Digital Impact Report 2023

In our last Impact Report, we shared with you our new Moody College Strategic Plan, which will guide the college’s efforts and investments during the next 10 years. 

Like with the larger UT Austin strategic plan, Moody College, as part of its own plan, chose to invest in its people, to leverage its unique place in Austin and Texas, and to improve experiences, education and research to ensure it remains the highest impact communication college in the world. 

In 2022-23, Moody College put special emphasis on improving the Moody experience, making considerable progress on these goals, as listed in the plan: 

• Enhancing digital media assets and expertise in all areas of teaching, research, service and operation. 
• Strengthening innovative advising, coaching, mentoring and training to create dynamic, equitable and successful futures. 
• Setting the standard for operational excellence on campus and in higher education. 
• Expanding awareness of, and support for, Moody’s unique impact and influence within the campus, community, state, country and world. 

In pursuit of these goals, Moody College has unveiled significant changes to its complex that reflect its desire to improve the student experience, including adding new study spaces with more access to power for laptops in both the G.B. Dealey Center for New Media and Communication Building A. Right away, students crowded around each other working in these spaces. Radio-Television-Film and Journalism and Media studios have been outfitted with new sets, lighting, curtains, PCs and production equipment. And in August, Moody College unveiled its new Student Success Suite on Dealey’s first floor, a hub for academic advising, study abroad, the UTLA and UTNY programs, Career Center interviews and mental health counseling for students. 

To further help students, the college’s academic advisers are all now mental health first aid certified — making Moody College the first advising office on campus to become fully trained. 

The in-house Marketing and Communications Office also has made great strides, aligning its strategic plan with Moody’s. In the past year, the staff has created new marketing campaigns to attract top undergraduate and graduate students and has boosted efforts to promote faculty expertise and thought leadership. 

Expanding awareness of and support for Moody College also includes stories like this one, where we get to share the amazing things happening on campus. 

Jade Emerson, who graduated in May 2023 with a degree in journalism, spent the bulk of her college career working with The Drag Audio, Moody College’s podcast production house, on a 12-episode, long-form series about Lady Bird Johnson.

At the LBJ Library, she listened to hours of old interviews with the former first lady. She traveled to Washington D.C., where Lady Bird helped implement her historic environmental policies, and spent time on the banks of Caddo Lake in East Texas, where the first lady grew up.

This summer, “Lady Bird” was released on all podcast platforms to a flurry of press appearances. In June, Emerson sat next to Luci Baines Johnson, Lady Bird’s daughter, in the historic Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Southwest Austin to promote the podcast, rain trickling down in the nearby fields that Lady Bird so loved.

It’s been a whirlwind that Emerson calls the honor of a lifetime. And it still surprises her. She came to Moody College not quite sure what she wanted to do before discovering audio storytelling and The Drag.

Moody College prides itself on giving students these one-of-a-kind experiences that they can’t get at any other communication college in the world.

This past year, Moody doubled its efforts, bringing in even more leading industry professionals for events and for mentoring students; opening opportunities to work at events like SXSW and the Texas Tribune Festival; boosting its UTLA and UTNY programs so even more students may study in these premier cities; adding the most advanced technology like new recording studios and improved community spaces and supporting cutting-edge research that is already having worldwide impacts.

Moody College kicked off the fall semester celebrating 25 years of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, which offers a broad selection of remote courses to journalists around the world.

In the spring, the School of Journalism and Media unveiled its new Photo Gallery, which hosted its first annual juried photo competition and will continue to display exceptional work by students and professionals. As the school year closed, the college announced the new Woolfolk Center for Language Disorders Research, a research and clinical site for graduate and undergraduate students that will revolutionize the treatment of language disorders. Two days later, blockbuster actor Glen Powell gave the keynote address at the Moody College Graduation Ceremony.

And just when the semester wrapped and you might have thought Moody would go quiet for the summer, Communication Studies professor Talia Stroud published four groundbreaking research papers on the same day and made the cover of Science magazine for work she did alongside Meta and researchers from other universities exploring the role of Facebook and Instagram in the 2020 U.S. election.

The world and the way we communicate is constantly changing. And Moody College is, among other areas, transforming healthcare, curbing disinformation and advancing AI. In this report, you’ll learn more about these efforts and hear directly from students like Emerson, as well as from amazing Moody College faculty and staff.

What starts here does change the world, and every day, Moody College is changing students’ lives by giving them incredible experiences inside and outside the classroom.

Ann and David Chappell Annual Lecture

Ann Chappell will long be remembered as “the woman who moved houses.” After she graduated from UT Austin with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1965 and master’s degree in speech communication in 1968, she devoted herself to numerous charitable causes, including Habitat for Humanity. To get people at her church involved in building Habitat houses, she devised a plan for members to build them in the church parking lot and transport them other places. She continued this model in parking lots across the Fort Worth and Dallas area. It is one of many ways she helped produce positive change. Ann Chappell died in 2020, followed soon after by her husband David Chappell, whom she met in a public speaking class at UT in the 1960s. Before their deaths, they gave $100,000 to Moody College to establish the new Ann and David Chappell Lecture series held by the Communication and Leadership degree program. The first lecture was part of a two-day series of events in February 2023 focused on “Collaborating to End Homelessness.” Five North Texas leaders spoke about their groundbreaking efforts to address homelessness through nonprofit-public-private collaborative efforts. The event coincided with the establishment of the minor in communicating for development and philanthropy. The series will be held annually in the Chappells' honor.

Journalists Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge Give Largest Gift Ever to KUT

Two Austin philanthropists and former journalists recently pledged $1.5 million over three years to KUT and KUTX to allow the stations to provide even greater news coverage and share even more amazing music in the decades to come. The gift from Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge is the largest the station has ever received. It will support Texas Capitol beat reporting and expand the staff of the station’s daily news magazine, the Texas Standard. The donation from the family’s Tejemos Foundation will also allow for the naming of KUT’s community room after John Aielli, who hosted the quirky Eklektikos music show on KUT 90.5 and later on KUTX 98.9. Aielli died last year after 56 years on the air. Dobson and Wooldridge have more than 50 years of journalism experience between them in newsrooms across the country, including the Austin American-Statesman, where she was a staff photographer and he was a sports and features editor. They also worked in the Dobson family business, Whataburger Restaurants, for many years in community and nonprofit outreach, communication and public relations. Dobson is a 1979 graduate of the School of Journalism and worked as a Daily Texan photographer.

Moody Grads Make Their Mark

Twenty-two Moody College businesses are among Texas Exes’ fastest growing. Learn more about the Longhorn 100!