{"id":447460,"date":"2026-09-25T15:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447460\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T15:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:20:18","slug":"students-go-home-to-texas-for-the-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447460\/","title":{"rendered":"Students Go Home to Texas for the Summer\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the furthest points of South Texas, the setting sun touches the waters of the Rio Grande and the dry brush of mesquite grass all at once. Laredo, Texas, which sits right on the river, is like a beginning and an end to the state\u2019s reach, depending on which direction you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Laredo, sophomore Ashley Nieto said, meant experiencing a tightly knit community even with a population that approaches 270,000. She remembers school days when chatter traveled fast and grocery trips seemed to involve everyone she\u2019d ever known, but even still, she said people cared about one another. Her pediatrician, who saw her through the growing pains of childhood and her teenage years, always made a point to remember Nieto\u2019s volleyball games and life events.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That added level of care is what set her on the path to becoming a doctor in the place that raised her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little role in the big community, but I think of it as a cycle. When a doctor moves on, you have to have someone replace them, and that doesn\u2019t always happen in Laredo,\u201d Nieto said. \u201cComing back home would be like cutting that cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

This summer, Nieto had the chance to do just that. As a member of The University of Texas\u2019 2026 Home to Texas<\/a> cohort, the public health major traveled back to Laredo to complete a paid summer internship in the city\u2019s health department with backing from the UT initiative and community partners.<\/p>\n

\"FiveThis year\u2019s cohort featured six total students from Laredo, including Nieto in the middle of the bottom row, and Isabella Ramirez to her right. The group all worked within different local government departments. <\/p>\n

Home to Texas is an annual program that places first-year students within public organizations, such as city governments, economic development offices, school districts, or airports as well as nonprofit organizations and private companies that have a strong community impact in their hometown. During the program\u2019s first year in 2019, there were initially 5 partner communities, with the numbers growing to 44 by 2023. Of the 38 participating students in this year\u2019s group, six matched in Laredo across departments in the health, transportation and development sectors. Supporting this number of students was made possible by a generous donation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to the internship experience, the students participated in a weekly online training call with their peers in the program to grow their professional skills. Each student also had the opportunity to complete a Google AI Professional Certificate intended for increased fluency in artificial intelligence tools. Nieto said these resources provided through Home to Texas made a big difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe added support definitely sharpened my skills,\u201d Nieto said. \u201cIt was cool because I would have my training class and then wake up in the morning and be able to apply those skills to my internship the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ASome days at Nieto\u2019s internship involved outreach events.<\/p>\n

For nine weeks, Nieto worked alongside some of the professionals she\u2019d known all her life as a once-frequent visitor to local clinics with her mother. The experience of working in the health department, she said, granted her insights into the impact she could have in the community with the knowledge she\u2019s gaining at UT\u2019s College of Natural Sciences over 200 miles away.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou grow up and you\u2019re like, \u2018we need more of this, we need more of that,\u2019 but then you go get your degree and you never come back. That never gets solved,\u201d Nieto said. \u201cI want to be someone that actually goes back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another student from Laredo, Isabella Ramirez, returned home in hopes of applying what she\u2019s learned in her studies at the McCombs School of Business to her internship with the Laredo Webb County Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. There, she had the opportunity to conduct outreach with the community, lead presentations and attend a national trade summit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis internship truly changed the way I think about my hometown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isabella Ramirez<\/p>\n

Along the way, Ramirez said, she gained new perspectives about her own day-to-day life as a resident.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis internship truly changed the way I think about my hometown,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cWith my internship, I understand how transportation planning really shapes the community we live in. No matter where my career takes me, I feel like having that understanding will make me a better student, a better professional, and a better citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the experience, Ramirez successfully proposed and launched an initiative to involve students from local schools in the decision-making that happens at the metro planning office. The idea, she said, was to empower students to provide feedback about policies shaping their roads, bike routes and other transportation resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStepping into something so unfamiliar was one of the best decisions that I could have made,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cThe fact that the transportation team believed in me while I had zero years of experience gave me a level of confidence I didn\u2019t even know I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AAt the end of her internship. Ramirez received certificates from both the hosting department and UT\u2019s Home to Texas program. <\/p>\n

In addition to her internship, Ramirez applied her training to her second job at a local Pilates studio. There, she put her newfound knowledge in AI to the test and created a streamlined process for onboarding employees that reached the head of the company and landed her a conversation with a team at Google.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the students spread across the map throughout the summer, Home to Texas celebrated their collective work on Sept. 24 with a showcase presenting highlights from their respective internships. Nanami Buchanan, a computer science sophomore, said she appreciated seeing the success of her peers throughout the internship process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe Home to Texas cohort celebrated their summer internships with a September celebration, complete with refreshments and presentations of their achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing all of my fellow cohort members, it really made me happy to be a part of something like that,\u201d Buchanan said. \u201cI knew that I was grouped with a bunch of other ambitious leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 minutes from her home in San Antonio, Buchanan got the opportunity to explore another side to being a local through an internship with Prytime Medical Devices Inc. in Boerne.<\/p>\n

In Buchanan\u2019s previous experience with programming, she had never dealt with medical terminology or software, but she said the team at Prytime was quick to bring her on board to dive into the new concepts. Soon, Buchanan saw that her work could have practical implications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ABuchanan completed an additional certificate in AI training from Google.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized I want to work with something that has an actual impact,\u201d Buchanan said. \u201cThat motivated me to get out of bed and go to work every day because I knew that what I was working on could potentially save a life.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of the summer, Buchanan developed an update to the company\u2019s simulation app that models the procedure of inserting a balloon catheter. With the app, users can practice the technique before entering a fast-paced trauma bay in the real world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Buchanan said many people envision that a career in computer science requires moving to technology hot spots like Silicon Valley or New York but realizing the impact her code could have at home opened her eyes to new possibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we grow up, we always have these aspirations of going to a new place. We always want what we don\u2019t have,\u201d Buchanan said. \u201cBeing able to come back home, and seeing these small places that have great ideas that could potentially change lives and change the future of medical technology, was huge to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After completing their summer internships, the students returned to the Forty Acres for their sophomore year, but many, like Ramirez, were left with a lasting impact. During the next couple of years as Ramirez wraps up her degree at McCombs, she said she plans to look toward law school before ultimately returning to Laredo to work in the legal field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since her schoolyard days, Ramirez has been involved in various community and volunteering efforts in Laredo. The Home to Texas experience, she said, was just another way of giving back to the community where she grew up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly hope that more students take advantage of this opportunity,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cOur hometowns benefit when students come back and invest in the place that invested in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes these students proud of their hometown?<\/p>\n

Ashley Nieto, LAREDO<\/p>\n

\u201cThe area code, 956. I feel like that\u2019s what I\u2019m most connected to: when people are from South Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nanami Buchanan, BOERNE<\/p>\n

\u201cThe downtown is very unique, you can see so much of that German-American heritage being preserved. If you go around with a local, they\u2019ll be able to tell you the history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isabella Ramirez, LAREDO<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of Laredo for taking on the Home to Texas program. I\u2019m proud of the local organizations for opening up their doors so that more leaders would want to come back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AThe Laredo interns celebrated the end of their summer with local officials.<\/p>\n

\"ARamirez had the chance to attend the Port Laredo Global Trade Summit.<\/p>\n

To learn more about Home to Texas, including how eligible students can apply and how employers and communities can get involved, visit UT\u2019s\u00a0Career Success website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the furthest points of South Texas, the setting sun touches the waters of the Rio Grande and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-447460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}