Engineering a new path

UTPA alumna discusses juggling career with family

Note: This article originally appeared in the Nov. 20, 2014 issue of The Pan American. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

Ever since high school, Christina Hickey has liked a challenge. Now the career of this UTPA alumna has her dealing with them every day.

As a civil engineer Hickey takes part in managing and designing the construction of McAllen’s roadways, drainage systems and buildings. Hickey, who graduated from UTPA with a master's in computer science in May, began working for the city in 2009. This was one year after she had married her husband, Dustin Hickey, whom she met while receiving a bachelor's in civil engineering from Texas A&M University in 2008.

The native of Carrollton in the D-FW Metroplex was initially interested in biomedicine to make prosthetics until a guest speaker in her sophomore geometry class at Newman Smith High School changed her mind. The presenter, a civil engineer from the Dallas/Forth Worth International Airport, presented students with a problem the airport was having and challenged them to solve it. The presentation gave the then 15-year-old a glimpse of what a career in engineering would feel like.

“It seemed like something stimulating for me,” the 28-year-old said. “I loved how the field incorporated (a subject I loved), math and would mean that I’d get to work in the field and see my work being done in person and not stay in front of a computer all day.”

A February 2014 report from U.S. News & World Report stated that in 2010, women made up 28 percent of science and engineering workers. This is despite the fact that females make up half of all the college-educated workers in the country.  Hickey graduated this past May with a master’s in computer science at UTPA, one of the three women who were awarded that degree in the 2013-2014 academic school year, according to the UTPA Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness.

Despite the low number of women working in the fields of science, engineering, technology and math, an interest in this area feels simply right for Hickey.

“Engineering is all around us and not a lot of people will immediately notice it,” she said. “Anything from sanitary sewer systems, pavements and roadways to even parking signs went through an engineer first. I really enjoy my profession so doing my job or additional activities to promote engineering just seems natural to me.”

BALANCE

Despite her regular workload, Hickey started taking night classes at UTPA in fall 2011 to earn a master's degree in computer science. With the skills she learned there she was able to lead a special project to update McAllen’s street maintenance program in summer 2013. By bringing in UTPA civil engineering students doing internships with the city at the time, Hickey was able to collect surveys of all the streets in the city to evaluate potholes or other damage.

At that point the city’s engineering department was using a spreadsheet to store all information on the city’s streets. Hickey, however, collected all the data and made it into a map via a “Geographic Information System” - a computer system that stores and analyzes geographical data to make it easier for the department to see which streets were in desperate need of repairs.

“As a spreadsheet, all the data was collected like a snapshot so it wasn’t exactly as accurate as we wanted it,” Hickey explained. “With this database, it’s an improved record for internal use in our department that can help us with long-range planning on fixing the roads.”

According to Yvette Barrera, the director of engineering for the City of McAllen, a lack of resources in the city’s department prevents the annual evaluations of streets. Most of the information the city collects on damaged roads comes when phone calls from the general public point out a problem. Hickey’s skills helped rectify that while bringing a different perspective to the department.

“With this database she made, we were able to analyze the data to take a look at areas in need of drastic repairs and better allocate fundings toward it,” explained Barrera, who is from Brownsville. “Hickey’s knowledge is a tool we’ve been able to use to improve our work. When your employer goes above and beyond to introduce something new to get the job done, then that’s a fantastic resource.”

HOME LIFE

While handling the street maintenance program, Hickey was getting ready for her final year at UTPA. She attended her last semester while pregnant.

Her husband was attending classes at UTPA to finish a bachelor’s in computer science, the same field Christina was receiving her master’s in. This resulted in the two of them helping each other out with schoolwork.

“Sometimes she’d come to me to bounce off ideas or ask me to double check code she was writing for errors and I’d go for her if I had any math questions,” her husband of five years said. “It’s her way of making sure we’re all doing good.”

In the summer the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Caroline.

“Being pregnant was a lot easier than having a baby so I was just lucky that our plan (was) to wait until after graduation to have (her) and (not) worry about schoolwork while raising her,” the new mother said.

She also explained that the hardest part of pregnancy was the nausea and fatigue that came during the first trimester.

“The rest of the pregnancy was really smooth from there and I couldn’t have done it without my husband,” she said. “It makes a world of difference to have a partner who was there to calm me down whenever I started panicking about anything baby-related. And now I visit Caroline every day at her daycare during my lunch break at work. I adore her.”

For Dustin Hickey, the way his wife handled her pregnancy while juggling work was proof of her resourcefulness.

“She does a lot for the city and is a fantastic mother. I don’t know how she does it,” the 29-year-old McAllen native said. “You would think she doesn’t have time for anything, but somehow she makes time for everything and can somehow juggle all these things in her life.”

Paranorman: A horror movie where we’re the monsters

Note: This article originally appeared online on Oct, 29, 2014 at The Pan American's website. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

What is scarier? A horde of zombies seemingly destroying your town and wanting to eat you or being the victim of bullying in which your classmates and townsfolks are the abusers? Laika's Paranorman, the 2012 stop motion horror comedy film, argues that there really isn't much of a difference.

Image via fmvmagazine

For the month of October, best known for Halloween, I decided to talk about a film that fits with the themes of Halloween and that of National Bullying Prevention Month. According to the website stopbullying.org, 49 percent of students from 4th to 12th grade  reported being bullied by other students at school at least once a month. Almost 31 percent of those students admitted to bullying others. The website also explains that bullying can lead to or worsen feelings of isolation, rejection, exclusion and despair. What does all of this have to do with Paranorman? All those feelings are explored in the movie.

This stop motion adventure follows Norman, an elementary school kid in a fictional Massachusetts town who can talk to the dead. Practically no one in his town accepts Norman as he’s constantly the punching bag for the older kids in his school or ignored by classmates. At the beginning of the film, Norman already has a reputation as “that weird kid” and gets stares from adults whenever he does something as simple as walking to school and conversing with the ghosts he keeps bumping into. Norman can only take solace in the companionship of Neil, a classmate who is bullied for his weight, and his dead grandmother- a relationship his dad disapproves of because of how “bizarre” it is.

Despite Norman’s struggles at the beginning of the film, this isn’t a simplistic story involving him trying to prove to others that his powers are real or something like that. Instead, Norman is practically OK with his powers and seems to accept his bullying from others as a consequence of his weirdness. While most films would play this is a form of empowerment for the main character, Paranorman subverts that idea by having him suffer for it. Not only is Norman being alienated because of his gift, he’s not fighting back against his tormentors, which motivates them to continue bullying him.

There’s a scene near the beginning of the film when Norman arrives to his locker at the start of a school day and sees the word “freak” scrawled on it. How does Norman react? He opens his locker and whips out a bottle of detergent to wipe the graffiti from it as if he’s been doing it for so long that’s practically a routine. There’s no fight in Norman as he accepts this broken situation as one he can do nothing to improve.

Image via fxguide.comfxguide.com

That all changes with the arrival of the vengeful spirit of a witch executed by the town elders three centuries prior to the start of the film. She then proceeds to wreaks havoc on Norman’s small town by resurrecting the dead. Norman along with Neil, their older siblings and one of his bullies, must then work together to break this curse.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Ultimately, through a series of visions Norman has been receiving throughout the film, Norman makes the shocking discovery about the witch. She was actually an 11-year-old girl named Agatha who, like Norman, could speak to the dead. This caused the townspeople to fear her and ultimately execute her without any remorse. Did I mention that this is in an animated children’s movie?

As Neil tells Norman at the beginning of the film, “You can't stop bullying. It's human nature. If you were bigger and stupider, you'd probably be a bully too.” Agatha is presented as proof of that statement when, once she becomes an all-powerful specter, she decides to seek revenge for all the torment she’s faced to ensure that everyone knows the same pain she felt when she was alive.

Via Rebloggy 

This form of reverse bullying is one that’s rarely seen in pop culture, especially children’s movies. Paranorman dares to suggest that there’s a bully and a victim in all of us by showing us that those who are picked on when they're powerless go on to victimize the people beneath them once they become powerful. These victims hold genuine hatred and a desire for revenge in their hearts. Norman admits to Agatha at the end of the film that he wishes he could make his tormentors suffer but chooses pacifism because he knows that revenge wouldn't break the cycle of victimization.

The zombie townspeople explain to Norman that their main motivation for killing Agatha was because they were scared of her and thought what they were doing was right. Bullying, the movie argues, comes not from a place of strength but from sadness and fear.

Norman is able to break this cycle of violence by responding to Agatha’s hostility with kindness and empathy. He understands what she’s going through and saves the day by convincing her that not everyone out there will respond to her weirdness with fear. He then tells her what his grandmother told him at the beginning of the movie: it’s OK to be scared, just as long as we don’t let it change who we are.

Image via Paranorman.wikia.com

Paranorman isn’t without its flaws. The middle section of it is filled with awkward attempts at physical comedy as the townspeople discover the zombies and attempt to destroy them. It’s cluttered and ultimately makes the film briefly lose focus of its themes despite the gorgeous, handcrafted stop-motion animation that helps make the film feel more special than it already is. Despite this, Paranorman has a message that children in particular should hear over and over again, but rarely learn from popular culture: bullying comes in many different forms, from playground teasing to parental neglect and the best counter to persecution is tolerance. This will cause everyone to hopefully be more enlightened about what bullying can do to others. As that saying goes, it gets better.

‘I lost a brother’

Former UTPA theater professor dies

Note: This article originally appeared in the Oct. 16, 2014 issue of The Pan American. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

Friday’s performance of Richard III from the University Theatre Productions was dedicated to former UTPA Theater Professor James Hawley, who died of lung cancer Tuesday Oct. 7, at age 71. A memorial service for the Iowa native was held Saturday at 2 p.m. in St. John's Episcopal Church located at 2500 N. 10th St.

Hawley was acknowledged with a poster-size card in the Jeffers lobby; propped up on an easel next to the theatre entrance at the Arts and Humanities Building, it read “teacher, designer, director, friend.” It was followed by the quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that is spoken by Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio when the titular character dies at the end of the play: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Hawley started teaching at UTPA in 1971, when it was known as Pan American University, and he helped start the University theatre department, co-designing and developing the undergraduate and the master's of arts in theatre program. He wrote and directed more than 35 productions, the last of which was Elizabeth and Robert in spring 2001. The play featured him and his wife, Alice Hadley Hawley, portraying poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Hawley stopped teaching shortly after his wife's passing in 2004 according to Marian Monta, a former colleague of Hawley’s.

Monta, professor emeritus for the theater department who joined the University at the same time as Hawley, reflected on her relationship with the Ohio State University alumnus. Together, they built the program from the ground up.

“I lost a brother,” the retired theater professor said of Hawley’s passing. “When we both moved here, we felt lonely in some place new and helped each other settle. We became more than friends, we were family.”

Monta spoke of the work Hawley did for the University’s theatre program when he started working on campus more than four decades ago, explaining that she and Hawley would fight against the music department for use of the fine arts theater because it belonged to the music department at the time. Hawley and Monta even built all the sets and costumes for their productions. To construct a studio theater, Hawley got the idea to use an unused classroom in the original fine arts complex and made all the light fixtures out of coffee cans.

“He always said, ‘We can either run straight to the hills or face the problems ourselves and fix it to improve what we have,’” Monta, a Virginia native, said. “It was a challenge, but the fact that he did so much for the department speaks of how much he cared for it.”

Thomas Grabowski, the current UTPA theatre director, joined the University in 1981 and also worked with Hawley.

“I always thought of him as a mentor,” said the Illinois, also communication department chair “There aren’t a whole lot of current faculty members in the department that were around when he was, but he still supported the program and attended our productions every season.”

Hawley’s family is requesting that all donations be sent to the Hawley Family Faculty Development Endowment and the James and Alice Hawley Theatre Scholarship. More information can be found at the UTPA Foundation, a charitable organization that raises funds to create endowments and scholarships for students.

No car, no problem

Lack of a car won’t stop UTPA students

Note: This article originally appeared in the Sep. 11, 2014 issue of The Pan American. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

The usual amount of heavy traffic seen at UTPA suggests that most college students drive.

However, according to a 2012 study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, the percentage of teenage drivers has dropped in recent years.

The study states that in 2008, 75 percent of 19-year-olds had a driver’s license, but the number decreased by five percent in 2010. UTPA sophomore Rogelio Mar falls into that age group and explained he hasn’t had a reason to get a license.

“I just never imagined myself with a car. When I turned 18 and started living on campus I thought, ‘Do I really need (a car)?’” the physics major said. "The way I live, I can just walk wherever I go, whether it’s to campus or a nearby restaurant to eat and not worry about groceries since my apartment comes with a meal plan.”

The research collected driver's license records and general population data from the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau to complete the study. Currently, six in 10 Americans ages 17-19 have a driver’s license. Thirty years ago, the numbers were closer to eight in 10.

PERSONAL TRANSPORTATION

Graduate student Lorena Garcia Ramon uses her bicycle for transportation. She has a Mexican driver’s license and can’t use it unless she’s driving a car with Mexican license plates, according to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. However, she doesn’t see getting either a Texas-issued license or a car as a priority since she lives within minutes of campus.

“I live in Schunior Village and I work on campus,” the 25-year-old graduate student said. “Walking or cycling to work or to Wal-Mart for groceries can take as much as 11 minutes. It’s all about being resourceful. Besides, I think it's great for me to not have a car anyway. If I did have one, I’d have no self-control and just want to drive anywhere, like an itch. I’d be spending more money.”

Ramon, who works as a graduate assistant at the UTPA Office of Graduate Studies, sees her boyfriend spending at least $60 per week on gas. She estimates that she saves at least $240 per month by not having a vehicle, not including insurance or maintenance.

She thinks public transportation is one factor causing a decrease in drivers. According to the American Public Transportation Association, Americans took nearly 11 billion trips on public transportation, the highest ridership number in nearly six decades. Ramon pointed out that McAllen’s Metro Connect not only offers discounts to students, but introduced several new service routes last year. Among them was one that connects UTPA to McAllen, making it easier for her to use the transportation system.

Since all of her classes are at the UTPA McAllen Teaching Site, located 13 miles from campus at 1800 S. Main Street, Ramon rides the shuttle from school and back home. She doesn’t rely on a car and recommends other students to do the same.

“You don’t have to be stuck just because you don’t have a car,” she said. “Try to be resourceful. Get a bicycle and ride, you’re exercising that way and it’s free.”

INDEPENDENCE

Ironically, the lack of access to the Metro Connect is the reason that Alton resident Joey Garza needs his car. The psychology graduate student lives approximately 25 minutes from campus, but neither Alton nor the neighboring city of Palmhurst has any form of public transportation. According to Garza, even if he could use the public transportation system that would mean he’d have to be driven either to campus or to McAllen.

“It’s the [Rio Grande] Valley, everyone needs a car to get around,” the 25-year-old explained. “There’s little here but everything’s so far apart that it’s hard to move without a car. It really comes in handy in helping you plan your day.”

According to Garza, he spends as much as $460 per month on gas, insurance and maintenance for his 2011 Nissan Sentra, but he believes it’s worth it to avoid what he’d have to repeatedly do in high school.

“(As a teen) If I ever needed to go somewhere, the movies, a friend’s house, I’d have to be dropped off at my aunt’s house so that she could drive since my parents were usually busy,” the financial aid assistant said. “A car is an extension of yourself that can give you more options and freedom. There’s a lot of responsibilities that come with it, but a car is the ultimate sign of being independent since you don’t have to rely on others.”

Despite being enamored with the idea of driving when she first received her license a decade ago, UTPA student Yarely Rodriguez no longer sees it as something that adds value. As a resident of the apartment complex Bronc Village, she uses Metro Connect to get around the city.

“As soon as I first got my license, I felt as if a whole new world was opening for me. I could literally drive anywhere,” the 26-year-old English student said. “Now, that excitement is gone. I’m over driving and anything car-related, like pumping gas or spending money on maintenance, (it) feels tiresome. Not having a car is more convenient.”

The Edinburg native previously owned a car, but sold it after moving to campus in fall 2013 because she didn’t feel that there would be a need for it. Her main motivation for selling the car came when she decided to ride a Metro Connect bus one day “for fun.” She had noticed several families and elderly people also using the bus and chatted with them.

“They explained to me that they don’t have a car and use [the bus] to go to their doctor’s appointments and other stuff,” she said. “I realized that there are people out there with no car and rely on public transportation to get around all the time. I thought to myself, ‘If they can do it, then so can I.’”

Rodriguez plans several of her trips along the bus routes, and if necessary, she gets lifts from friends and family then pays them gas money, something she doesn’t mind.

“I know it sounds silly, but I’m proud to be able to move myself around without a car,” she said. “It just feels a part of being an adult, I’m able to make my own decisions and be responsible for my own transportation, even without a car.”

Student spotlight

University theater technician discusses craft

Note: This article originally appeared Sept. 11, 2014 online at the website for The Pan American. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

The technical aspects of theater production range from scenery, visual effects and costumes are commonly known as design. Viewers watching a play are drawn to the action of the actors onstage so they may not immediately notice the effort by designers working behind the scenes of what they’re watching. Propmaster Giovanni Salinas is one of those technicians.

“Every little note I do reflects the world that is being built and I have to ask myself, ‘what do I need to help make this work as one cohesive piece?’” the 20-year-old said. “Props are small items that not many people will notice, but I can make them and add details that make it personal for the characters and I’ll be happy leaving them there for people to discover.”

The Edinburg resident is currently working as a technician for the upcoming University Theatre production of Richard III, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s more than 400-year-old play about the rise of power and reign of Richard III of England. The play, scheduled to run Oct. 8-12, is set in a post-apocalyptic future where society is trying to rebuild itself following a nuclear fallout. Salinas works with three other designers and focuses on creating the props to be used onstage from weapons to personal tokens each character carries.

To prepare for the props, the senior consults with the script to see what kind of items would be found in a post-nuclear world. He plans on travelling to a local junkyard to scavenge for items that fit the scenery as part of his research.

Aside from his stagecraft, Salinas works as a facility manager at the Wellness and Recreational Sports Complex and usually takes 18 hours a semester. His only source of personal time, he says, are the hours of midnight to 5 a.m. when he gets to sleep.

“Theater is practically my other job,” he said. “What I do as a designer is part of a jigsaw puzzle. Without us, there wouldn’t be a play, but we need the actors as much as they need us so that we can have something to revolve our work around. It all adds to one cohesive whole.”

Since he joined UTPA two years ago, the theatre major has been involved with the university theatre program and has worked in lighting design and as a stage manager. He held the position of stage manager when he worked for local theater group Thirteen O’Clock Theatre before stepping down this past summer. However, Salinas enjoys operating light design.

“Light affects the way we see things,” he explained. “Obviously the lighting can’t work without the set or costumes on display, but our job is to make those things shine. It’s fun seeing how we can experiment with it to see how we can accentuate those things and yet still make it our own.”

Over the summer Salinas won a scholarship to attend a nine-week-long class with the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas. At the institution, Salinas learned advance stagecraft techniques in several fields such as audio and visual effects. The class also held weekly trips to the Las Vegas Strip to see a show.

“I was exposed to a lot of very different shows and I was reminded of why I love working in theater,” he said. “It’s all about that little thing of my own that I put in (the play) that will make me happy. When I considered a career in high school, I knew I didn’t want something that would cause me to live the rest of my life waking up every day and saying ‘Ugh, I have to go to work.’ I’m not like that with theater because I love it.”

After Richard III, Salinas will work as the lighting designer for the University Theatre production of the musical Evita, based on the life of former Argentine First Lady Eva Perón. It is scheduled to premiere March 2015.

Closing the curtains

UTPA Theatre previews new fall season, final year

Note: This article originally appeared in the Sep. 4, 2014 issue of The Pan American. The Pan American was the student newspaper at my former university, The University of Texas - Pan American, where I got into writing. Ultimately, TPA was shut down as a result of a merger with neighboring university to make way for The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley and the new student publication did not transfer anything from TPA. Here's one of my articles for them that was saved thanks to the miracle of Google Docs.

The University Theatre Productions is getting ready for its fall season that begins next month. Theater Director Thomas Grabowski discussed how the start of the 2014 fall semester marks the beginning of the end of the University Theatre Program. This is due to the upcoming merger with The University of Texas at Brownsville that will open The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley next fall.

“When we started picking performances for this school year, we didn’t even realize that it actually was our last year,” said the University of Illinois alum who has been at the University for 33 years. “We’re assuming that we’re going to continue doing the same thing we’ve been doing and prepare for our spring season. We haven’t heard anything saying otherwise.”

THE PRODUCTIONS

The season starts off with Richard III, a historical play by William Shakespeare that depicts the rise of King Richard III of England and his two-year reign from 1483 to 1485. In the play, the king is portrayed as a villainous hero who schemes his way to the top. It is set to run Oct. 8–12 at the Albert L. Jeffers Theatre.

Zebastian Duchene, a junior who has the role of Richard III’s co-conspirator, the Duke of Buckingham, noted the changes the adaptation makes from Shakespeare’s drama. According to the finance major, changes include the condensing of several storylines to focus exclusively on Richard III, as well as a completely different setting.

“The production is set in an post-apocalyptic world where society is trying to rebuild itself after an undisclosed fallout,” the McAllen native said. “Even though it’s a different place, the play manages to recreate the political climate of the story that personifies several human faults.”

UTPA Professor Brian Warren wrote the play and managed to slash as much as half of the original four-hour run-time to make Richard III accessible for students while ensuring the adaptation will satisfy Shakespeare purists. He noted that this is the first time that the theater department has performed one of Shakespeare’s historical plays, which covered English history from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

Despite the fact that the original play was written more than four centuries ago, the Iowa native believes that audiences would still be interested in the story due to the themes in Richard III he sees as “relevant,” and the popularity of the award-winning series House of Cards. The blockbuster series from Netflix depicts a congressman who schemes and backstabs his way to the top, much like Richard III.

“The play is a behind-the-scenes look at politically ambitious people who do things in the name of power,” Warren said. “Even though the events depicted took place in the 15th century, the behavior of these characters and the question the play asks, ‘how much power can these people have before they start to lose themselves?’ makes for a compelling drama.”

DRAMA

The second production from the theater department is the original drama Locked. It depicts an African-American family that discovers an ancestor of theirs was a slave - a realization that shocks them. Locked was inspired by a family heirloom that UTPA art professor Lorenzo Pace, a co-writer of the production, is in possession of: the metal lock that bound his great-grandfather in chains when the latter was a slave.

English professor Philip Zwerling, the other writer of the production, commented on the difficulty of casting the play, which featured a dominant African-American cast. This caused him and Pace to go out into the community into places such as Edinburg’s Rising Star Baptist Church to recruit actors.

“In the seven years I’ve been teaching here, I’ve never seen an African-American-themed production, this may be a first for the department,” the New York native said. “[Pace] and I were interested in seeing how a family would react to discover something as shocking as slavery about an ancestor. Even though the characters are fictional, it tells a story that is real and important.”

Locked is scheduled to run Oct. 23–26 in the UTPA Studio Theatre, adjacent to the Albert L. Jeffers Theatre in the Arts and Humanities Building.

COMEDY

Following a slave-themed drama, the tone for the department’s next play is wildly different. The Mystery of the Shady Palms RV Park, an original comedy by UTPA professor Eric Wiley follows the owner of a Winter Texan RV park who is desperately trying to sell it. THis biggest obstacle in getting rid of the park is the fact that visitors keep disappearing, turning off potential buyers.

“Part of the fun in watching the play is the performance of the students as they’ll all be acting as Winter Texans,” said Wiley, who received his doctorate in theatre from Louisiana State University in 1999. “They’ll be dressed in old-people makeup having fun, and that enthusiasm will hopefully translate in the audiences enjoying the play as much as the actors are enjoying acting in it.”

The Mystery of the Shady Palms RV Park will run Nov. 19-23 in the UTPA Studio Theatre.

CHRISTMAS

The final production of the season will be Pastorela, otherwise known as A Shepherd's Play, which is part of the department’s Theatre for Young Audiences Program. The program produces plays aimed at young audiences and features child actors working with student actors.

Pastorela tells the story of a group of shepherds who follow the star of Bethlehem to meet the Christ Child. It is directed by University Theatre alumna Martha Angelica Chavez de Palmerin and will run Dec. 4-7.

LOOKING AHEAD

Gina Marie, a veteran student actress for the last two years, is unfazed by the coming changes to the programs. The 28-year-old Pharr native pointed out that more students will have a chance to major in theatre, as UTB never had a theater program nor did they offered a degree in that field. Because of this, she is looking forward to see what the UTRGV theater program will offer.

“It’s a bittersweet year, but it’s helping our new season stand out more, marking the beginning of great things for the community,” said Marie, a theatre performance major. “I see [UTRGV] as not only something that will unite the community, but the entire Rio Grande Valley.”

Professor Warren is also interested in what the new university will bring and hopes some of the accomplishments from UTPA’s theater program will transform to UTRGV’s program.

“Our purpose is to educate the community and our students through our productions,” he said. “We’re going to continue with that mission and keep the quality of our plays. We’ll see where this collaboration with UTRGV takes us.”

More information about the UTPA Theatre Productions, including their spring lineup, can be found at the website.