Austin, TX

UT Austin, one of the city's largest employers, is eliminating most remote work

Published

2 years ago

June 12, 2024

UT Austin, one of the city's largest employers, is eliminating most remote work

The University of Texas at Austin will require “almost all” staff members to return to working on-site, full-time ahead of the fall semester.

In an email to the campus community Wednesday, UT President Jay Hartzell said leaders of individual colleges and schools will finalize logistics by early July, and the policy will fully take affect by Aug. 19 — the week before fall classes start.

“Staff members can most effectively serve our students, faculty, fellow staff members, and other stakeholders when working together in an environment that fosters collaboration, innovation, availability, and reliability,” Hartzell said in the email. “We are here because of our students, and your consistent presence will help provide a more complete and engaging learning experience for students throughout campus.”

Some roles will still be eligible for remote or hybrid work based on what department leaders decide. Hartzell didn’t share specifics, but said the roles “will be characterized by observable productivity; work that is transactional, internal, or service related; or functions that require high levels of individual time to perform.”

Mike Rosen, a spokesperson for UT Austin, said in an email that “certain accounting, payroll, or IT positions” could be examples of jobs eligible for hybrid or remote work. Rosen said UT Austin doesn’t have a tally of how many staff members the new policy will affect, but that many employees have already returned to full-time, in-office work.

UT Austin has 21,000 faculty and staff members, according to its LinkedIn. That makes it one of the largest employers in the area, according to data from the Austin Chamber of Commerce. KUT staff are also employees of UT Austin.

One UT staff member, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern that her coworkers could experience retaliation, said she thinks returning to the office full-time is unnecessary for her position. As an academic adviser in the College of Liberal Arts, she works directly with students.

“Most of my job is with students over Zoom,” she said. “A lot of students … they commute to UT, they have jobs, they have other things going on outside of school. Not everybody is able to stay on campus and meet with advisers for whatever they need.”

Her team currently works three days in office, two days remote during the fall and spring semesters. After receiving Hartzell’s email Wednesday, she said she got another email from her team’s HR representative specifying that she will now need to work four days in person, one day remote every week while school is in session.

The UT employee was already planning to quit her job for personal reasons before the most recent announcement, but this has cemented her decision.

“I think everybody’s aware that it’s very expensive to live in Austin,” she said. She has worked in multiple positions at UT since 2019 and now makes $53,000 a year. “The university is also fairly expensive [for] anyone who commutes to UT …. We have to dedicate even more of our time to getting to campus, paying to get to campus and continuing to do these jobs where we’re very underpaid for the amount of work that we’re expected to carry out.”

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Austin, TX

Texas Primary: Breakdown of Texas races

Published

6 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Democrats tried to stop a mid-decade redistricting effort, but were unsuccessful. Now, we are starting to see some of the candidates emerging in those newly drawn districts. FOX 7 Austin’s Rudy Koski gives a full breakdown.

Posted March 3, 2026 10:32pm CST

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Austin, TX

Remembering Jorge Pederson: Minnesota MMA fighter killed in Austin, Texas, shooting

Published

18 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Remembering Jorge Pederson: Minnesota MMA fighter killed in Austin, Texas, shooting

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – A shooting on West Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, early Sunday morning, killed three people and injured more than a dozen others, according to the Austin Police Department. APD confirmed one of the victims was 30-year-old Jorge Pederson, a Minnesota man who worked as an MMA fighter for the Med City Fighting Championships.

“You meet tons of fighters and there are people that stand above the rest that you find you enjoy or find the most amusing,” MCFC Co-Owner Matthew Vogt said. “He was definitely one of them.”

According to Vogt, Pederson was also the owner of a Minnesota business called Metro Movers. Vogt said the MMA competitor touched everyone’s hearts since his first day of fighting professionally in Rochester.

“As soon as we met him when it was the weighing time, we just loved the guy already because he had a great mission or spirit about him,” Vogt said. “He was a funny guy and great fighter.”

Vogt told KTTC when he first saw the news that Pederson was killed, he could not believe what he saw.

“I was looking, like, ‘Wait a minute. Is this one of his shenanigans or did something actually happen there?’” Vogt said, recalling the moment he saw a social media post regarding the shooting in Austin. “I confirmed with a few people and I’m just like, sometimes, some things happen that you don’t even like, you don’t even know how to respond to it because it’s just so out of left field that you don’t immediately have a response to it.”

MCFC confirmed there is an online fundraiser dedicated to supporting Pederson’s family. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than $10,000 has been raised.

“He was someone that always could make anybody laugh,” Vogt said. “Support his family through the fundraiser and take a look at his Instagram especially to see how funny he was.”

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Austin, TX

Here are the major statewide and Austin-area races on the ballot Tuesday

Published

1 day ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Here are the major statewide and Austin-area races on the ballot Tuesday

A voter heads into the Ben Hur Shrine polling place in Austin as early voting begins for the March primary elections in Texas, Feb. 17, 2026. Voters can cast their ballots to decide who represents Republicans and Democrats in the November midterm elections.

Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman

A rare mix of competitive races up and down the ballot has voters turning up to the polls in droves ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, which will set match-ups in the high-stakes midterms in November.

Voters will decide if U.S. Sen. John Cornyn gets to keep the seat he’s held for more than two decades and which candidates will likely take a slew of redrawn congressional seats meant to give Republicans an edge. The races could decide control of Congress.