It’s Orange and Maroon Legislative Day at the Capitol, which means there will be lots of alumni and friends of the University of Texas and Texas A&M University in Austin today! It’s a day for those interested in our state’s higher education system to show up at the Capitol and let their voices be heard – especially if you are a UT or TAMU alumnus.
Over the last few years, Texas Central has created internship opportunities, forged classroom-based partnerships, and hosted competitions for students across Texas and down the Texas Central line. So, we at Texas Central are celebrating Orange and Maroon Day by revisiting some of the times we have worked with these two powerhouse educational institutions:
Texas A&M University
In 2017, Texas Central helped to establish an internship agreement between Texas A&M Engineering and the company behind the Shinkansen technology, Japan Railway Central. This partnership formally kicked off in the Summer of 2017 with TAMU student Brandon Swearengen, a junior mechanical engineering major from Sealy, Texas traveled to Tokyo to begin his internship at JRC. While in Japan, Brandon learned about the operations, maintenance, and engineering behind the Shinkansen system and gained an understanding of the company’s business environment and corporate culture. You can read more about Brandon’s experience interning in Japan here: https://www.texascentral.com/2017/09/19/japanese-bullet-train-won-aggie/
Based on the success of this pilot internship program, JRC formally invited Texas A&M to be an ongoing program participant, making Texas A&M the first Texas university to send students to Tokyo to intern at JRC, and the third American university alongside University of Wisconsin and Vanderbilt. Even more, this past summer JRC expanded this opportunity to accept two interns! TAMU Mechanical Engineering major Katy Armitage and Electrical Systems Engineering major Stephen Koucmoud spent their summer of 2018 learning all about Shinkansen trains and Japanese culture.
We are so proud of how well Brandon, Stephen and Katy represented Texas!
In 2017, Texas Central hosted a short film competition open to university students from across the state. Teams from Texas A&M won two of the three top prizes:
Team No Train, No Gain won the “Live Action Excellence” category with it’s creative take on the project and its use of Time as a main theme.
Not to be outdone, Team Texplorers took home the prize in the “Creativity” category for its emphasis on speed and the potential to explore new parts of the state with the Texas high-speed train.
And, in Fall 2018, Texas Central worked with the Texas A&M Visualization Department to provide students with a real-world opportunity to work as though they were a professional agency. The students were tasked with creating a user experience (UX) platform and user interface (UI) for the company’s passenger ticketing system.
The final production included a cohesive design strategy for various aspects of the digital journey, including logos, typography, color palette and design elements for the Texas Central app and website booking and buying experience. Read more about it here: Aggie Undergrads Get First Taste of Agency Life with Texas Central Partners.
GIG EM!
The University of Texas
UT took home one of the top prizes in our 2016 student architecture competition, which gave architectural students from accredited universities across Texas the opportunity to share their inspiring visions for proposed Texas high-speed train passenger stations in Dallas, Houston, and The Brazos Valley.
The student team from UT won the Urban Design award for their breathtaking depiction of the future North Texas station in Dallas:
In Fall 2018, we had an amazing opportunity to partner with UT’s School of Advertising and Public Relations and provide an agency practicum for students. The agency (class) was asked to help us design a uniquely-Texan brand, complete with communication strategy/media plan, that utilizes our current brand guidelines and creative assets to better reach Texans who are ready to ride this train!
At the end of the semester, the class traveled to Dallas to present their findings to the Texas Central team, including the CEO Carlos Aguilar.
HOOK EM!
We look forward to continuing to work with both of these universities, and expanding our opportunities to work with Texas students from across the state!
And finally, Texas Central is proud to have several Longhorns and Aggies on staff, working each and every day to #BuildThisTrain in a uniquely Texan way:
