All OLLU staff and faculty are invited to join the community in welcoming OLLU’s 131st Incoming Class at this year’s New Student Convocation on Friday, August 14, 2026 at 11 a.m. in Sacred Heart Conventual Chapel. We will conclude this cherished tradition with Providence Path, where the community lines the hallway of Main Building to cheer on and welcome in our newest Saints.
Participating administration, faculty, and staff are asked to arrive by 10:45 a.m. on the 2nd Floor of Main Building.
Dress Code: Faculty, please wear regalia.
Staff: Please wear OLLU polos or similar.
Everyone is invited to join us for the New Student Convocation Reception immediately following New Student Convocation/Providence Path on Friday, Aug. 14, at 12:15 p.m. in the Mall Area. This is a wonderful opportunity to mingle with our incoming students and their families, extend a warm OLLU welcome, and help them feel part of our community from day one. Light appetizers will be served. We hope you can join us in celebrating the start of their OLLU journey! We look forward to seeing you there!
The start of a new academic year is almost here, and we can’t wait to welcome everyone back for University Professional Development Days (UPDD), August 10–14! Join us for a week of learning, collaboration, connection, and plenty of fun as we prepare for an exciting 2026–2027 academic year. Throughout the week, you’ll find engaging sessions, opportunities to connect with colleagues, games, prizes, and a few surprises along the way.
Don’t Miss Convocation – State of the University (Mandatory)
The University Professional Development Days keynote speaker, Norman Wirzba, will deliver an inspiring and thought-provoking address. Faculty and staff are invited to attend the session from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Please remember that while most UPDD activities are encouraged but not mandatory, Convocation – State of the University on Tuesday, August 11, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. is a mandatory gathering for all faculty and staff. This important annual event will provide updates on the university’s direction, priorities, and vision for the year ahead and marks the official start of the new academic year together as one OLLU community.
Whether you’re attending one session or many, we hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, celebrate our shared mission, and build momentum for the semester ahead.
Celebrating Community
In addition to administrative updates, each quarterly gathering will recognize university accomplishments and milestones. This year’s Convocation will also mark the debut of the Customer Service Excellence Award, a new recognition honoring staff members that create a welcoming, respectful, and caring environment for students, colleagues, visitors, and the university community.
REMINDER:Submit a nomination by August 4th by 5pm below. (If your nominee was not selected, please know that their contributions are valued and they may be considered during a future nomination period.)
Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, and phishing emails can look surprisingly convincing. If you receive a suspicious email, don’t forward it—especially not as an “FYI” to Paul Patillo or the IT team.
Instead, help keep our campus secure by reporting it directly:
Open the suspicious email.
Click the three dots button on the right-hand side of your email.
Select PhishNotify.
Reporting suspicious messages through the Phish button allows IT to investigate and protect the OLLU community more quickly and efficiently.
When in doubt, don’t click—report it! Every reported phishing email helps make our inboxes safer.
Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) welcomed 20 faculty and staff from institutions across San Antonio for the inaugural AI Algoritmo Academy, an invitation-only professional development intensive held July 20–21. Funded through the La Cosecha Seed Grant Initiative, the two-day program explored the evolving role of artificial intelligence in higher education, equipping participants with practical strategies to address algorithmic bias, academic integrity, ethical AI use, and innovative course design before the start of the fall semester.
Hosted on OLLU’s Westside campus, the Academy brought together educators from diverse disciplines—including social work, history, education, leadership studies, student development, institutional research, and business—from OLLU, the Alamo Colleges District, and community organizations such as United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County. The interdisciplinary approach reflected the Academy’s mission of fostering meaningful collaboration and dialogue across academic and professional fields.
“Twenty educators from completely different disciplines spent two days questioning, challenging ideas, and building solutions together,” said Stacy Ybarra Evans, Ed.D., Director of OLLU’s Center for Teaching Excellence and creator of the Academy. “What emerged was stronger than anything a single department could have produced on its own. That is the true meaning of cosecha—the harvest. Participants arrived with questions and left with a community of colleagues committed to advancing AI in education.”
The Academy opened with the keynote address, “The Human Algoritmo,” presented by OLLU alumnus Dr. Juan “JQ” Quintanilla, a Business Transformation Solutions Architect whose career has included leadership roles guiding digital transformation initiatives for organizations such as Wells Fargo, AT&T, and USAA. Returning to his alma mater, Dr. Quintanilla challenged participants to recognize and confront algorithmic bias while emphasizing that human insight, ethics, and cultural understanding remain the most powerful drivers of innovation.
Conference attendees at Our Lady of the Lake University
Participants also engaged in masterclasses led by nationally recognized experts. Dr. Jamie Crosswhite, Assistant Professor and Faculty Lead for Writing at St. Mary’s University, explored teaching AI discernment as a critical academic skill. Organizational learning architect Dr. Steven Linley demonstrated strategies for designing assignments that use AI to support—not replace—student learning, while Naphtali Bryant, founder of Spark-ED University and Childcare Scholarship Coordinator at United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County, shared approaches for integrating AI into student coaching while preserving human judgment and connection.
One of the Academy’s most distinctive features encouraged open and honest dialogue. Throughout the program, participants anonymously submitted questions, concerns, and skepticism in traditional blue books. The second day began with a collaborative discussion devoted entirely to addressing those questions without attributing comments to individual participants. The exercise complemented the Academy’s largely paperless experience, where registration, program materials, evaluations, and digital credentials were delivered electronically.
The program concluded with an interactive innovation showcase in which each participant presented an AI tool, prompt, or classroom strategy successfully implemented in their own work before joining discipline-specific discussions to identify ideas they would bring into the upcoming academic year.
Educators who completed both days of programming and participated in the Academy’s synthesis session earned a verifiable digital badge from OLLU’s Center for Teaching Excellence, allowing them to showcase their professional achievement on LinkedIn, digital portfolios, and curricula vitae.
Building on the Academy’s momentum, OLLU’s Center for Teaching Excellence will host the upcoming AI Confluence Series, a collaborative retreat with the University of the Incarnate Word and St. Mary’s University. Scheduled for September 2026 at Providence High School’s Najim Campus Center, the retreat was organized by Dr. Evans and made possible through a Collaboration Kickstart Travel Grant awarded by the Center for Hispanic Serving Institution Community Coordination at Florida International University. The initiative will continue strengthening regional partnerships while advancing responsible, human-centered AI innovation in higher education.
This Friday, August 7th, the OLLU Center for Service-Learning and Volunteerism and the Biology and Environmental Science and Sustainability Programs are partnering with the San Antonio River Authority to start a native pollinator garden on our campus. This new garden will be dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, for whom we are celebrating a Jubilee Year in 2026, and will be located on OLLU land behind our softball fields and alongside Elmendorf Lake Park. Last semester, we partnered with the Bexar County Audubon Society to build Bexar county’s first chimney swift tower on this area, this structure provides important shelter for locally threatened birds.
This week we are going to begin preparing the lot for future planting in October and we need your help! We will be “solarizing” the ground which means laying down cardboard and covering with mulch to allow the August sun to kill the undesirable plants underneath. This will allow us to start fresh with selected native flowers and shrubs. After lunch, come on out and join us – you should be prepared for the sun and to work with your hands, but we will provide gloves, sunscreen, tools, and plenty of ice cold water! If you have an OLLU t-shirt please wear it. Feel free to bring your family or friends, all are welcome! You can park by the softball fields or on Cesar Chavez Blvd near the Worden Building or walk over.
If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to Jesse at joharasta@ollusa.edu or at (210) 431-3990.
Our Lady of the Lake University has received a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve and expand access to archival records of San Antonio’s missions and related collections documenting the early history of Texas and the American Southwest.
OLLU was one of only 33 organizations funded nationwide through the NEH’s Rediscovering Our Revolutionary Tradition program—and the only NEH grant recipient in Texas during this funding cycle.
The project includes the only accessible research copies of many original handwritten records related to San Antonio’s five historic missions, including the Alamo. The two-year grant, beginning in January 2027, will support improved preservation and storage of the collections and make high-resolution digital images searchable online, with tools to assist researchers in transcribing and translating the records.
The proposal and vision for the project were developed by Maria Cabaniss, Director of the Sueltenfuss Library, and Liana Morales, Archives and Special Collections Librarian. Liana Morales will serve as Project Director.
Congratulations to the Sueltenfuss Library and on this extraordinary achievement!
OLLU’s Fall 2026 enrollment continues its steady climb, reaching 1,554 students as we work toward our goal of 1,800. Every new Saint represents another life transformed through education and brings us one step closer to achieving our enrollment goal.
This milestone reflects the collective efforts of the entire OLLU community. From faculty and staff to student ambassadors, alumni and coaches, every conversation, campus visit, referral and shared experience helps prospective students discover what makes OLLU unique.
As we enter the final stretch of the enrollment cycle, your continued support remains essential. Whether you’re participating in the internal enrollment challenge, connecting with prospective students, sharing your OLLU story or simply extending a warm welcome to visitors on campus, your efforts make a meaningful difference.
With 246 students remaining to reach our Fall 2026 goal, every interaction counts. Thank you for your dedication, enthusiasm and commitment to helping future Saints find their home at OLLU. Together, we are building a stronger university—one student at a time.
If it seems like your inbox has been filling up with more campus-wide emails lately, you’re not alone. That’s one of the reasons Our Lady of the Lake University is taking a fresh look at who can send broadcast emails to the entire campus community.
Right now, 56 individuals and offices are authorized to send messages to all faculty and staff. As part of this review, the university will be updating that list to reflect current roles and organizational changes. In some cases, authorized senders are no longer with the university or represent offices that no longer exist.
The goal isn’t simply to reduce the number of emails—it’s to make campus-wide communication more meaningful. By ensuring that broadcast emails are reserved for information that truly affects the entire university community, important announcements will be easier to recognize and less likely to get lost in a crowded inbox. At the same time, more targeted messages can continue to reach the people who need them most.
This review will also help establish thoughtful guidelines and consistent practices for campus-wide communications moving forward, making it easier for everyone to know when a message is intended for the entire OLLU community.
As this work continues, we’ll keep the campus informed about what’s being considered and invite feedback along the way. Your input will help shape a communication process that better serves everyone across the university.
Our Lady of the Lake University proudly celebrates Cassandra “Cassie” Valdez, a two-time OLLU graduate and former Saints softball standout, on earning a spot on the National Team for the upcoming Central American and Caribbean Games.
Valdez, who recently joined the OLLU softball program as an assistant coach, continues to build on an impressive athletic career while inspiring the next generation of Saints. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from OLLU, most recently crossing the commencement stage as a Spring 2026 graduate.
Looking ahead, Valdez is working toward earning a place on the Mexican National Team as it pursues qualification for the 2028 Olympic Games.
Congratulations, Cassie, on this outstanding achievement. The OLLU community is cheering you on as you represent your team and continue your journey on the international stage.
“We are so excited to announce that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Mural has been voted by the people as the Best of San Antonio in 2026 with The San Antonio Current!
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Mural is a historic public artwork gracing the Cassiano Homes, a public housing community in San Antonio. This mural and the hundreds around San Antonio painted by Anastacio “Tache” Torres and Juan Hernandez are a result of the important Chicano Movement efforts in San Antonio, of which OLLU has been an incubator on the Westside. This work commemorates the Treaty and the formation of Mexican-American identity, preserving an important piece of community history and cultural memory. This project was co-sponsored within OLLU by the Visual & New Media Arts Program, the Center for Service-Learning and Volunteerism and the International Folk Culture Center with the Segundo de Febrero Planning Committee.
The students worked alongside the original artists who generously donated their time and expertise to the project and to our students. The project also could not have been successful without the support of Opportunity Home SA and District 5 City Councilwoman Teri Castillo.
We are so thankful for everyone who voted to support this project, especially given that the competition is intense for best mural in a city with so many talented muralists. We think it shows a dedication and belief in the importance of our cultural history. We also hope that it shows the crucial role of public art in our communities and the strength of service-learning and community engagement as a way to bring students and the surround neighborhood together to do amazing things and provide world-class education on the ground and, in this case, in the streets!”
