Alumni in the News

January 2005

Progress with Mortar, Staff: Endowed Chair Joins Gulf Center
Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 1/19/05

Not only is construction progressing at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, but also the institute recently hired its first endowed chairman.

The research institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi hired Richard McLaughlin '75, a professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law, shortly before the winter break, said institute director Robert Furgason.

McLaughlin will start working at the institute at the beginning of June after completing his last semester at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said Furgason, who stepped down as president of A&M-Corpus Christi to become the institute's first director.

Furgason said McLaughlin would focus on coastal and marine policy in his new position. The mission of the institute is to support and advance the long-term sustainable use and conservation of the Gulf.

"We have good scientists but nobody that deals specifically with these issues of policy and law," he said. "He fits to a T. He was perfect for what we wanted." ...

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The Green Man; Passion's Current Runs Strong for Save Our Springs Chief Bill Bunch
Austin American-Statesman, 1/17/05

As the broad blue waters rumble over the low-water dam beside him, Bill Bunch '86 sits on a limestone ledge and pulls off his Save Our Springs T-shirt in preparation for a morning swim in Barton Creek. It is a cheerful, gentle Saturday. The summer rains have brought a bounty of water, and in the water there is wildness.

Bill Bunch dives right into it—not with splashy abandon, but with the air of a man surrendering himself to the power of the waters. We wade in behind him, feeling the cool, brisk current pushing against us right away. The stream is as wide as a river here, at the northern tip of the Barton Creek greenbelt near the Lost Creek subdivision, eight miles upstream from Barton Springs.

The swimmer—our city's most prominent advocate for nature, the executive director and chief legal counsel for the SOS environmental alliance—is tall and lean, 44 years old, with a boyish face. His thick and wavy dark hair has been soaked flat by the rushing waters. Bunch fidgets with his snorkel mask, then disappears in the hopes of bumping into some bluegill perch near the bottom of the creek.

Yet when Bunch pops back to the surface, he is toting trash.

Standing chest-deep in the stream, he displays a garish Mexican beer bottle, a 32-ouncer. Bunch turns the bottle upside down, lets the creek water drain out. "You rock, man!" shouts a hippie guy from the shore. Then the swimmer goes down again. ...

"Looks like I've hit the jackpot," Bunch says with a smile after popping up from the water a second time. From the pockets of his swim trunks, Bunch pulls out five golf balls that have apparently washed downstream. "The currents carry the golf balls in a way that they get deposited in clusters," he says. "You don't often see one sitting alone. Instead, you find two or three resting together in one spot." ...

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