The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley opened under its new name on Aug. 30, 2015 to mark a fresh start toward becoming a comprehensive regional university. On Aug. 30, 2025, UTRGV kicks off another new chapter in its nearly 100-year history when the university’s Vaqueros football team plays a Division I football game in Edinburg. “It will be 10 years to the date we opened the university,” said Guy…
Daniel Silva spent 19 years at the Mission Economic Development Corporation, starting as a fresh college graduate and ascending to being the organization’s chief executive officer. The climb to the top job was fulfilling, but eventually there was an aspiration for another challenge. In 2022, when the opportunity to serve more than one Rio Grande Valley community came along, Silva took it in seeking to have a bigger footprint. In…
Esmeralda Estrella’s students in a Texas State Technical College classroom are huddled around incubator equipment used to support newborns in neonatal intensive care units. The students on the Harlingen campus are enrolled in TSTC’s biomedical equipment technology program. Students jot down notes and confer in teams as if they were in real-world hospital settings. Maintenance and repair of this sort of equipment is critical to sustaining and saving lives. “The…
The Rio Grande Valley’s well-deserved renown for being a national birding hotspot overshadows another element of wildlife that attracts eco-tourists to the region. The Valley has a stunning array of butterflies. Almost 40 percent of the over 700 species of butterflies in the United States live in the region. The National Butterfly Center south of Mission is at the forefront of this brand of eco-tourism. The center’s 100-acre site features…
Nick Dozer grew up a metal rocker and a buckeye in the rolling hills of southern Ohio. Dozer considers himself part of Buckeye Nation, as in Ohio State University football lore, but these days he finds himself in the Rio Grande Valley. He met a Valley girl while living in Nashville where both he and Dina Obrego were what he called “musicnaries.” It was ministry through music as Dozer and…
Dr. Aaron Unterbrink got through 2020 and 2021 when, as a dentist, he tended to one emergency after another. Unterbrink had five dental offices at the time in Hidalgo County. His main office was in McAllen with another one in Alton and another in Donna. The frantic pace of those years and the constant medical emergencies he dealt with took a toll. It convinced Unterbrink there had to be a…
Nayelli Valdemar is a one-woman shop for now, a young mother who has aligned her personal values with a passion to run “a business I know inside out.” Only 25, with the energy of a budding entrepreneur, Valdemar embodies her motto, uno solo puede. “One can do it” is a general translation and is reflective of the work ethic demonstrated recently at her Funky Flower Shop in Mercedes, just a…
The Fun N Sun RV Resort in San Benito fits the description of a community within a community with its over 2,000 residents coming and going like a small town. The San Benito resort is one of the longest active RV parks in the Rio Grande Valley. It got its start decades ago in Harlingen near the Air Force base that would be redeveloped into the Valley International Airport. Fun…
Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda is known for making the rounds of her city and dropping in on locally-owned small businesses. In mid-January, she made such a visit to The Reading Turtle. In the mayor’s words, it’s “a cozy bookstore” and where she made a pact with her young son. “I’ve made a deal with my son,” Sepulveda wrote on her Harlingen mayor Facebook page. “Every time he completes a book,…
Roel Villanueva was enthralled with fireworks as a boy growing up in Mercedes. The Mexican-style palomas were his favorites, the triangle shaped firework known for packing a punch with their concentrated amounts of gunpowder and being loud enough to trigger car alarms in neighborhoods. Villanueva was just shy of 10 years of age when he didn’t flee the scene fast enough from a paloma ready to go off. It went…