This City Is Our Classroom

The first of many doors that open for professor Christine Drennon’s urban studies students are the ones on a city bus.

This is one of the most memorable assignments for any member of Trinity University’s Urban Studies program: experiencing the dynamic city of San Antonio by riding to the edge of town and back. 

“You ride the bus, and you sit in the same vicinity as complete strangers whom you will never see again, and you make peace with that,” says Drennon, Ph.D., now in her 22nd year with Trinity. “Getting out into the world is step one for our program. After that, you engage with the community. Then, when you can do that effectively, you’re going to have ideas and contribute.”

Drennon is not one to mince words, and under her guidance and vision, Trinity’s Urban Studies program is not content to sit on the sidelines. Here, Tigers conduct pivotal research that informs multi-billion-dollar city budgets, they provide invaluable technical skills to an entire ecosystem of nonprofits that help San Antonio flourish, and they go on to thrive as leaders in a variety of careers across the nation.

This success all stems back to Drennon’s belief in the power of people skills, an emphasis on lived experience over textbooks, and a realization of the connectedness between the many disciplines that affect people’s lives in an urban environment. And, as Drennon tirelessly advocates, what better environment could there be than Trinity’s unique place as a small liberal arts school in a big, growing city such as San Antonio?

“Trinity is one of the very, very few highly ranked liberal arts universities in a major city,” Drennon says. “If you want to make significant contributions to the future in every way, this is the place to be to educate yourself in urban studies.” 

“If you go to New York City to study, you don’t get this close to decision making,” she continues. “But here in San Antonio,” Drennon leans in and holds her fingers close enough that a strand of hair couldn’t fit between them, “I can get you this close to decision making. I can get you in the room.”

Connecting Across Disciplines

Which room—and what doors open—is largely up to Drennon’s students.

Urban studies can be a difficult subject for its students to explain because its scope encompasses too many possibilities to count. At its most basic premise, urban studies is an interdisciplinary program that examines the history and nature of cities and the global phenomenon of urbanization.

“I tell my students that a lot of traditional disciplines are a product of 19th-century problems. Now we're in the 21st century, and we have to start thinking differently,” Drennon says. “You can't do anything coming from just one perspective. If you’re studying housing, you need to know finance and economics, but if you don't also understand poverty, sociology, environmental studies, and urban planning, you're never going to be effective.”

But that’s life at Trinity, where a dedication to interdisciplinarity combines with a unique urban location, which creates an exciting environment for students, such as Elizabeth Hammer ’27 and Caitlin Minor ’27, to explore, grow, and discover across disciplines. 

Hammer, an urban studies and environmental science double major, says she might want to work in landscape architecture or for an environmental nonprofit when she graduates. Wherever she ends up, she feels the interdisciplinarity of Trinity’s approach to urban studies is going to be an asset.

“Urban studies and environmental studies are both studies of our surroundings. One is built, one is natural,” she says. “But the line between those definitely gets crossed as we start talking about sustainability as the main thing that we're focusing on in urban studies and urbanism.”

Minor, who originally came to Trinity from her hometown of New Orleans interested in political science, says her “mind exploded” after taking Drennon’s “Urban Experience” class, and swapped out her previous interest for urban studies. “I said immediately, ‘Oh my god, I love this,’” she adds.

Hands-On Experience

As someone who wants to work with public transit, Minor says she was hooked by Drennon’s bus ride assignment. That assignment is just the beginning of how Trinity’s urban studies program puts Tigers in a position to gain lived experience in their field.

For decades, Drennon’s formula for hands-on work has been consistently rigorous and practically applied. Early assignments give students the chance to reimagine what a city would look like under their own influence: They may examine new possibilities for disinvested spaces, pushing themselves to take into account varied perspectives; they may envision how a land bridge connecting Trinity’s campus to the River Walk would affect the University’s connection to the city.

Then, Drennon’s students launch into a series of community-based research opportunities. They develop invaluable skills in geographic information systems [GIS], a mapping software that allows users to analyze and visualize geographically referenced information.

By the time Drennon’s students are seniors, they can do more than collect data. “My students don’t just analyze a situation, they propose change,” Drennon says. “And afterward, they’re in demand for any number of internships because they’ve gone above and beyond volunteer work. They’re bringing a pretty elite set of skills into the field.”

Minor, who says she’s looking forward to more research and hands-on opportunities this year, is ecstatic to pursue these experiences under Drennon’s guidance. 

“Drennon is always telling us, ‘You have to be a grounding force in the field. You should be able to apply what you’ve learned to the real world,’” Minor says.

Drennon’s Own Opportunity

What better example of “practicing what you preach” than Drennon herself, whose teaching is still being informed by lessons learned from her 2022-23 sabbatical, where she went out into the world for a stint as a CEO for a local housing nonprofit.

After serving as a longstanding member of the board of a local housing resource called the Alamo Community Group (ACG), Drennon was asked to step in as CEO during a turbulent time for the organization. 

Cities typically have a handful of area organizations like these for local residents who are seeking affordable housing and social services. ACG serves a specific niche in the housing sector, consisting of inhabitants living at about 60-80% of the area’s median income. “These are people who are still struggling to find a place to live,” Drennon says. “The nonprofit community uses financial instruments to help them, but this is really tough work. We're very reliant on the state and federal money that runs through the state.”

With Drennon’s help, the nonprofit was able to navigate multiple challenges while maintaining its community commitments. Though Drennon is back on campus at Trinity, she remains connected to the housing sector by sitting on the ACG board after her term as CEO ended. “Trinity saw value in my involvement and was gracious enough to allow me to continue to serve in these roles,” she says.

Routes to Success

When your urban studies program is this connected to practical opportunities, from top to bottom, it’s no surprise that alumni are still buzzing about the impact this major has had on their trajectories.

Jason Azar ’16, who double majored in urban studies and art history with a concentration in architectural history, now works in commercial real estate in Austin. While he went on to get his master’s degree in urban design in New York, he still remembers his undergraduate capstone project with the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders, where he helped analyze shifts in home prices and tax rates.

“That was a real-world exercise that, the older I get, really has informed how I communicate complex, overlapping systems,” Azar says. “Right now, I’m putting together marketing material for a new multifamily investment in Colorado. A lot of our investors aren't familiar with Colorado, so I have to educate them from zero to them being comfortable saying, ‘Here's all the demand drivers in this area.’ Just like Drennon would tell us, I’m thinking about how all of these different layers stack to influence one place.”

Giselle Britt ’21, an urban studies major who has worked in affordable housing development for about five years in Texas, has now started a master’s program in city planning in Pennsylvania. Still, she’s continually thinking back to her undergraduate experiences.

“Some of my favorite Trinity projects were San Antonio-focused. We did some longitudinal studies and analyses of neighborhoods,” Britt says. “Regardless of what we were working on, I really appreciated getting hands-on experience and also learning those technical skills that allow you to work in the modern environment. At Trinity, you’re going to get the critical skills that are needed in city-planning fields.”

Even Trinity’s own University Chaplain Alex Serna-Wallender ’08, M’09, and his spouse Elena Serna-Wallender ’08, fondly recall their times as urban studies majors under Drennon. Elena now works as a researcher for an education nonprofit, specifically focused on researching how to improve opportunities for students in community college. She says she still thinks about Drennon’s bus ride assignment.

“On that very first project, the bus project, Alex and I were bus buddies before we even started dating, and we chose the same route,” Elena says. “It was just so eye-opening as a way to get to know San Antonio better. That really pushed me out of my comfort zone and began to shift my identity away from the bubble that I grew up in to someone who can really live out in the world and fully engage with a city.”

After Drennon connected the Serna-Wallenders to the city, she helped connect them to opportunities. Drennon helped Elena find an internship with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and she helped Alex secure an internship with a city councilwoman that Alex says “was instrumental in helping me think about living out my faith values.” Drennon pushed Elena to attend grad school in the Ivy Leagues. And ultimately, Alex jokes that Drennon “also claims credit for our marriage. She was even at our wedding.”

Compassionate Challenge

In many ways, Drennon’s bus ride assignment has become more than just an introduction to the urban studies program—it’s a definitive dot on the map where urban studies students can pinpoint the origin of lessons that will serve them for a lifetime.

“Drennon really challenges you to think critically and thoughtfully. I think she's just such a seismic force,” Elena says.

Like an earthquake, Drennon has a way of disrupting what students may have previously considered to be rock-solid, underlying beliefs and assumptions about city life. “She’s so passionate about bringing people into the field of urban studies that it can be a little intimidating,” Hammer says with a laugh. “I joke that I feel like I’m spending the whole class trying to impress her because she just very clearly has so much to offer. If you’re willing to sit down and learn, she really challenges you and your ideas.”

But the true legacy of the program, her students and alumni say, is not just technical skills or academic knowledge—it’s making a case for finding ways for people to live and thrive together. 

After flourishing in Drennon’s urban studies program, Victoria Gonzalez-Gerlach ’13 went on to work at a real estate law firm and even worked for former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg ’99 on his housing policy task force and his housing initiatives. She currently oversees the voter-approved affordable housing bond, which provides $150 million for the preservation and the creation of housing.

Gonzalez-Gerlach says the experiential opportunities she had access to at Trinity were foundational for the work she is doing today. However, she credits Drennon’s mentorship for teaching her not just how to be successful in her chosen career field but also how to be an all-around empathetic leader. 

“Dr. Drennan always made the time to hear what we were going through and share what she thought. It was life-changing to be able to have someone to lean on, to serve as a mentor, and just be present,” Gonzalez-Gerlach says. “Dr. Drennan has helped me become a better person by thinking about how we can serve people within our work. It helped me put people first.”

“Drennon is the reason I approach problems through a compassionate lens,” Britt says. “I think this Trinity program really inspires stepping into other perspectives. You're understanding things from poverty, class, and gender, and while you’re developing a set of analytical skills, you’re also understanding that at the root of truly productive policies, there should always be compassion. And I think that at Trinity, you learn that compassion is rooted in a deep understanding of your community. Every day, that’s the thing that carries me through.”