I  hope you’ve had a productive and enjoyable week.  My week has been action-packed as usual, and I’m about to head south to one of my favorite cities in the world, my hometown of San Antonio.  I’ll be visiting the campus of UT San Antonio, one of the UT System’s largest and fastest growing universities.  Established in 1969, UTSA has been hailed by the UK magazine Times Higher Education as one of the best universities in the world that is less than 50 years old.

One of UTSA’s many outstanding faculty members will soon receive a terrific honor.  At a ceremony on April 29, Mary McNaughton-Cassill, a professor of psychology, will be inducted into the UT System’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. For those not familiar with it, the Academy was created three years ago to recognize the most outstanding teachers at our nine UT System schools.  Sixteen teachers have been inducted so far, and joining Professor McNaughton-Cassill in this year’s class are:

• Diana Dominguez, associate professor of English at UT Brownsville;
• Juan Noveron, professor of chemistry at UT El Paso; and
• Larry Speck, professor of Architecture at UT Austin.

The mission of the Academy is not just to recognize some of our great teachers, but to also give them a platform to share some of what they have learned over the years.  To that end, the Academy will soon release The Little Orange Book: Short Lessons in Excellent Teaching, a book of vignettes, written by our Distinguished Teachers, focused on fundamentals of great teaching, applicable across all disciplines and levels of instruction.  We plan to give a copy of The Little Orange Book to every new faculty member going forward – and I plan to keep my own copy close at hand as well.

I want to congratulate the new inductees into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, while also recognizing, of course, that the members of the Academy represent but a tiny subset of the thousands of great educators throughout the UT System.

On a lighter note, and since I have UTSA on my mind today, I want to end with a quick shout out to the For The Kids student organization at UTSA, and wish them the best of luck with their sixth annual Dance Marathon, which will happen tomorrow at the UTSA Convocation Center.  The 12-hour, no-sitting, no-sleeping marathon sounds to me like something out of Navy SEAL training!  But, it’s for an excellent cause, raising money to help children with cancer and their families.  Last year’s event raised more than $50,000 and I’m hoping this year’s event will raise even more.  So if you’re a UTSA student, I want to encourage you to step up, and get your groove on between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. tomorrow. 

Then rest up on Sunday for another busy week.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend.