Spreading Sunshine

Susana Alemán, B.S. ’75, M.Ed. ’78, J.D. ’84, exudes passion for The University of Texas at Austin. But she is even more passionate about creating bright futures. This “Rio Grande Valley Girl” spreads her own brand of sunshine through scholarships — and sunflowers.

Susana enrolled at the UT School of Law after a successful career in teaching. The decision married her love of civics and her desire to become an administrator in higher education.

“During my final year of law school, they announced that the school’s assistant dean for student affairs was planning to retire, and I knew I wanted that position,” recalls Susana.

She got the job — and a new nickname: the Sunflower Lady. During her 22 years as an assistant dean, Susana took to the Texas fields to gather sunflowers for the law school’s Sunflower Ceremony, a century-old tradition in which a sunflower is pinned to the lapels of graduates.

Today, she is on a mission to help future Longhorns. Through the Texas Exes, Susana created the Alemán-Wilson Challenge Grant Scholarship to assist high-achieving Mexican American students from South Texas who are pursuing degrees in education. The scholarship was named in honor of her mother, father, sister and uncle. Another scholarship, the Dean Alemán Law Scholarship, created by UT’s Chicano/Hispanic/Latino Law Students’ Association, was named in Susana’s honor.

Recently, Susana has supported the Texas Exes and the UT School of Law initiative to make the school a more welcoming place for all. She allocated a gift in her estate to create the Dean Alemán Sunflower Lawhorn Scholarship — an investment in future generations of Mexican American law students.

“I want there to be a level playing field, and we’re not there yet. Not in my lifetime, but at some point, we won’t have a need for there to be scholarships for a specific ethnic group. And I’m hoping that these scholarships will assist in that process,” she shares.

Keep Our Traditions Alive

Do you want to enrich the Longhorn experience? Is it important to you that UT remains one of the best universities in the world? Our FREE resource can help you find the right way to support UT, and you don’t even have to write a check! Download our guide, “Longhorns Forever: 7 Top Ways to Strengthen UT,” to learn more. For more information, contact the Gift and Estate Planning Team at 512-475-9632 or giftplan@austin.utexas.edu.