Student Spotlight
Trumpet and Tradition
Organizing a mariachi band on the Angelo State University campus was a cultural imperative and just came naturally for Rosendo Ramos.
The ASU senior music major’s family boasts three generations of mariachis, and he developed his own chops playing trumpet in mariachi bands at San Angelo Central High School and the former Edison Junior High School, now the Central Freshman Campus.
“My grandpa played with professional mariachis in Mexico,” Ramos said. “He played with a lot of great artists and passed it on to my dad who comes from a family of 10 with five brothers who all play mariachi.”
Ramos also has two uncles who live in Mexico and play mariachi music professionally.
“They play at bars and make enough money to live off of,” he said. “They also play for tips in Cuidad Acuna on a street that has many bars. They have a repertoire of 250-300 songs and play all of them from memory.”
That background led Ramos to form Mariachi OroAzul (Blue and Gold) as an ASU student organization that debuted during ASU’s Rambunctious Weekend at the beginning of the fall 2010 semester. He took up the mantle of leadership as president of the group along with Laura Lara, vice president, after former ASU student Victor Andrade laid the group’s foundation several years ago.
“Victor got it going,” Ramos said, “then Laura and I came back this spring and got everything together to get the organization started.”
Ramos hopes his group and the mariachi genre become popular enough on campus to eventually be incorporated into the Art and Music Department with a mariachi instructor.
“A lot of university mariachi bands in the San Antonio area started as student organizations that became a big part of their music departments,” he said.
Another goal for Ramos is for his group to enter the Mariachi Vargas extravaganza, an eight-day music festival that draws 15,000 fans and 1,000 performers to San Antonio to witness the Mexican tradition that stretches back 113 years.
As for himself, Ramos hopes to become a music teacher, and in particular, a mariachi teacher.
“But, I’m going to get certified as a band teacher,” he said. “I love that and it’s what I want to do. I prefer junior high and high school, but I might eventually teach in college if I get my master’s and advance my education.”
Also in the near future for Ramos is marriage to his fiancé, April Martinez.
Much of Ramos’ time since he has been at ASU has been taken up playing his music, not only mariachi, but jazz and classical.
“Jazz really caught my attention,” he said. “My number one favorite jazz artist is Arturo Sandoval. He’s more Latin jazz, and I like Wynton Marsalis.”
Ramos credits Dr. John Irish and playing in the West Texas Jazz Band for sharpening his skills, and his foray into classical music has helped him build a foundation for his other musical pursuits.
“Classical is where all the fundamentals come from,” Ramos said. “I like the baroque style and early classical music.”
But mariachi music will always be in his heart because it is part of the culture of Mexico.
“My family came straight from Mexico and mariachi represents us directly,” Ramos said. “It’s not as well known here, but in San Antonio, it is everywhere. That’s what I want for San Angelo, so we can get students from Central and maybe start a program at Lake View, and even have a lot of people come to ASU eventually.”
Breaking New Ground
ASU biology major Stephen Boyles spends half his time trying to knock people’s teeth out, and the other half preparing for a career in fixing them.
As an offensive line starter on the ASU Rams football team, Boyles bangs heads weekly with some of the biggest and meanest players on the opponents’ rosters. Off the field he is a gentle giant who could be the first ASU football player to apply to medical school and only the second to apply to dental school.
It almost didn’t happen that way for Boyles, though, as he was actually considering giving up football to be a full-time student, even though he had interest from NCAA Division I schools like Texas Tech. But, when he and his parents investigated ASU, they discovered he could live out both of his dreams.
“ASU was one of my last football visits,” Boyles said. “I loved the campus, I liked the coaches and I really liked what Dr. (Russell) Wilke and Dr. (Alan) Bloebaum said about how it’s possible to both play football and be a doctor. So, I made my choice.”
“There has been a real push, especially in Division II athletics, for the ‘student-athlete,’” he added. “The well-rounded student-athlete, where you are involved in the community, you do excellent in school, you have a bright career ahead of you and you do well in athletics. At ASU it is definitely possible to do it all and I’ve done great here.”
Only a junior in football eligibility, Boyles has two more seasons to deliver teeth-rattling blows from his left guard position. He also gets to take advantage of ASU’s pre-health program that boasts one of the top medical and dental school acceptance rates in the state.
“Basically, by the time I graduate, I will have had my first two years of dental or med school, with at least background in everything,” Boyles said. “We have medical genetics, histology, anatomy and general physiology. There are tons of classes here that work out perfectly to set you up to be at the top of your class in medical or dental school. Not just get in, but to compete to be a top student.”
Boyles is already a top student at ASU. He has been awarded a Carr Academic Scholarship and Biology Special Academic Scholarship, was picked for the Lone Star Conference Commissioner’s Honor Roll and is a member of the Alpha Chi and Alpha Lambda Delta honor societies. He is also a member of the Tri-Beta biology honor society, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Who’s Who Among American College and University Students, and was picked for the District 6 All-Academic Team by ESPN.
In the Athletic Department, he is a member of the Student Athlete Advising Council, is on the Champions’ Table for team leaders and is part of the Player’s Panel that helps with recruiting high school football players.
“During recruiting season, our coaches try to match up our players with high school players who have the same interests,” Boyles said. “It might be by position or where they are from or academics. It helps to form ties between the different players.”
In addition to all of his campus activities, Boyles also has community service and shadowing responsibilities as part of the pre-health program. He has performed almost 100 hours of community service with agencies like Meals for the Elderly, Rebuilding Together and the San Angelo Children’s Fair, and has spent more than 100 hours shadowing various medical professionals in fields ranging from OB/GYN and orthopedics to ophthalmology, dermatology, oral surgery and periodontics.
In fact, it was through shadowing periodontist Dr. Marshall Morgan that Boyles reaffirmed his desire to go to dental school.
“I’ve always been leaning toward the dental field because that is what I’m familiar with,” he said. “I’ve worked in my dad’s office and I already know how to do a lot of different things that he taught me. But, it was when I shadowed a periodontist back in Odessa that I really got intrigued with that field.”
Regardless of what medical field he eventually chooses, at 6’4” and 280 pounds, Boyles will strike a commanding figure as one of ASU’s first football players to stride the halls of dental or medical school.
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Driven to Serve
Jeff Harris won a second term as ASU Student Government Association (SGA) president in April, but will trade it for a higher position after being named the student regent on the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents in May.
Governor Rick Perry’s office informed Harris that he would have to step down from the SGA post to assume the regent position, something he sees as worthwhile.
“The Board of Regents will be more work, but nothing I can’t handle,” he said. “I will graduate next May, but I will only lack four hours that semester which will be good because the Tech system will be going into the legislative session.”
Harris also sought the Precinct 5 seat on the San Angelo City Council, but lost to local businessman Kendall Hirschfeld.
“That was good practice for running for office,” Harris said. “I’ve worked on a few campaigns, but I’ve never run one of my own. I don’t think I want for anything for trying. I learned there is a lot of hands-on time that has to be spent, especially in the district where you’re running.”
“I ultimately want to end up in politics,” he added. “I’ve done a lot of work with the Republican Party, and I restarted the College Republicans here at ASU in fall 2007. We also started a program that should keep the College Republicans running during off-election years. When there are no elections, it’s more of an informational group bringing in speakers and helping people understand what’s going on in politics.”
Harris sees himself as a catalyst for getting necessary projects accomplished.
When he assumed the SGA post in spring of 2009, Harris looked at projects that were already in effect to make sure they were running as efficiently as possible.
“We came in and looked at the committees and the student discount program,” he said. “We are up to 48 or 49 businesses in the discount program with everything from electric companies, to food and entertainment entities, retail and pretty much anything you can look for.”
An issue that recently arose among ASU students and alumni is the lack of ASU-branded products available in the community.
“It’s one of those deals that has always been a small complaint, but it came up recently, especially with our shift to the Texas Tech system,” Harris said. “People saw a lot of Tech merchandise everywhere, but not ASU merchandise.”
The SGA started a push to increase available goods and, after meeting with administrators and local business owners, found out there was a perceived lack of demand.
“Businesses didn’t think demand would justify carrying ASU products,” he said. “We initiated the petition to get ASU products in the stores. Now, Academy, Wal-Mart and Hastings are carrying ASU products. Now people need to buy them because the more people buy the merchandise, the cheaper it will get and the more they will carry.”
A graduate from Arlington High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Harris is still active in the Texas Republican Party and the state College Republicans, where he serves on the executive board focusing on resolutions. When he isn’t elbow-deep in politics, Harris likes to volunteer for worthy causes.
“I’ve done a lot of work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Cancer Society, Meals for the Elderly and Special Olympics, and I’ve gone out to Legend Oaks Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center to help out there.”
But for now, Harris focuses on ASU students’ concerns.
He was recently instrumental in getting a student vote on a campus health care fee passed, a measure that will allow the ASU Health Clinic to keep operating at its current level and negotiate a deal with a local hospital for services and prescriptions to keep prices reasonable.
Harris also has worked with the city government to get more professional internships for students with city agencies because it helps with student retention at ASU and in San Angelo.
“My two big words are investment and involvement,” he said, “because when you start involving people in a local field where they can stay here and get their credit or experience from it, they are becoming invested in this community. Once people become more invested in the community, they are more likely to stay here to develop an identity with the community and be a part of it.”
Currently a senior, Harris plans to get a Master of Public Administration degree at ASU after getting his bachelor’s degree in May 2011.
“Really, politics is a matter of opinion on how things should be run,” he said. “If you have office politics and you don’t agree on something, you have to agree to disagree and get on with the job. Usually, you have an extreme option here and an extreme option there. When you put them together and compromise, you usually get a pretty decent option that everybody can live with.”
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Teaching Legacy
Jordan Cox grew up in a family of educators, so it wasn’t a stretch for him to become a teacher, too.
“I come from a long line of teachers,” Cox said. “I have maybe two or three relatives who aren’t in education and the rest are superintendents, diagnosticians or teachers. My mom is an English teacher and taught me in high school at Rotan, and my dad taught me math in middle school. My aunt taught me English in middle school and my uncle was my principal. I also have an uncle who is the athletic director at Jim Ned High School (Tuscola).”
With a legacy like that, it’s no surprise that Cox is avid about his chosen profession. The Carr scholar graduated from ASU in three years and taught in the Paint Rock Independent School District for a year before moving to his present teaching post at Grape Creek High School.
“I love English first and foremost,” he said. “I teach four sections of English and I’m the ESL (English as a Second Language) coordinator at Grape Creek Middle School. I also teach a section of remedial math.”
Besides those duties, Cox is the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) coordinator for the Grape Creek ISD and is charged with setting up and organizing the standardized test used to measure reading, writing, math, science and social studies skills.
Cox will graduate in May with a master’s in education from ASU, after which he hopes to work as a counselor for awhile before pursuing a doctorate and later teaching at the university level.
“I don’t want to be one of those professors who says, ‘I heard in a book somewhere that you are supposed to teach it this way,’” Cox said. “I want to be in the trenches and teaching from experience. That way you can tell your education students ‘this works for me’ and tell them ‘this is what helped me get through to this kid who was ADD and also to the three other kids in the class who were bouncing off the walls.’”
When he does move to the university level, Cox wants to teach counseling and curriculum and instruction.
“From what I understand from my professors,” he said, “if you have 18 graduate hours, you can teach those classes. I’ll graduate in guidance and counseling, and I’ll get my doctorate in curriculum and instruction, so I could do both.”
Cox learned about the Carr Research Scholarship program from one of his professors, Dr. Mary McGlamery, who encouraged him to return for his master’s degree after getting his bachelor’s.
“She introduced me to the Carr grant,” Cox said. “I told her I couldn’t find anything about how teachers and counselors interact and how counselors can help teachers out. She said I should sign up for the Carr grant and research it. We sent out a survey to the counselors to see what they do to prevent teacher attrition, and they ranked the effectiveness of what they do and how often they do it.”
Cox said he plans to create another survey to correlate the counselors’ viewpoints with teachers and see which ones work best.
As for his present teaching duties, he couldn’t be happier.
“I love where I work,” he said. “It’s one of those prime examples where the teachers work really well together. I don’t think I could do the TAKS coordinating without the support I’ve gotten from the teachers and principals that are helping me out.”
Cox’s background also plays into his comfort level at Grape Creek.
“Coming from a smaller town, even though Grape Creek is way bigger than Rotan,” he said, “the students ask what I did in school and I can relate back to them. Kids want to know about their teachers. I’m the nerdy teacher who will walk through the hallway and give them high fives with pens and pencils in my pockets. They seem to gravitate towards me.”
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Helping Others
When Stephen O’Brien found out he would have to do community service as a requirement for membership in his high school’s National Honor Society chapter, he was a little apprehensive.
“I was one of those people who dreaded the moment of getting into it,” he said. “We were required to get services hours and it was a miniscule amount, like 10 hours a semester.”
He went a little beyond that for an organization in his hometown of Olney, near Wichita Falls, called Helping Olney Possess Excellence (HOPE).
“My whole senior year in high school,” O’Brien said, “I volunteered for HOPE. We helped poverty-stricken families, their children and children with academic disabilities. It was an after-school program to help parents who couldn’t afford daycare, and could drop their children off and pick them up after work.”
When he wasn’t working at a local grocery store in Olney, O’Brien could often be found at the HOPE facility.
“I did it just because I really liked what I was doing,” he said. “That’s what I got out of it, and they were thankful for it, too. It was a completely eye-opening experience.”
The integrated accounting student found himself drawn back into volunteerism at ASU when he began filling in with the Community Development Initiatives (CDI) after his roommate, Brian Zitrick, asked him if he would help from time to time.
“Brian was working with CDI on data analysis to create a baseline for the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council for the Concho Valley Community Action and Resources for Empowerment and Success (CARES),” O’Brien said. “They needed someone to take up the slack, so I talked to Dr. (Ken) Stewart and really liked what he had to say about CDI and decided to take up where Brian left off.”
“I didn’t know Dr. Stewart, and I didn’t know any of the people in sociology or psychology, but when I heard what they were doing, I just had to be part of it,” he said. “During the summer of 2009, Dr. Stewart put me on a project to get the books of a church in order so they could develop a faith-based transitional program for prisoners coming out of prison to get them back on track.”
“They required funding for that,” O’Brien added, “so when I was brought in, they had no real track of numbers, where their expenses were going and how much money they were making. I went in and completely redid their books for six years. Now, they can go into the software program, develop budgets and project how much they will make in a certain time period.”
His volunteer work is temporarily being curtailed by studies and a student position with a San Angelo certified public accountants firm, a career path he is exploring along with the possibility of becoming a criminal investigative agent for the Internal Revenue Service.
“Basically, the IRS agents are accountants with guns,” O’Brien said. “Right now, I have an internship in town where you can see how the real world works. I think I might like the private sector of accounting, as well, dealing with corporate tax returns, personal estates and trusts. I’m kind of on the fence and I like the amount of options open to me.”
When he completes the integrated accounting program in 2011, O’Brien will have both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He said he would then likely continue helping others in his free time.
“Definitely, I’ll be going to soup kitchens during the Lent season,” O’Brien said. “Other than that, it just depends where I end up and what I am doing. I like giving back to the community, but it’s difficult sometimes.”
That won’t stop him from giving of himself, though.
“It’s hard to know how well you have it until you’ve walked in someone else’s shoes,” he said. “Then you say, ‘well, I guess I can go spend a couple of hours in a soup kitchen.’”
