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(Austonia staff)
The University of Texas-Austin continued its march toward a new normal on Friday, as university President Gregory Fenves marked his last day of leadership after five years in office—the final two months of it dominated by sweeping pandemic-era changes on campus.
As he heads to Atlanta to lead Emory University, Fenves passes the torch on Monday to Interim President Jay Hartzell, dean of the McCombs School of Business, who takes the helm just three months before classes start on Aug. 26.
Greg Fenves(Marsha Miller/University of Texas)
Hartzell faces a term marked by new protocols aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 among students, faculty and staff on campus. University officials said that the transition, even in such uncertain times, is expected to be smooth.
"Even though this is a challenging time for higher education nationally, UT-Austin has prepared well for the transition in leadership to President ad interim Hartzell," Kevin P. Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, told Austonia on Thursday, saying he has "full support" of the university leadership.
Depending on his own plans and how long it takes university officials to name a permanent replacement, Hartzell will almost certainly also be called upon to play the roles of politician and advocate in the Texas Capitol, just two miles away, when UT faces budget cuts during the Legislature next year.
But officials say Hartzell's immediate mission is to ensure the campus is ready for its approximately 40,000 students to return to a safe, productive learning environment that is as valuable as it was before the pandemic caused so many changes.
Jay Hartzell(University of Texas)
"Our number-one goal at this time is to ensure that UT institutions are prepared to educate students, serve patients and conduct critical research in environments safe for students, faculty and staff," UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken told Austonia on Thursday. "[Hartzell] has very successfully led one of the largest colleges on campus, and for the last couple of months, he has been involved in all major decisions as the institution navigates the challenges of the pandemic and budget reductions. We need this kind of experienced leadership in the months ahead."
Neither Fenves nor Hartzell were available to comment this week.
The news that Fenves was leaving came less than two weeks after the university officially closed to contain the spread of coronavirus. It capped a term marked by success in financial aid and graduation rates, and no headline-grabbing scandals or damaging public infighting.
His announcement was a surprise to many because Fenves' candidacy at Emory, whose president vacated the role late last year, was not made public until both universities made official announcements on April 7.
It was not long after Maurie McInnis, then the provost, said she would leave at the end of the semester to become president of Stony Brook University.
Even Hartzell expressed surprise at his new role, joking last month that he was hurrying to organize his office so the new dean of McCombs, Lillian Mills, could easily take over when he moves to the tower leadership offices.
Fenves wasn't specific about his reasons for the move, but given the nature of the two vastly different jobs, Fenves likely heads to higher pay, better decision-making control, more privacy, less meddling by politicians and an overall less-public role at the prominent private research university in Georgia.
Former UT Chancellor Mark Yudof describes the post as "a great job," but one that is highly accountable to taxpayers, lawmakers, and the media in several ways—particularly as it comes to campus policies and budgeting.
Testifying before the state Legislature and fighting for funding, for example, is a vital part of the role—one Yudof relished, as a lawyer who spent his career at public institutions. By contrast, the focus of private school leadership tends to more "inward" on education and internal campus issues, he said.
"It's very different," said Yudof, who served as president of the University of California after UT. "I've never held a high post in a private school, but I did for a time think about whether I should make the move."
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Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
