Author: OLLUNewsletter

The University Community Convening has been rescheduled to April 28 during Community Hour at the MARC.

Please bring your own lunch. A calendar invite will be sent with additional details.

Dear OLLU Community,

As we work together to make Fall 2026 as successful as possible, our vision is clear – we want our classes filled with students and our community full of energy and opportunity. Achieving this will take all of us working together with focus and urgency. Enrollment is a shared responsibility, and every interaction we have with students matters.

As a community, we each play a role in this effort:

Recruit future students by sharing your OLLU experience

Retain the amazing OLLU students that are already here 

Engage and collaborate across campus with everyone that crosses your path

Together, we can create a vibrant, welcoming environment that makes OLLU not only a great place to study, but also a place to work, grow, and truly enjoy the college experience.

 You will see the enrollment thermometer displayed across campus each week as we track our progress together. Every registration matters, and every conversation counts. Let’s work as one community to build momentum, support one another, and reach 1,800 students for Fall 2026.

Julian S. Garcia, a 1975 graduate of Our Lady of the Lake College, has published his first novel, When VIAztlan Was the Rage. Garcia studied sociology and bilingual education at OLLU and is now adding fiction to a long record of published writing.

Garcia is a regular Op-Ed contributor for the San Antonio Express-News, San Francisco Chronicle and other Hearst publications. His work has also appeared on the Texas State Historical Association website.

The ebook edition of When VIAztlan Was the Rage has been published by Tiltwood Press, with a paperback edition expected in summer 2026. The book cover describes the novel as “a novel of writers, rebellion, and literary awakening.”

A literary novel exploring the vibrant history of the ViAztlan International journal in the 1980s, captures the creative energy, cultural rivalries, and artistic voices that shaped San Antonio’s West Side and connected local writers to an international literary movement.

This accomplishment highlights the continued impact of OLLU alumni in literature, journalism and public thought.

You may obtain this e-novel on Amazon here.

On Saturday, OLLU and our neighbors and partners celebrated the unveiling of the Treaty Mural. This beautiful piece of Chicano art was painted in 1980 by Community Cultural Arts, the pioneers of public muralism in our city. While the piece has stood proudly for 45 years, it has become weathered by time and over the course of this semester, students from the OLLU Visual Arts class “Barrio Art and Popular Culture” partnered with the original artists to restore it to its glory. They did so with many partners, including the Segundo de Febrero Committee at OLLU, Opportunity Homes, City District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo, the OLLU Center for Service-Learning and Volunteerism, and a whole crew of volunteers from across the OLLU and Westside communities.

This Saturday, we celebrated this success with an unveiling ceremony and blessing. The event was from 11 to noon and included addresses from Visual Arts professor Suzy Gonzalez, original mural artist Tache Torres, Amber Ortega from the International Folk Cultural Center and Segundo Committee, and representatives of the Councilwoman and Opportunity Home. The event culminated in a blessing presided over by Sister Rose Kruppa, the Superior General of our Congregation of Divine Providence.

Speakers at the event highlighted its historic importance, not only as an early example of Chicano muralism but also due to its link to Segundo de Febrero. This event commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War and marked the political birth of the Mexican-American people. This transformative event has had repercussions that continue over the centuries. OLLU was among the first organizations in the nation to recognize the significance of this event, and this mural restoration is part of a revival of that tradition this semester.

Others spoke to the importance of intergenerational connections between the original artists and today’s art students, to the crucial role that public art has in uplifting our community and the special role the public housing plays in creating a just society.

OLLU has committed to continuing this partnership and will be seeking pathways for restoring more murals and uplifting their presence in San Antonio and beyond.

Full story from TPR click here.

Please be advised that Our Lady of the Lake University will be closed from April 2 through April 6, 2026. During this time, all on-campus operations will be suspended. We will return to normal operating hours on April 7th.

Faculty and staff are reminded to:

• Set their email and voicemail greetings to out of office to reflect the campus closure.
• Disconnect and empty any perishable items in office mini fridges.
• Unplug any office space heater
• If any faculty members need to come to campus during the closure, they must notify Campus Police before arrival to ensure proper access and safety.

If any faculty members need to come to campus during the closure, they must notify Campus Police before arrival to ensure proper access and safety.

As a reminder, OLLU partners with Uwill to provide students with 24/7 emotional support, scheduled counseling, and urgent medical care via telehealth. Students can access these services at https://medical.uwill.com.

Please note the adjusted hours of operation for on-campus dining locations during Easter Weekend.

From Thursday, April 2 through Monday, April 6, the Market will be open with modified hours, while all other dining locations—including Annie B’s, SBX, Crave, and the Sub Shop—will be closed.

For more information on dining at OLLU, click here.

📱 Safety Reminder:
Download the InformaCast app to receive important campus emergency alerts and safety notifications.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. Wishing you a joyful Easter break and a restful holiday season.

By now, many of you have seen or heard the results of the Focused Differentiation Survey that was shared a couple of weeks ago.  The results of that survey helped us see that we are, by a majority,

• aligned on the student populations we should prioritize
• accept (again by majority) that we will have to deprioritize certain student segments as long as we do it based on data
• agree on the attributes that differentiate us
• and believe that we are not yet ready; not disciplined enough to execute a focused strategy

Focused Differentiation is a strategy defined by businessman, author and Harvard professor Michael Porter.  It identifies an approach that accepts that you can’t be everything to everyone and promotes the idea of identifying something that you do better than anyone else and that others (the competition) would find hard to copy.

The survey results show that we are in line with who will be our target market: First-generation Hispanic undergraduates from South Texas.  We will not be everything to everyone.  That’s not to say we won’t accept other students; it just means that first-gen Hispanic undergrads from South Texas are who we will spend valuable marketing dollars on to recruit. 

The results also show that we believe we are good at having

• strong career pipelines in select industries
• accelerated pathways (3-year degrees, flexible scheduling)
• personalized, high-touch advising model
• and small-class, faculty-mentored environment

We will have to ‘focus’ more on these attributes if we want to make them so strong that the competition would not be able to replicate them.

The overwhelming response was that we are not yet ready to execute a focused strategy.  We are not yet disciplined enough.  That is true.  Some people may see it as defeating; but this is where Providence and resilience kicks in.  It is Easter season after all. We are preparing for our rebirth by making changes and improvements.  We are re-evaluating current practices and assessing tools such as software that we no longer need.  We are identifying skills that will be needed in this renaissance.

While some will be excited about this refreshing change, there will be some that will be concerned about a change.  That is natural.  “Change” involves human behavior; and humans involve emotions.  Below is a chart that we will discuss at our University Community Convening on April 22^nd.  The top row shows that in order to have successful change, you need to have Vision, Skills, Incentives, Resources and a Plan.  If any of these five items is ignored, then you can see in the blue column the effect that it could cause.    Take a look at it.  Think about it.  Be prepared to discuss it at our convening.