Advertising campaign features Doc Augustin as a faculty star

July 2007—Dr. Byron "Doc" Augustin, a well-known Geography professor, is being featured as a "faculty star” in an advertisement promoting academic excellence at Texas State University-San Marcos. The broadside ad is posted on a campus shuttle bus that commutes between the campus and Austin and San Antonio.

Augustin in the classroom

Augustin, a popular teacher at Texas State since 1978, was named one of 10 Piper Professors in Texas in 2005, by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation.  His research in geography has centered on the conservation of resources, Latin America, Texas, and geographic education. In his years at Texas State, he has earned the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Alumni Association Teaching Award of Honor, and the Associated Student Government Outstanding Student Educator Award, along with the National Council for Geographic Education Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award, presented to only 10 teachers in the United States and Canada annually. Recently, he was invited to be one of 50 professors in Texas serving as scholar-speakers for the Exploration Texas speakers bureau of Humanities Texas, formerly the Texas Council for the Humanities.

Augustin is the third Liberal Arts faculty member to be featured in the campaign.  Two other faculty—History Professor Dr. Frank de la Teja and Anthropology Professor Dr. Britt Bousman—were featured in Texas Monthly magazine and Hispanic Magazine in April and May. De la Teja is Chair of the Department of History and was recently named by Gov. Rick Perry as Texas’ first-ever State Historian of Texas.  Bousman is Director of the Center for Archaeological Studies, which conducts archaeological investigations for public and private entities in the U.S. and abroad.

The bus ad, touting Texas State as "The Rising Star of Texas," is part of a larger campaign to enhance the public’s understanding of Texas State, said Dr. Michael Heintze, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Marketing. Future print and bus ads will feature faculty in other departments on campus, he said. Other campaign elements include such things as advertisements in selected publications, radio ads, television ads, billboards, campus signage, a redesigned university website, a limited edition fine art project, stadium signage, an identity/branding policy, unified logo system, new business cards and letterhead, new lapel pins and name badges, and increased coordination of campus publications. And there is more to come, Heintze said.