 | The Class of 2009 |
TEXAS LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY–TRANSFORMING LIVES WHEN STUDENTS FIRST ARRIVE AT TLU, THEY ARE OFTEN UNAWARE OF HOW MUCH THEIR LIVES ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE. A CLOSE-KNIT TLU COMMUNITY AND THE CHANCE TO EXPERIENCE THE WORLD FIRST-HAND TRANSFORM THEM FROM WIDE-EYED FRESHMEN TO CONFIDENT TLU GRADUATES. EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF 2009 SHARE THEIR STORIES. Andrea Fernandez
 |
| Andrea Fernandez interns with Ron Quiros in the Guadalupe County Juvenile Detention Center. |
“As a freshman, I was a little hermit,” Andrea Fernandez said, explaining that her dream was to be the first in her family to go to college – then to become a lawyer. “I was afraid of college, and so I dedicated a large portion of my life to studying.”
Studying and playing golf.
Golf brought Andrea from Hondo to Seguin, and she said being a member of the TLU golf team brought her amazing new experiences.
“I’d never even been on a plane or traveled out of Texas until I was on the TLU golf team. We flew to places like Florida, Georgia, and California – in fact, our trip to California was a deciding factor when looking at law schools!”
Her desire to go to law school changed Andrea in other ways as well.
“I was competing in a philosophy ethics bowl at St. Mary’s, and I started talking to a law student. I asked her what, besides good GPA and LSAT scores, will help me get in to law school, and she said involvement on campus. I got that information and just kind of ran with it.”
Since then, Andrea, a political science major with a concentration in pre-law and a double minor in criminal justice and philosophy, has embraced every opportunity. First she joined Young Democrats and then pledged Xi Tau Sorority.
“Xi Tau has a lot of very strong women who do a lot on campus and in the community. I got involved with the Student Government Association through one sorority member, became an admissions advocate because of another, and have just been very active on campus ever since.”
Last summer Andrea was selected as the Texas representative to the Henry Clay Student Congress. She flew to Kentucky where she networked with national leaders and fellow students.
Andrea also spent last summer interning with San Antonio District Court Judge Barbara Nellermoe.
“Legal terms that we learned in criminal law came to life in the courtroom,” Andrea said. “I saw and learned a lot about due process, the justice system, and courtroom etiquette. Judge Nellermoe is my role model – I hope to someday be a judge – I want to be just like her!”
This spring Andrea completed another internship at the Guadalupe County Juvenile Detention Center with Ron Quiros ’85, who was also an intern there when he was a TLU student. Working with Quiros, Andrea has learned to look at the justice system from the other side.
“I’ve done a lot – home visits, drug tests, even shackling juveniles for court. I’ve taken sociology, psychology, and criminal justice classes, and here I can see how all that – the theories, terminology, and applications – is incorporated and what happens in real life.”
Andrea said she has changed a lot in her four years at TLU. Her experiences have broadened her perspectives and understanding, and remembering her trip to California, in the fall she will enter that state’s Western State University College of Law.
“Everything I’ve done here has definitely given me confidence, and I feel like I’m an inspiration to other first-generation students. I came from not even knowing how to apply to college to now helping others apply. I don’t think I would have had all of these opportunities if I’d gone to a larger school,” she said.
Cody Fuller
 |
| Cody Fuller plays on the TLU tennis team. |
A graduate of Cedar Park High School north of Austin, Cody Fuller wanted to play tennis in college. He looked at several schools, but when he visited TLU and met Head Tennis Coach Bill Lehman, he decided to become a Bulldog.
“The tennis program here places its emphasis on academics. You are a student-athlete – student first,” Cody said. “Coach Lehman always advocated for academics – he would tell us, ‘I want you to succeed in tennis, but I want you to get an education and your degree.’”
A business major with a concentration in finance, Cody graduated magna cum laude in May, wearing cords from four different honor societies, and he was named the American Southwest Conference Distinguished Scholar-Athlete in men’s tennis.
Cody said he enjoyed the community life and indepence afforded him by living on campus, and he became an RA (resident assistant), creating that sense of community for other students.
He was president of Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity and an officer in other organizations on campus. He said he is pleased that TLU gave him the opportunity to take leadership roles while he was a student.
“I enjoy leadership, and being here at TLU has created a fire in me to work for it,” he said.
“I see the advantages and the doors leadership can open, and that insight has helped me. TLU has offered me more than an education and an academic background. It has created an ability inside of me to see and understand things in a broader spectrum.”
Cody said his parents encouraged him to study abroad, and, during his junior year, he spent a semester in Hangzhou, China, taking international business, history and language classes.
“Studying abroad in China was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It poked little holes that allowed me to see a more global perspective of the world. You are confined here on the TLU campus. You get wrapped up in the TLU atmosphere. You know that there’s something else out there, but you don’t understand that until you experience it yourself.”
Kati Krzystyniak
When Kati Krzystyniak first came to TLU, she says she was a different person than she is now. Unsure even of her major, she wrote “accounting.”
“I came to this school a shy little freshman – I wasn’t confident in myself,” she said.
Kati’s freshman adviser, accounting professor Ron Huntsman, recommended that she start her accounting courses early. She took principles as a freshman. She said she did pretty well, so she took intermediate as a sophomore – she had found her calling.
“As a sophomore I joined Alpha Kappa Psi, the business fraternity, and I started getting a little more involved on campus,” she said. “I played trombone in the band and was a member of the Leadership Certificate program. I started taking better care of myself, and I gained a little bit more confidence. My experiences in class and doing well made me feel better about myself and what I was doing here.”
When it came time to compete for a Big-4 accounting internship, Kati, with the guidance of Prof. Melanie Thompson and others, went after the prize.
“The internship was kind of a scary experience. All the big firms came to campus. If they liked our resumes and applications, they requested an interview. We didn’t necessarily know what to expect. The professors helped us with that – how to dress and general guidelines.”
The big firms flew Kati and some of her fellow students to Houston and Dallas for the interviews.
“It was a very nerve-racking experience,” she said. “You want to show off what you’ve learned at TLU and to make sure they know who you are because there are so many applicants.”
Kati was selected as an intern at KPMG in Houston, and at the end of the semester, KPMG offered her a job. She will work in their Houston office beginning in October, after she has sat for her CPA exam.
Kati graduated magna cum laude with concurrent B.B.A. and B.S. degrees and a rainbow of cords. She said TLU has helped her change a lot. “Prof. Thompson says I just have this aura about me now.”
Jamie Baldwin
 |
| Student teacher Jamie Baldwin, right, helps a Seguin High School math student. |
Jamie Baldwin knew what she wanted. She wanted to go to a small, liberal arts college, and she wanted to become a math teacher.
“I love math, and I feel like so many students don’t have a good experience with it. I love it so much; I hope that will rub off on my students.”
When Jamie began her freshman year at TLU, like most college freshmen, she had never had a roommate before. She said learning to compromise and work around another person helped her to grow and learn more about herself and other people.
“I think when I came here, I had those rose-colored glasses on,” she said, “But I think I’ve grown up a lot. Not being around my parents and being independent, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what my limits and boundaries are.”
Along the way, she was active in TLU’s Black Student Union, a member of Delta Epsilon Iota, a PACEsetter student all four years, and on the Dean’s List every semester since spring 2006. Jamie started a new chapter of the TLU Mathematical Association of America, and she served as the new organization’s first president. For the past two years she was an admissions advocate, meeting prospective students, answering their questions and showing them around campus when they visited.
“I loved being an admissions advocate and meeting new people. I tell them things that I wish someone would have told me – like plan ahead and don’t live semester by semester. I told my mom I’d graduate in four years, and I did. And I think it’s all because I planned ahead!”
Jamie stayed on track, student teaching last spring at Seguin High School. At the student teacher luncheon at the end of the semester, Jamie was named the department of education’s “2009 Outstanding High School Student Teacher.” She kept her promise to her mother and graduated cum laude in May.
When Jamie went to the Houston area to interview for teaching positions, she said she was surprised at TLU’s excellent reputation in the education arena.
“TLU’s education department is well known, well respected, and as I talked to prospective employers, they knew that I came out of a good program,” she said. “Imagine, this little bitty school has that much clout in the education world!”
Christopher Rodriguez
 |
| Christopher Rodriguez discusses research findings with Dr. Tiffany Sia and Dr. Michael Czuchry. |
The faculty of TLU’s psychology department sealed the deal for Christopher Rodriguez. He started his college career as an information technology major at a large school in Florida, but after one semester, he decided to switch to psychology and move closer to his home in San Antonio.
“I heard good things about TLU, so I started looking at the psychology professors online, and it just struck me how unique their interests were. I thought I wanted to do counseling, but I didn’t necessarily know why. When I came here, I got to talk to Prof. [Carolyn] Turner who has her own private practice. I think it’s good to hear from their different perspectives.”
Chris credits Turner with helping him be selected for an internship last summer with REU – Research Experience for Undergraduates – an exclusive program funded by the National Science Foundation. The program at the University of Texas at Austin took 10 students from around the country, many from Ivy League research universities.
“The program was not competitive, but rather collaborative, and it was a good way to see the different universities’ departments. It was a very good networking opportunity,” he said.
The close working relationship with TLU’s four full-time psychology professors has helped Chris mold and develop his interests – interests that are now in the social psychology realm. He spends most of his free time with psychology professors Dr. Mike Czuchry and Dr. Tiffany Sia, who, along with a handful of psychology majors, work in a group they call OGRE (Ongoing Research Experience).
“My primary interest has to do with barriers to higher education,” he said. “For Hispanics, for example, there are a lot of barriers – some have to do with standardized testing, others have to do with remedial tracks rather than college prep courses.”
His group presented part of their findings at the recent Student Academic Symposium. Their study, “Face-ism,” compared public reaction to various couples, including bi-racial couples.
After graduation from TLU, Chris plans to take a year to work with a nonprofit organization in a real world education setting, before beginning graduate school.
Valerie Clark
 |
| Valerie Clark tours Italy while studying abroad in Spain. |
Valerie Clark is fast. A kinesiology major who loves physical activity, Valerie was a sprinter and hurdler on the TLU track team for four years. She explained her passion this way.
“I love to get on the line and wait for that gun to go off. There’s such an adrenaline rush for me. I run as fast as I can for the next 60 seconds. It is all on me. I have only myself to congratulate or blame in the end.”
Valerie was able to harness this passion last summer when she interned with Dr. Bill Kohl at the University of Texas School of Public Health.
“He got me to wrap my mind around using my kinesiology and my love of activity and physical fitness for a public health career,” she said. “Before I got the internship I didn’t even know what it was. Dr. [Bill] Squires said it would be good for me, and I agreed to try. I received the Budwine Scholarship and headed for Austin. Squires knows how to plug people in and pushes those who he knows can handle it – I appreciate that.”
The internship was an eye-opening experience for Valerie, and she will continue down that path. She has been accepted to UT School of Public Health to begin graduate work in Austin in the fall.
Valerie feels her minor in Spanish and studying in Spain will be helpful for her career in public health, helping her to communicate with those who don’t speak English.
She said she had hoped she would become fluent in Spanish after a semester in Spain last year.
“Once I got there, it was a culture shock,” she said. “The language is not the same type of Spanish as I was used to, and the accents were so heavy. I was terrified of looking like a tourist since the only other time I’d been out of the country was when I went to Nuevo Laredo when I was about 10.”
The semester in Spain boosted Valerie’s independence and broadened her global knowledge as she traveled to seven different countries. She said the experience changed her in ways she still hasn’t completely grasped.
“And sometimes I catch myself thinking in Spanish – but I’m still not fluent.”
Luke Tillman-Young
 |
| Luke Tillman-Young makes his senior seminar presentation at the Student Academic Symposium. |
Most students don’t take two years off between high school and college, but then most students don’t finish high school at 15 or start college at 17. Most students aren’t Luke Tillman-Young.
After finishing high school in Maryland, Luke’s father retired from a high-powered job in Washington D.C., and his family relocated to Texas to be near his grandparents in San Antonio.
Both Harvard Law School graduates, his father and his mother, a minister, together with the rest of his family built a unique tuition-free academy and church on a ranch outside of Seguin.
Luke enrolled and started classes at TLU shortly after his 17th birthday.
“I liked the fact that TLU was a small college in a small town,” Luke said. “I know people on the faculty and staff on a personal level. Here you can talk face-to-face with them, and your ideas can actually be implemented.”
Luke double majored in history and biology. He said he is always interested in how things work – scientifically and historically.
“I think the two complement each other nicely, because history provides a general overview and I can understand where people come from. And biology lets me know what’s going on inside physiologically – inside the body, inside the world.”
In his history senior seminar presentation, Luke discussed “Patterns of Black Business Ownership: A Case Study of Black Farm Operators in Guadalupe County.” His topic came from helping his family build its ranch and school near Seguin.
“The best way to be part of the community is to have the community build it, and so we hired local contractors and workers,” he said. “Through that interaction, I noticed that there weren’t many black ranchers, even though at one time there had been.”
Luke found that he particularly enjoyed interviewing people in the community about history as they experienced it. He said that preparing for the interviews was perhaps the most important part of the process.
“Anyone can ask someone questions, but knowing which questions to ask is what I’ve found makes accurate history,” he said.
“I interviewed a person born in 1913, and I definitely appreciated the effects the civil rights movement had and the transition that we’ve seen over the past 100 years. Understanding the regional dynamics of race relations within the past century, especially here in Seguin, has led me to discover that it definitely deviates from contemporary stereotypes of racism.”
Luke presented his findings before a standing-room only crowd at the Student Academic Symposium on April 17. Students and professors from a variety of disciplines listened closely to the half-hour presentation and then asked probing questions.
“The questions definitely challenged me and made me realize how broad my education was because I had to pull everything together to answer their questions. It was an amazing experience. It was definitely a culmination of everything I learned at TLU.”
Luke completed his degree in 3 ½ years and plans to take a year off to work in a foreign exchange program before beginning law school and, perhaps, a career in politics.
Andrew Jastram
 |
| Andrew Jastram visits Hanua Falls, about an hour from Auckland, New Zealand. |
Physics just fits Andrew Jastram.
“I like the way everything works together – my mind works well with these types of problems,” he said.
It was his love of physics, along with a recommendation from Dr. Lorne Davis, that earned Andrew an internship in 2007 at SMU’s Research Center for Advanced Manufacturing, working with lasers and welding samples of high strength steel for GM.
“I got to roam around the lab with the resident senior research scientist and get a taste of all the different projects,” he said. “It was really cool to see more than just a canned lab assignment.”
In spring 2008, Andrew took a giant step outside of his comfort zone and found another life-changing experience when he studied abroad in New Zealand for the semester. Before, he said his nature had been to sit back and analyze things, often missing opportunities that he later regretted. But because he was going halfway around the world, he knew he had to change.
“In high school, I wouldn’t have done this, but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I knew if I didn’t take advantage of it, the experiences would definitely pass me by. I learned so much in that little time I was in New Zealand – overall it was an amazing experience! I wanted to go somewhere I could learn about another culture. And that I definitely did!”
Back at TLU, he said he has changed.
“I am more open to opportunities. I have booked my schedule very full.”
Andrew’s next opportunity is graduate school. He has been accepted into the physics Ph.D. program at Texas A&M.
“I hear about a new opportunity for physics everyday – a new idea I hadn’t thought of. Skills you learn with a physics degree are applicable to many things – mathematical modeling, astronomy, medical applications, engineering. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll do after I earn my Ph.D.”
But you can bet he won’t miss the opportunity when it does come.
