September on the Forty Acres
As September winds down, the Forty Acres has plenty to celebrate.
This month, the first day of fall brought dreams of burnt orange trees and pumpkin spice lattes, although temperatures remained in the high 90s. Despite the heat, game day festivities were in full swing as Longhorn City Limits welcomed artists including Robert Earl Keen and Sugar Ray to the LBJ Lawn, giving fans a soundtrack for Texas Football’s September home games.
The Longhorns gave those fans plenty to cheer about inside DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium too, kicking off their season with a win against Texas State. The team continued to protect their undefeated record, even coming back from a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit to win against then No. 1 Ohio State by one point.
That wasn’t the only kick worth talking about. Before the Ohio State game, freshman Connor Kacena-Merrell stepped up at ESPN’s “College GameDay” and kicked his way to a $1.2 million prize. The electrical engineering and business double major pledged to donate half his winnings to Building Tomorrow, a nonprofit based in his home state of Indiana.
A short walk from the stadium, you could find another team of Longhorns making a different kind of impact. At the turtle pond, student researchers found that turtles on the Forty Acres carry a distinctive mix of microbes compared with turtles at other Austin ponds. The research not only reveals previously unknown details about ecology and turtle behavior, but also opens doors for future undergraduate researchers to continue practicing effective research methods.
The research news didn’t stop at the pond’s edge. UT researchers in the College of Natural Sciences helped develop a lower-waste method for breaking down a durable plastic that has been especially hard to recycle. The research could offer a new way to recover valuable materials from products that might otherwise be incinerated.
Longhorns were also making their mark beyond campus. In September, the Home to Texas program celebrated 38 students who spent the summer in paid internships in their hometowns. They returned to campus with new professional skills and a deeper understanding of the communities that shaped them.
Meanwhile in Austin, the Autry C. Stephens Engineering Discovery Building celebrated its completion while the pediatric neuroscience program at Dell Children’s Medical Center, led by Dell Medical School faculty, received national recognition.
With October just around the corner, we can’t wait to see what Longhorns do next. Before we turn the page, take one more look at September through the photos on UT’s Instagram. Hook ’em!
