by Adam Sanchez ’28
As a native of nearby New Braunfels, Maggie Bergeron had always felt that TLU was a comfortable, inviting community. After getting accepted and coming to campus in the fall of 2008, she knew that TLU was the place for her. Because she’d attended a smaller high school, the idea of a large university like UT was intimidating. “I was pretty sure I’d get lost in the crowd, and not in a good way,” she says, looking back. During her time at TLU, Bergeron homed in on the skills and strategies needed to step into her current role as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Administrator for Victoria, Texas.
As a member of the Delta Alpha Delta sorority, Bergeron learned a lot about what it takes to be a great coordinator, between talking to people and organizing activities for the group. “I kind of knew I had a knack for creating schedules and events, getting things set up,” she says. As it turned out, she wasn’t just planning social gatherings and events for her sorority; she was learning the planning and administration practice that she would eventually utilize in her career. She learned from her successes—but even more, she learned from her mistakes. “Everyone has a different learning style, but for me, failure is the best learning experience.”
Bergeron had always found political science and analytical thinking interesting. “I was the kid who watched C-SPAN,” she says. “It’s being able to be decisive. Give me something to solve or fix. I love problem solving.”
At TLU, she took advantage of the political science major’s internship requirement by working with the City of Seguin’s Planning Department and Main Street Program. Bergeron remembers talking with Dr. Germaine Walsh, professor of political science and director of International Studies, about her internship, telling Walsh that she initially found the work to be boring. Yet she persisted, later working on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the City of Dallas.
That experience changed Bergeron’s perspective, and it turned out that the initial projects leading up to that work were invaluable early components in her career. At TLU, she’d learned a lot of lessons that proved priceless in graduate school and beyond. “It’s not always going to be something in your lane, but you still have to do it,” she says in hindsight. “You have to do the right thing. The diversity in learning and thinking really followed me.”
After graduating TLU, Bergeron went on to Texas State to pursue her master’s in sustainability studies. There, doing assignments was standard, but being able to bring critical thought into conversations was something that she was prepared for—thanks to TLU. “[TLU] made it much less intimidating once I got into the [graduate school] classroom.”
Now, as the regional transportation decision-making authority for an area encompassing some fifty thousand people, Bergeron finds herself doing a wide variety of tasks around Victoria. “I can go from mapping, to building a model, to budgeting, to running socio-demographics for an area,” she says. “You have to wear a lot of hats, but if you have the willingness to learn, there’s not much you can’t get done.”
To better understand transit needs, Bergeron found herself riding public transit along with commuters, asking face-to-face questions about what their thoughts were. Getting personal comments from the people directly affected by changes to public transit proved to be one of the most important types of feedback that informs her planning processes.
Sometimes things like attending events hosted at libraries, and appealing to children and their families, are parts of the job. She asks attendees how they feel about the current system, how they would feel about their children walking on area streets, and whether there might be any known deficiencies. Through experiences such as this, Bergeron has learned that public education, transparency, and meeting the people of the community where they are all make for better transportation planning.
One valuable lesson from TLU she’ll never forget: “Learning never stops. Always try to communicate and approach things on different sides.” Opportunity and discovery change the way you approach your daily life and overarching goals, but, at every step, life experiences have shaped Bergeron’s career.
Adam Sanchez ’28 is a junior communication studies major.
