The Honorable Gisela Triana-Doyal, ’88, administered the University of Texas School of Law Professionalism Oath to incoming first-year students, August 22, 2011.
UT Law’s Class of 2014 arrived August 22, 2011, for 1L Orientation and the beginning of classes. As usual, the incoming students are a diverse and accomplished group.
Members of the Class of 2014 have lived or worked in the following countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belgium, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territories), Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Panama, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tibet, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vietnam, and Zambia.
And can speak the following languages:
Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese (Teochew dialect), English, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Mandarin, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Urdu.
UT Law Dean Larry Sager addresses the Class of 2014.
They can play the following musical instruments:
accordion, alto saxophone, autoharp, bagpipes, banjo, baritone, bass guitar, bassoon, cello, clarinet, congas and bata drums, doumbek, drums, erhu, euphonium, flute, french horn, guitar, handbells, harmonica, kazoo, mandolin, marimba, oboe, organ, percussion, piano, recorder, saxophone, tambourine, tenor saxophone, train whistle, trombone, trumpet, tuba, ukulele, viola, violin, and xylophone.
Among their many accomplishments, individual members of the class have:
- Helped a philanthropy raise $9.5 million for children suffering from pediatric cancer
- Taught kindergarten
- Registered seven thousand voters
- Run a marathon
- Hiked the Grand Canyon rim to floor and back in a single day
- Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro
- Worked as a community organizer
- Attained the rank of sergeant in the United States Marine Corps
- Started a boxing club at their university and at a local high school
- Won an award for best paper and presentation at the nation’s largest undergraduate philosophy conference
- Won a three hundred-person poker tournament
- Completed an eighty-kilometer trek through the Peruvian Andes
- Been the first person in their family to graduate from college
- Taught three years in a low-income high school in the Rio Grande Valley
- Circumnavigated the globe
- Helped to launch a national music-in-schools program
- Created a successful clothes drive for the local colonias
- Led a seminar on women’s health for a recent mothers’ home in Nicaragua
- Directed a university mariachi group to a third-place finish in an international mariachi competition
- Lived out of a car while earning two undergraduate degrees
- Earned a PhD in developmental cellular biology
- Placed first in age group at two triathlons
- Started a summer drop-out prevention program for their community’s most at-risk youth, with a 100 percent graduation rate among those students that finished the program
- Published short stories
- Had a student film screened at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California
- Helped to change the U.S. Embassy in London’s policy for reviewing business visas
- Learned to read Biblical Greek and Hebrew
- Performed a one-man show based on Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider
- Bicycled 2,600 miles from Germany to the Caspian Sea
- Worked for a television news channel in New Delhi, India
- Ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain
- Saw the last game played at Yankee Stadium
- Represented the U.S. at the 2006 IAAF World Junior Track & Field Championships in Beijing, China
Professors Robert Bone, Jennifer Laurin, Justin Driver, and Mitch Berman offer advice on how to succeed in law school at the Class of 2014 Orientation.
Forty-four percent of the Class of 2014 are female, and the average age of the class is twenty-four. Minority representation is 32 percent. The youngest incoming student is nineteen years old, while the oldest is forty-nine. Class members come from thirty-four different states.
We welcome the newest members of the UT Law community, and wish them success in their studies and beyond.