Dr. Heather Wilson, President, The University of Texas at El Paso and Aaron Hernandez

[00:01] DR. HEATHER WILSON: I'm Heather Wilson, the president of the University of Texas at El Paso. I'm 62 years old. Today's date is January 11, 2023. We're in El Paso, Texas, and my interview partner is Aaron Hernandez, who is a student at the University of Texas at El Paso.

[00:18] AARON HERNANDEZ: My name is Aaron Hernandez. I'm a student at the University of Texas at El Paso. I'm 22 years old. Today's date is January 11, 2023. We're here in El Paso, Texas. I'm with President Heather Wilson, who is the president of my university.

[00:34] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So, Aaron, why don't I start out? Tell me about your family and growing up in Houston.

[00:41] AARON HERNANDEZ: So I didn't really grow up in Houston, per se. I was born in Houston. We lived there for maybe two, three years whenever I was just a little baby. And we ended up moving to Wharton because my mom got remarried. Wharton's like this little, small dot on the map. The best way I can describe it is in between corpus Christi and Houston. I mean, it's a really small town. My graduating class was 72 people. So growing up there, it was kind of just like a little small farm town, me and my mom, for about half of it. And it was really close because of that.

[01:20] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Well, how did you end up. I mean, we're here in El Paso. We're closer to Los Angeles than we are to Houston. How did you end up finding the University of Texas at El Paso?

[01:29] AARON HERNANDEZ: Well, to be completely honest, I was looking for a place with a lot of sun and a lot of mountains, and that perfectly describes El Paso. Can't get away from that over here.

[01:41] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Had you ever been here before?

[01:43] AARON HERNANDEZ: I had not. My first time coming to El Paso was when I was visiting the university, and I kind of just fell in love the moment that I hit Fort Stockton and got into that last 3 hours of the drive from Houston.

[01:58] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Why don't you describe that to me? Describe arriving in El Paso.

[02:05] AARON HERNANDEZ: I would say it's a lot more modern than a lot of people think it is. I don't know why. I never really thought it would be as modern as it is, especially coming in from the east side. You know, you've got all these restaurants, you've got all these shopping centers. You hit downtown, and it might be like a small, little downtown, but, like, the skyscrapers just sitting there with the mountains is really awesome to see. Then once you get to campus, I mean, our campus is, like, so unique in the way that it's designed, in the way it's built. So whenever I just, like, hit El Paso after six, 7 hours of nothing, driving after San Antonio, it was really cool. It had me a little dumbfounded for a second.

[02:49] DR. HEATHER WILSON: What did your family think about your coming to college so far away?

[02:53] AARON HERNANDEZ: Well, they were used to me going to colleges far away. This isn't my first university. But when they found out El Paso, they were like, are you sure? Do you really want to go to El Paso? I heard it's dangerous. I heard it's violent. And I can understand kind of why they would think that, you know, the reputation from El Paso, from the nineties. But I was like, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be perfect. I think I'm going to thrive here.

[03:19] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Now, you said you went to another university before. Tell me about that.

[03:23] AARON HERNANDEZ: So I was in high school, and I was doing speech and debate in high school, and my teacher goes, hey, I have this really cool offer from this guy at Seton Hall University. He used to go to school here, went over there, coached for a while, and now he's looking to recruit a. So I reached out. I did, like, this Skype audition for the speech and debate team at Seton hall, the Brownson forensics team, and they accepted me. I applied to Seton Hall. I got in, and for a year and a half, I was living at jersey, 30 minutes from Manhattan. So it was the complete opposite, you know, small rural town to big city Manhattan.

[04:07] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So you moved from Seton Hall, New Jersey, to El Paso, Texas. Why did you decide to make the move?

[04:14] AARON HERNANDEZ: Huh. Well, I didn't really enjoy what the rat race of Manhattan was. You know, it was kind of a cultural shock to just go from the one side to the complete opposite side to the other, and I felt as if I could succeed over there, but I wasn't going to be happy doing it. So whenever I got to El Paso, you know, it might be a city, but it really has that feeling of a small town, because it really is.

[04:49] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So you were the first in your family to go to college, is that right?

[04:53] AARON HERNANDEZ: I was.

[04:54] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Who encouraged you along the way? How did that happen?

[04:59] AARON HERNANDEZ: It was mostly my mom. Whenever I was a kid, I would say, I'm gonna join the military. She was like, only if you go to college, and then go to officer school afterwards. And after that, she always kind of, like, subconsciously beat it into my head, hey, you're going to college. You gotta go to college. I didn't know where I would go to college, but I knew that wasn't off the table at all, so I knew I was gonna go to college, and one of the few memories that I have of my father. He would say, hey, where are we going to go to school? And I'd be like, little four year old, and I'd be like, harvard. But obviously I didn't get into Harvard.

[05:41] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So where do you think your mom got the idea that it was important for you to go to college? Did she ever talk to you about that?

[05:51] AARON HERNANDEZ: I wouldn't say that she really talked about her own experiences, about wanting to go to college. I would say it was more of me seeing what she had to go through because she didn't go to college. And she was raising me as a single mom for a lot of that time. Whenever I was, like, a small kid, like six or seven, she had to work crazy hours at at and t. I mean, she wouldn't get home until maybe 09:00 p.m. and the idea of her having to call me to say good night every night from the bathroom stall at at and t, I kind of just knew how important it was for her to see me graduate college. And, you know, at this point, as much as it is for me, it's for her as well.

[06:40] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So did she drive with you across Texas to come to El Paso?

[06:43] AARON HERNANDEZ: She did that one time, yeah, she did that one time, and then she was like, I don't know if I can make this drive again.

[06:51] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So do you think she'll be here for your graduation?

[06:53] AARON HERNANDEZ: Absolutely. She's so excited. She's already planning things out, and we're planning some more things out together, so it's going to be a really special day for the both of us.

[07:03] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So what are you majoring in?

[07:04] AARON HERNANDEZ: I'm a communication major with a minor in national security.

[07:08] DR. HEATHER WILSON: How did that happen?

[07:10] AARON HERNANDEZ: I got to El Paso, and after my failures at Seton Hall, I was like, all right, I'm going to be a. A speech and debate coach in high school and taking this, like, block elective, you know, intelligent national security with doctor Diana Bolsinger. And she's absolutely fantastic. I mean, she grabs ahold of everyone's attention. She makes, like, the information, the material, so cool and fascinating to learn about. And she gave me the free will to choose my own topic of what I would do for my last project. And she was kind of just like, that free will and the ability to know that I could succeed in that field. By all the confidence that she gave me, I was like, might as well make it my minor. And it turned into me pursuing a career in the foreign service.

[08:05] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So you think you're going to go.

[08:06] AARON HERNANDEZ: Into the foreign service know I'm going to go into the foreign service.

[08:11] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Have you started preparing for that?

[08:13] AARON HERNANDEZ: I have. I've had a lot of amazing opportunities offered to me by the Texas system.

[08:19] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Talk to me about that.

[08:20] AARON HERNANDEZ: This past summer, I participated in the Texas Intelligence Academy. It took students from all over the UT based school system to DC for about a week and a half, where we learned about things such as intelligence issues. You know, that was in the mid, like the high or not the mitts, the peak of the Ukraine Russia war. So we got to talk to that with John McLaughlin, the former CIA director. And, yeah, it was just a really cool experience because you're sitting there with a bunch of smart kids, a bunch of smart people in the field, and I got to just sit there and learn from them and walk around the NSA. I mean, who gets to do that, you know? And then right now, I'm in a project with the UT global disinformation lab, and that's the most I can say about that.

[09:10] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Interesting, interesting. So what surprised you most when you started college here at UTEP?

[09:21] AARON HERNANDEZ: How much the faculty cares about their students? It was really. I came from, like, the complete opposite. I'm not gonna say, like, all the faculty at Seton hall doesn't care about their students. I don't want anyone to think that at all. But here at UTEP, I feel like a lot of the faculty came from the same place that we came. They understand what a lot of us went through. So just seeing the complete difference, you know, that surprised me. And I knew, oh, yeah, uteps my place. Uteps my home.

[09:53] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Is there anything that we should think about to make it even better?

[10:00] AARON HERNANDEZ: I don't want to criticize your job or be, like, critical right now, but I have thought in the past that El Paso is so isolated, and this community is so knit together. It has a very latino culture. So that means a lot of students end up living with their families. That's something that I can't relate to. However, we do have a big population in the dorms. I mean, they're at max capacity right now. What I want to see UTEP do is transition away from the commuter school. And there's. There's plenty of ways to do this. But as big as UTEP is, as big on the national, you know, scale that it is, I think that UTEP has a lot more potential as, like, an actual state school similar to UT or a and M or any of those schools.

[11:00] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So you're gonna go into the foreign service?

[11:03] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yes, ma'am.

[11:05] DR. HEATHER WILSON: What is it that appeals to you about the foreign service as opposed to, for example, any of the intelligence services?

[11:14] AARON HERNANDEZ: So I don't have any dislike for the intelligence services. I would be completely fine being an analyst with the CIA. More than fine, actually. That would be a blessing for me. But what I appreciate about the foreign service is getting to sit there and talk to people, getting to communicate with them, and trying to find some common ground. You know, everyone wants something for themselves, but at the same time, no one wants to be in conflict perpetually. That would be silly. It would be terrible for all of us, you know? So there's ways to mediate this that I don't think a lot of people understand right now.

[11:55] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Is there a part of the world that's particularly interesting to you?

[11:58] AARON HERNANDEZ: Eastern Europe.

[11:59] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Really?

[11:59] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yeah.

[12:00] DR. HEATHER WILSON: It's.

[12:01] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yeah.

[12:02] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Why Eastern Europe?

[12:03] AARON HERNANDEZ: It's, uh. It's like, how do I explain this? Ever since, like, the collapse of the. The soviet bloc, you know, you've had all these countries pop up. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Bollands, et cetera, et cetera. And all of them are unique in their own cultures. You know, Latvians and Lithuanians hate each other, duly to sports, a lot to do with sports, but at the same time, they're all united and trying to move away from their past into a new future, and I think that's incredibly cool. And then you look over at what's happening in Ukraine right now, and you have to wonder, how do they feel about their own security? And I think that's where the two mesh together. The cultural aspect of what Eastern Europe is like in the specific countries, and the security aspect of making sure that these cultures can continue to thrive.

[13:03] DR. HEATHER WILSON: You mentioned speech and debate, and that you did it at Seton hall, and you also were involved in that in high school. Talk to me a little about that and how that is shaped, the young man that you are.

[13:17] AARON HERNANDEZ: I started in high school. I have the best coach in the world. Her name's Joanna Hickey. She was like a second mom to me. You know, she really took care of me when I was at my lowest, and she actually tried to, like, get me to quit. She'll never admit this at all. She'll always be like, no, no. I always knew he was going to be good, but that's a lie. She wanted me to quit at the very beginning. My best friend was also in speech and debate, and she was like, let's put them together for a tournament. And we ended up doing really well at my first ever speech tournament. So we were together for the rest, he ended up going to a college program, which left me by myself, being like, the most senior person there after only one year. And I kind of just picked up and ran with it. I found like a very. I found a lot of confidence in speech and debate. And I knew that's where I was going to thrive. And when you're that age, you know, you want something to make you feel confident.

[14:20] DR. HEATHER WILSON: You say, when you were at your lowest, what was that about?

[14:27] AARON HERNANDEZ: There was a lot of personal stuff going on back then. High school relationships, high school depression. You know, some traumatic moments that I had to go through. Inpatient psychiatric care. But speech was always there. You know, Miss Hickey was always there. She really cared to make sure that I would do fine after. So kind of speech became like this outlet where for a second I felt confident and I felt detached away from everything else around me and everything else that I had just gone through. And that's why I keep it to me this day.

[15:18] DR. HEATHER WILSON: What events did you do?

[15:20] AARON HERNANDEZ: I did basically everything, honestly. My sophomore, junior year, I went to state in poetry. I went to state in Congress, went to state two times in CX. And I got a 6th place Ld state championship medal. Was alternate to state in extent. But that's something I'm still very salty about to this day.

[15:47] DR. HEATHER WILSON: So do you remember any of the poems that you did?

[15:50] AARON HERNANDEZ: Do you know Shane Koyczan or big papa? Eta no big puppy. They're the two most opposite poets that you can get. Shane Koyczan was very great with spoken word. You know, kind of like this rap type poetry that kind of flowed off the tongue. You know, you can kind of expect the next beat that was coming by. But big poppy E, on the other hand, he was a pure comedian. He, like, kind of just did poetry about the most random things. Like, he did one about environmentalism. And the way he got that across was through this. This poem called crack squirrels. Where in the eighties they had this epidemic of crack in New York City, and they threw it out on the streets and it got to the squirrels. So the squirrels were then on crack. And everyone was trying to figure out, how do we handle the crack squirrels?

[16:44] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Can you remember the lines, stanzas, any stanzas from those poems?

[16:49] AARON HERNANDEZ: I can remember one line from the crack squirrels poem, and it was, now what we need to do with these damn squirrels is we need to bomb them, said the Republicans. And that one always stuck with me because, you know, we're in debate, we like to poke around on each side, you know, Democrats and Republicans. And that's what we would always reside pretty neat.

[17:17] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Well, do you have questions of me?

[17:20] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yeah. So, recently, there's been, like, this massive expansion of UTEP, the aerospace building, the commerce program that's building up. What brought you to these big moments?

[17:37] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Well, so UTEP has actually grown pretty consistently over the last 20 years, and maybe even more than that, 30 years or more. Now, in 1992, UTEP was not even allowed to have more than one PhD. It was kind of a regional college under a UT system that said, at that time, we've got one flagship, and that's it. There was a lawsuit brought by the people of El Paso, as well as people in south Texas along the Rio Grande, that said that we were being denied the opportunity for an excellent education in this region because not everybody can move 500 miles away to Austin, Texas. And they lost the lawsuit, but they won the argument, and the regents at the time changed the rules, and the regent, rather, the chancellor at the time, came out to West Texas, to my predecessor and doctor Diana Natalicio and her team here at the time, and said, get ready. The doors are going to open. And UTEP started putting together proposals for PhD programs and strong masters programs that are associated with them, and it started to grow, both in numbers of students, but also in contributions to research and advancing discovery in its application. And so since between. You know, I think about this because I moved to New Mexico, moved to the west in 1991. I was a mail order bride to New Mexico, and I. So I. So I lived in Albuquerque, and I saw UNM at that time. And University of New Mexico is roughly the same today as it was in 1991. UTEP is a completely different university today than it was in 1992. It is now when it comes to research, one of the top 5% of research universities in America, it has over 24,000 students, and. And we are about to add our 26th PhD. So it's happened over time with consistent effort toward the goal of becoming an exceptional university while also maintaining our open access mission. It's the only tier one research university in America that still allows any student willing to work for it to give a shot at a college degree. And I actually think that if more universities were like UTEP, universities would have a better reputation in America. I think UTEP is more what Americans expect higher education to be than where there's a strong commitment to excellence and a commitment to open doors to opportunity for those who historically have been underserved by higher education. So there were very strong fundamentals here. And then I showed up three years ago and said, all right, what do we got. And then there was this global pandemic thing, which was kind of annoying to all of us, but the fundamentals were strong, and we started putting deadly the case to say, okay, we're as good as we've ever been. Now how do we get even better? And that included building on advanced manufacturing in aerospace, which is a very strong piece of what UTEP does. And then you think about it. All along the US Mexico border, from all the way to California to the Gulf of Mexico, there is no university that specializes in US Mexico trade and business. But Mexico is the second largest trading partner to the United States, and 20% of that trade comes through the city of El Paso. And this is in this region of Silad Juarez and El Paso, the 2.6 million people. It is the fifth largest manufacturing region in all of North America. If there's a place where we should have the best business school in the country for US Mexico business, it should be the University of Texas at El Paso. And we have a very generous benefactor here in West Texas, Woody L. Hunt, who shared that vision. And just before Christmas, we announced that he made the largest gift in the history of the university, $25 million, to create this focus on excellence in US Mexico trade and business at the College of Business, which is now the Woody L. Hunt College of Business. So the fundamentals were here. It's just figuring out how to build on those and then standing up and advocating for it.

[22:21] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yeah, it seems like for the past three decades, we've kind of had to catch up with other state schools. But I kind of want to know what you plan on for the next ten years. You know, what's your big goal at the end of the day, what do you see the whole big future of UTEP?

[22:40] DR. HEATHER WILSON: We have a strategic plan, a ten year strategic plan. Most universities do. The one thing that I like about UTEP's strategic plan is it doesn't read like it was, you know, written by Booz Allen out of, you know, Virginia or something. It's very true to us. We have a mission here. We are increasing access to excellent higher education, advancing discovery of public value, and positively impacting the health, culture, education, and economy of the community we serve. That's our mission as a public research university. We have some strategic advantages here in this region. You mentioned. One is the culture of care, and that comes from the community in which we live. But it is different here. You picked up on it about that faculty really care here. It is an unusual university in that way. We meet students where they are and help them to become better versions of themselves, not by lowering standards, because there is nothing worse than the tyranny of low expectations, but by helping students achieve excellence and showing them the way. And so there's a culture of care. Obviously, we're in a strong binational region. Excuse me, binational bicultural region. So leveraging our place. Leveraging our place is a big part of what we're trying to do. And then we have some specific goals we're trying to meet and how we meet those goals, for teaching and learning, for advancing discovery, for positively impacting the community, and also for changing higher education in America by our example as America's leading hispanic serving university is the tactics will change the goals likely will not, but we will use our strategic advantages that we have that are very difficult for somebody else to replicate to achieve our goals and accomplish our mission. So there are things. We're working on building a new advanced manufacturing and aerospace research center where we're planning to get. Have you had any classes in the liberal arts building?

[24:55] AARON HERNANDEZ: Of course.

[24:56] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Yeah. Nice, huh?

[24:58] AARON HERNANDEZ: Nice. It would be a very different descriptor.

[25:02] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Yeah, it was. You know, it's. It's, like, built in the 1960s and with no air conditioning, and it's. It should. It needs to be torn down. And we convinced the legislature to fund a replacement building. So we're starting that planning. So standing up and advocating for what this university needs and getting the resources to be able to do it.

[25:25] AARON HERNANDEZ: You sound like you understand what UTEP is. You understand what El Paso in this region is, but it makes me question, why El Paso? I mean, you've had these big jobs throughout your entire career. What brought you specifically to UTEP?

[25:44] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Well, I was the president of a university before, so I've had a kind of unusual life, I guess, a blessed life, much of it in New Mexico. And of course, UTEP is 7 miles from the New Mexico Texas border. It is the region of the country that we want to be in. And just before this job, I was the secretary of the air force back in Washington, DC, and I did that because I have a commitment in life to serve. And I understood why Jim Mattis wanted me to do that job, and I loved it in a lot of ways, but I always knew I wanted to come back to higher education. And when the University of Texas called, their headhunter called, saying that they were looking for a new president for Utepath, I mentioned that to my husband. And it was about the time when Secretary Mattis looked like he was going to be leaving the Pentagon and I came home from work the next day and my husband said, you know, I looked at the map and that university is closer to hatch green Chile than Albuquerque is, and maybe you ought to call those people back. So. So it's the mission of the university I believe in. I believe that regions of the world who choose to educate their people will thrive in the 21st century, and those that don't will be left behind. This mission matters, and it's in the region of the country that we want to be in. So it was a combination of those factors.

[27:18] AARON HERNANDEZ: I remember I was in DC and I was talking to a man named Michael Allen.

[27:24] DR. HEATHER WILSON: I used to work with him.

[27:25] AARON HERNANDEZ: Yeah, Michael, he's a very kooky guy. And he goes, you know, you have your close friends and then you have your DC friends. Do you have your DC friends? And is that different with how you interact with the faculty, the students here at UTEP? Do you understand, like, that dynamic?

[27:45] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Yeah, I've had different lives and cultures are different. So I've worked in national security, I've served in the United States Congress, I've been the president of a university and worked in business. And the ability to take lessons learned from different contexts and apply them in different ways is a tremendous advantage, I think. But it is true that I've lived in different cultures, and I don't mean just cultures in the way you aspire to in the foreign service, but academia is a different culture than national security or than the United States Congress. It is true to some extent that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Washington is driven by agendas and politics, and one of the things that I very rarely see three generations in the same booth at Denny's in Washington. It's a transient town, and I wanted a place to be from when I married this guy from New Mexico. So I still have a lot of friends in Washington. Michael Allen is one. John McLaughlin I know as well. It's funny you mentioned those, too, but I was in the Congress when he was the director of the CIA and I was the subcommittee chair for the House permanent select committee on intelligence, so engaged with them quite a bit, but I'm much happier on the Rio Grande. As I tell my friends here in El Paso, people wave at you with all five fingers. It's much, much nicer.

[29:21] AARON HERNANDEZ: Of course, it really is a big city, but like a small town vibe. You bring up your husband. I have to know, how did you and your husband meet?

[29:32] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Oh, that's the scandalous part. Oh, yeah. So I went to the Air Force Academy. I graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1982. So I was in the third class with women to graduated from the Air Force Academy. And my senior year, you have to take law. Law for commanders. And my law professor was a guy named Captain J. Hone, and he was a really funny teacher, and he made this joke in class. There was one of my classmates who said. Answered some questions, said, oh, something. Something's busting out all over. And Captain Hone said, oh, sounds like that song from Oklahoma. And I looked up and I said, no, carousel, because June is busting out all over. It's from carousel. It's not from Oklahoma. And he was amazed that he got it wrong because he used to play oboe and pit orchestras and loves Broadway musicals. And he was even more amazed that a Philistine cadet would know anything about Broadway. But I grew up in this town where there was a music college, and everybody did music. We did musicals and stuff like that as the community. And so it became like this running joke. And when I got out, so I went off, I went to graduate school, I served in Europe. I came back to America and was working in Washington, DC. And he was coming to New York City, and I had just gotten my change of address card and said, look, I'm coming to New York City. Why don't you take the train up and we'll go to a matinee on Broadway? So it was this, like, joke from this old teacher friend of mine, and so I thought that'd be fun. So went up to New York for this, to go see this matinee with this old teacher friend of mine. And there's a lot less difference between 38 and 30 than there is between 28 and 20. And by that time, I was 30 years old, and I thought, wow, that was really fun. And he's a nice guy, which probably meant I'd never hear from him again. But then he. He called me a couple of days later, and we started talking to each other, and he invited me to visit New Mexico. He says that, so he says that. So we went to the matinee. I took the train back to Washington, DC. He had to stay over for some other things the next day. And he says that he knew by the next morning that I was the woman he was supposed to marry, but he was just afraid I wouldn't figure it out. And so he just knew. And he was 38, had never been married, but just had this attitude that God would provide, and he just knew it was the right thing. And so that's the scandalous part I married my Air Force academy professor, which had me dated at the time would have been quite scandalous, but we didn't.

[32:29] AARON HERNANDEZ: I think what's more scandalous is that you guys went to a matinee in New York City. Out of all the Broadways, you went to a matinee?

[32:37] DR. HEATHER WILSON: We're boring. We are still very boring. And the other thing is, when I remember, we went to lunch in New York City, and here's Jay. By that time, he's no longer an air force officer. He was practicing law in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he comes to New York City to see a matinee wearing, I kid you not, a seer sucker suit and cowboy boots. And I thought, okay, he knows who he is. He's comfortable with who he is. You know, that's okay with me. I don't like people who are trying to be something else, and so. But I laughed at a seersucker suit, and it's now, we've now been married for over 30 years. He's never worn a seersucker suit again.

[33:21] AARON HERNANDEZ: Maybe you can get them in there. So you say you like musical theater?

[33:26] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Yeah.

[33:27] AARON HERNANDEZ: Utub has a really great program. Do you ever just get to sit down and watch whatever they do? I know they're doing prom. I know they're doing another scandalous show coming up here in the spring.

[33:38] DR. HEATHER WILSON: The dinner theater at UTEP is one of the hidden gems of the. Well, there's a whole bunch of hidden gems about UTEP, but, but we have this wonderful dinner theater, and they put on these great shows, and they put on five or six of them every year. And so Jay and I very often go to the musical theater, and we bring guests. We bring, you know, the people who are donors and supporters of the university, and we'll go to dinner and see the show. It's fantastic. It's just wonderful.

[34:07] AARON HERNANDEZ: What's your favorite show?

[34:08] DR. HEATHER WILSON: That's hard. So the show we saw in New York 30 x years ago was city of angels, which was good, but I like more of the traditional kind of Broadway shows, not so much some of the newer ones, but I would say les miserables, which I've seen on the stage as an in addition to the movie. And I used to, when I was in graduate school in England, we, we'd go in and get a, go take the bus into London, and students could get standby tickets for really cheap in London's West End. So I saw cats in London, which was also wonderful. So there's a whole bunch of them.

[34:58] AARON HERNANDEZ: You sound like such a dynamic person. Air Force, Congress, Broadway musicals. Is that what you want to be remembered as when it's all said and done from your time at UTEP, a dynamic president?

[35:14] DR. HEATHER WILSON: I think, you know, when I was younger, I had more specific goals. Once I got older and more experienced, first I realized that I was the smartest I ever was in my life at the age of 17 when I graduated high school. And my entire life since then has been learning what I don't know. But I think I want to be a good wife and mother. I want to make a positive contribution to the community in which I live, and I want to be a craftsman at my work. And I think those three things will define me. I don't say that I, you know, I'm not interested so much in people, what other people say about my work. I care about what I feel about my work and that I'm a good wife and mother. I make a positive contribution to the community in which I live, and I'm a craftsman at my work.

[36:19] AARON HERNANDEZ: I feel like everything that you've done for this community, we can go ahead and say thank you. You know, I told you before we started about how at work, one of the regulars at the bar said, oh, she's done so great. She's done wonderful.

[36:33] DR. HEATHER WILSON: And I had probably bought him a beer. That's probably why, hopefully, I mean, this.

[36:37] AARON HERNANDEZ: Guy can drink anyone under a table. But I also just wanted to say that I do appreciate everything that you've done for this university. There was a lot of skepticism that I'm sure you know of when you first came here, but you shut that all down within a semester, and you should be really proud of that.

[36:56] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Thank you.

[36:56] AARON HERNANDEZ: Of course.

[36:57] DR. HEATHER WILSON: Thank you.