standing in line. The only clinic in Ciudad Juarez approved by the US government. One day they will move you to more invasive medical exams searching and checking your body for tattoos or drugs inside of you. Casual. Finally, I was called in to San Antonio for my citizenship interview. The interview was conducted in a small office where I sat across an immigration officer who asked me question after question after a question. Legal name? Check. Country of birth? Check Titles of nobility, I wish. Criminal background, no, no. I was cruising until he got to question 47. Are you willing to bear arms on behalf of the United States of America? Something in me just stopped. I grew up Catholic in central Mexico with this firm belief that life is sacred. And then the Sixth Commandment was just kind of burning my conscience, like you should not kill. And then I thought, you know, I would never kill for Mexico. I don’t think I can promise to kill for the US. So I answer firmly, no. My faith does not allow me to take a life. So my. Interview on that quickly after that. I step out of the office and to the waiting room. I saw my mom holding my newborn. My husband stood up searching for my face, and I just showed my head. My mom panicked immediately. What happened? And I told her. And she, without losing a beat, came to me and said, go back in and tell them, yes, that you will kill if needed. I said, mom, she’s like, I know, I know, but you have gone through so much. I had paid so much money. And quite frankly, she wasn’t wrong. Saying yes would have been so much easier. She wanted the victory. She wanted safety for me. And she wanted what I wanted for it to be over. But my husband, just nodded gently, we have talked about this possibility many times and we agree that whatever will happen, we’ll face it together. So instead of a ceremony, I cut more paperwork. I had to collect letters and documentation from my church, proving white killing was not an option for me. So then I just waited more and more uncertainty. Months later, a new letter came, this time inviting me to my citizenship ceremony. I… Walk into this federal courthouse among dozens of immigrants from all over the world. The judge began to read the oath, right after the part about bearing arms. He called a few names, mine was one of them, we were asked to stand up, and he gave an abbreviated oath. And there I was, this sleep deprived new mom, raising my hand to every promise of citizenship, except the one about bearing arms. I finished the off and I turned around and I saw my little family. My baby girl in my husband’s arms, my sister standing for all my family in Mexico that couldn’t be with me. And at that moment, I felt hope and I felt proud about that love that brought me here. Proud about the faith that anchored me and proud that This new American family would not be founded in fear or shortcuts, but conscience. That day, I became a U.S. Citizen. But most importantly, I claim the kind of American and the kind mother I was going to be, one who builds a family rooted not in violence, but in curiosity. In kindness and in love. Thank you.
Nammy Sirur That was Johanna Hosting-Coledo, telling her story to a live audience at a recent accent unmuted in Studio 1A here at KUT. I’m Nami Siruj and this is Austin Signal.
Jerry Quijano Summer is coming to a close, and if you’ve been following along with the Field Guide to Austin’s Summer Reading Bingo Challenge, you’re gonna have a chance to party with other book lovers at our Summer Reading Challenge celebration that’s coming up on Thursday out at Central Machine Works. Here to tell us more is KUT digital editor, Wynn Davis. Wynn, welcome back to the show.
Wynne Davis Thanks, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano Alright, so tell us a little bit about what’s happening at this closing event.
Wynne Davis Yeah. So we are just going to be celebrating summer reading, celebrating everyone who’s participated in our bingo challenge and also just, you know, having a good time talking about books. Um, and it’s going to a chance for people to not only celebrate and have some good combos, but also, you know pick up their prizes that they won.
Jerry Quijano That’s right. Well, I wanted to ask you, you also hosted a book swap earlier this summer to help folks fill out their card. This started from a germ of an idea and has turned into this big community. We’ve been sharing lots of book recommendations this summer right here on Austin Signal because of the reading challenge. So how cool has it been to see this idea turn into a real thing?
Wynne Davis It’s been very cool, um, I love bingo cards. I use them in my life for all sorts of things.
Jerry Quijano Like what?
Wynne Davis Um i mean you know like achieving other things yeah like new year’s resolutions summer bucket list but yeah it’s been very cool also just because i love reading one of my personal goals this year was to read more and then also like talk about the books that i’m reading so through this i’ve been able to do that both you know in my personal life and in my work life it’s been a nice time
Jerry Quijano Okay cool, you mentioned a little while ago that folks can pick up their prizes. What are some of the prizes that are going to be available and what other goodies are going to available at this event?
Wynne Davis Yeah. So we have a couple of prizes for people who’ve gotten just, you know, your standard bingo. So, we have field guide to Austin stickers. We have field guided Austin bookmarks that they come with a tassel. So very much, you now like harkens back to, I feel like at least my childhood in the nineties. Um, and then we also have a limited number of lick ice cream vouchers for people who come out, show us their bingo card. Now, if you’re an overachiever or maybe just like a very well-read person who churns through those pages, and let’s say you’ve gotten a blackout on your card, you’ll be entered into a raffle for a couple prizes. We’re going to be giving away a pair of tickets to our next A.T. Explained live show. We’re also going to give away a concert club membership for people to come experience some live music here in studio. And then we’re also going to have a basket of KUT KTX swag throughout the years.
Jerry Quijano Okay, well, you have your bingo sheet right in front of you, so what are you looking at? How much more spaces do you have to fill out?
Wynne Davis Okay, yes, I have not hit bingo yet, but I am closing in. I was not very strategic about this and I just sort of went with the square that first spoke to me for some of these books that I’ve read.
Jerry Quijano This makes sense since you’re already used to using bingo cards, you weren’t, like, trying to knock it out, you wanted to kind of experience it, okay?
Wynne Davis Just wanted to have a good time. So right now I need to read a fantasy book to get my first bingo Uh, I feel like I can do that. I have started a fantasy books this summer, but I actually don’t really like it So i’m having a little bit of trouble there. Okay, but you know, i’m also Reading a title or a book with a one word title Um that could also help me There are options, but I’m just in it for the good time to read more and see, you know, what comes in the next few days.
Jerry Quijano Was there one particular read that really was your favorite from the summer?
Wynne Davis Ooh, uh, well, I really enjoyed yesteryear. That has been a, you know, pretty divisive title. I think there are some people who really loved that book. Some people who did not like it at all. I enjoyed it. And that one was really fun in particular because a lot of people at the station read it. So then we had a book club during lunch one hour where we all got to talk about it. Oh, cool. Yeah.
Jerry Quijano All right. Well, we would love to know what your favorite read of this summer was coming out to Central Machine Works and join us. We’re going to have more information about how you can RSVP in today’s podcast show notes. That is Wynne Davis. She is a digital editor here at KUT News. Wynne, thank you.
Wynne Davis Thank you.
Jerry Quijano And thank you out there for making us part of your Monday. That is it for us today right here on Austin Signal. There’s more about the stories we shared with you today in the podcast show notes and at kut.org slash signal. And the Austin Signal team is Jake Perlman, Alexandra Hart, Kristen Cabrera, and I’m your host, Jerry Quijanol. We’re gonna be back at the same time tomorrow. Talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
