Andres Correa
“At UT Dallas you are surrounded by smart people who provide you a remarkable academic challenge. Still, life has to have balance. One of the things I look back on with great pride is the fact those members of my graduating class did a great deal to build campus activities from the ground up.
“For instance, a friend of mine started the campus radio station. Then, our roller hockey team improved greatly, placing third in the national collegiate club tournament. Interest in all campus sports began to grow along with all manner of social activities.
“As students, we saw ourselves as builders. And, to its credit, the administration was open to our ideas. I saw a unique willingness on their part to adapt to the students’ needs.
“One of my proudest moments came when we were able to initiate a program where a local immigration lawyer agreed to come to the campus on a weekly basis to answer questions from immigrant students.
"And while I benefited greatly from the growing on-campus opportunities, until my travels all I knew was what I’d read. I’d come to the United States with my family at age 11, so I had little grasp of the realities of life even in my native country.
“Visiting other countries, seeing things first-hand, meeting other people and learning of their lifestyles, changed the way I thought about so many things. I graduated from UT Dallas with a new perspective on my life, and that of people elsewhere.
“I look back on my summer travels, visiting small village schools built by the parents of the students, going out on fishing boats with men who barely made a living at their profession, even participating in a few anti-government protests with the locals, as something that greatly enriched me.
“And it gave me a focus for the future. The matter of immigration is a large and important part of my life. As a lawyer one day working for a firm or as an elected official in some capacity, it will remain my passion.”
Andres Correa spent a summer in Mexico, interning at the State of Guanajuato Electoral Institute, another in Chile, working in the Office of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. As an Archer Fellow in Washington, D.C., he spent a semester with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. He was admitted to New York University Law School and has long range plans to enter politics.