Meet our graduate students and alumni . . .
Jose F. Olascoaga
Land-Use Planning, Management and Design
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I had a great experience during my graduate studies at Texas Tech University. I am original from Lima, Peru. I attended the school Santa Maria Monterrico, founded by an American Marianist congregation, by whom I became proficient in English. I held undergraduate studies on philosophy in the Facultad de Teología Pontificia y Civil de Lima and on architecture in the Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal. Pursuing graduate studies in the United States, I felt attracted to the interdisciplinary doctoral program of Land-Use Planning, Management and Design (LPMD) at Texas Tech University. I found that this program had four academic tracks: environmental/natural resource management and planning, community planning and design, public policy administration, and historic preservation. I was especially attracted to the historic preservation track because I had a previous specialty in this area, and the doctoral programs in historic preservation are few worldwide. I received an invaluable support from the Graduate School to fulfill my doctoral education through the Chancellor's Endowed Scholarship and, especially, the Elo and Olga Urbanovsky Endowed Fellowship, assisting me during three years. | |
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Although my education was mainly in architecture, I undertook a variety of courses from other departments, such as philosophy, public administration, agriculture, geography, and law. This gave me a real taste of interdisciplinary studies. I had the opportunity to apply all this knowledge in my dissertation: "Development of a new approach for appraising the aesthetic quality of cities" (2003). I noticed that, in real life, different fields are deeply interrelated. For example, I learned about the important interconnection between the perception of design qualities of the urban environment, mostly related to beauty and culture, and existent social issues, such as environmental care, land-use, economic development, and crime rate. |
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Continuing with an interdisciplinary approach, I worked on a historical overview of Latin American art and architecture. I presented my findings in two conferences to students from both architecture and Latin American studies. In order to increase my knowledge of art and culture, I pursued graduate studies on Spanish at Texas Tech University, with an emphasis in Latin American literature; I study first as a master of romance languages and, later, a Ph.D. in Spanish. My second dissertation, "The Andean world in the Work of César Vallejo" (2009), focuses on the movement of modernist indigenismo, the remains of the Inca civilization, and the contemporary social problems of the Andean inhabitants in the literary works of a Peruvian poet. Here, I unveil how literature can serve as the verbal expression of the author's conception of history, geography, culture, art, and his deep emotional world. During this doctorate I had the opportunity to work on some papers for publication on Latin American literature and on Don Quixote. As a graduate student, I really engaged in prolific reading and research. In order to fulfill my doctoral education in Spanish I counted with an important assistantship from the department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures. After finalizing my graduate studies at Texas Tech University, I feel comfortable that I acquired a strong sense of intellectual maturity. Currently, I am looking for a professorship position where I can both apply and stimulate in students interdisciplinary knowledge in relation to Latin American art, literature, and culture. |
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