University Of Texas At Austin

Researchers at the University of Texas' Cockrell School of Engineering have been tapped to help propel Uber "air taxis" into the sky.

UberAIR – the ride-hailing company's proposed urban aviation program – is set to launch flight demonstrations in Dallas and Los Angeles by 2020. The service is scheduled to be commercially available to riders by 2023. 

The suspect accused of stabbing four people Monday near Gregory Gym on UT campus may have been "suffering from mental health issues," UT Police Chief David Carter said.

Kendrex White, a 21-year-old junior, has been booked on a charge of murder in the death of first-year student Harrison Brown. He faces additional assault charges for the stabbing of three others. As of Tuesday morning, one of those victims was still in the hospital, UT President Greg Fenves said.

From the Texas Tribune: The Texas Longhorns' old football coach has a new job. That's good news for him, and it's even better news for budget-conscious University of Texas at Austin.

The University of South Florida announced Sunday that Charlie Strong, who was fired by UT-Austin at the end of this season with two years left on his contract, will be the school's new football coach. That means UT-Austin will hold on to some of the millions of dollars that it still owes him. 

Tom Herman is coming back to the 40 Acres, this time as Head Coach of the Longhorns football team. The announcement from University of Texas Athletics Director Mike Perrin came just hours after the news that Charlie Strong had been dismissed from the head coach job following three losing seasons. 

From the Texas Tribune: University of Texas System Regent Wallace Hall's public fight with the chancellor of the system he oversees isn't over yet. 

With the clock ticking on his time on the board of regents, Hall has filed an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court to get access to confidential student records that Chancellor Bill McRaven has denied him. 

As one of the first black students to attend the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Miles faced a circumscribed life. It was 1956, and there were many places he and other blacks were not allowed to go. So when the pastor of a nearby church announced that blacks were welcome there, Miles and his friends saw no reason to not attend. 

From the Texas Tribune: Across Texas, tens of thousands of students have earned enough college credit for an associate degree without knowing it. A new project led by the University of Texas at Austin hopes to track them down. 

The program to be announced Tuesday, known as Reverse Transfer, will attempt to get those students their degrees — and maybe convince them to continue their schooling. If successful, there could be benefits for the students and the state, its creators say. And officials hope its use will extend beyond Texas. 

"It's a win-win-win solution all the way around," said UT-Austin Registrar Shelby Stanfield, who led the initiative. 

Last week marked the surprise return of one of the preeminent voices of 1980s newspaper comics: Berkeley Breathed, the artist and author behind Bloom County — and University of Texas alum. The strip, for which Breathed was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, was put to rest — supposedly for good — in 1989. Breathed followed that strip with others, featuring some of the same characters, like Outland in the ‘90s and Opus in the mid-aughts.

From the Texas Tribune: After more than three weeks as the sole finalist for the job, Gregory Fenves has been named the next president of the University of Texas at Austin. 

And this time, the current executive vice president and provost has been elevated without any dissent. The vote to hire him was 8-0 by the UT System Board of Regents. Regent Wallace Hall abstained from voting.

From the Texas Tribune:

University of Texas at Austin President Bill Powers has helped secure college admittance for some students over the objections of the admissions office, according to an external review of lawmaker and regent influence at the flagship campus.

UT-Austin's Blanton Museum of Art has acquired and will construct an original work by artist Ellsworth Kelly. The price tag for the construction is $15 million, but the work is more than a sculpture or an installation – it's a 2,715-square-foot building.

Kelly designed the piece, now titled "Austin," in 1986, and he hoped that it would one day be built in a public space. The work will feature a redwood totem sculpture, black and white marble panels and colored stained glass windows.

Parking around the UT campus when classes are in session is never easy, but it's also going to get more expensive soon. Parking rates are set to go up on the UT Austin campus, and it's an increase that will continue for several years. Outgoing President Bill Powers asked a committee of faculty and administrators to look into how to get more money for the university out of parking, and not surprisingly, the answer was higher fees.

The increases vary based on which permit you get, but it is an increase across the board. Let's say you have an "F Garage" permit, which currently costs $420 a year. Five years from now, that same permit will cost $588.  A "C" permit, for students parking in surface level lots, which is currently $120, will go up roughly $6 a year over the next five years, up to $150.

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is donating $25 million in a challenge grant to pay for Seton Healthcare Family’s new teaching hospital in Austin.

Susan Dell, who announced the decision today, says they want the community to get involved in donating the remaining $25 million. The $50 million combined will go toward the Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas.

"We will have state-of-the-art treatments for our patients, we’ll be able to attract the best talent in the country to our team here in Central Texas," Dell said. "One of Michael and my biggest goals is always about elevating the level of care for the entire community here in Central Texas, and this project helps us do that."

Most young women and men prefer to equally share family and work responsibilities, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California Santa Barbara.

The researchers found that regardless of their social class, both men and women ages 18 to 32 prefer relationships in which the woman isn’t doing more of the housework and the man isn't spending more time at work.

Women who participated in the survey say they’d prefer to not be the primary caregivers and homemakers, if they could have support from their workplaces.