Filmmaker And Longtime Faculty Member Paul Stekler Named RTF Chair

By randyramirez in Blog on August 16, 2010 at 3:59 pm

UT’s Department of Radio-Television-Film didn’t have to look far to find a leader that had just the right mix of industry and academic experience. Paul Stekler, a UT faculty member since 1997, was named chair today.

Stekler’s documentaries on American politics have won prestigious awards, including a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award, three Emmy Awards, three duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards, and two Peabody Awards.

Succeeding interim chair Tom Schatz and 2003-09 chair Sharon Strover, Stekler becomes the first working filmmaker to serve as RTF chair.

He keeps busy with his film projects — he’s working now on a documentary about New Orleans five years after Katrina — but it doesn’t keep him from being active in UT’s and Austin’s communities.

Besides teaching, he has helped overhaul the film production curriculum and recruited other filmmakers to the faculty. He also is on the faculty of the UT Documentary Center and co-founded the LBJ School’s Center on Politics and Governance.

Away from the Forty Acres, Stekler is on the advisory boards of the Austin Film Society and the South by Southwest Film Festival.

Want to more about the man leading one of UT’s top programs? Let his work speak for him. PBS aired his documentary, The Choice 2008, about the Obama-McCain presidential election and has it online for all to see. View it here.