Ballad of an Engineer

Engineering students and faculty teamed up with UT's Former Songwriter in Residence Darden Smith to write songs about their lives, their discipline and more.

by Jack Myer

Sharing her ideas with a room full of students is not unusual for professor Alexandra Clarà Saracho. However, the civil engineering professor is doing something she’s never done before—she’s writing a song. And she’s not in the classroom; she’s on stage at the Cactus Café with Darden Smith, UT’s first songwriter in residence.

In a matter of a couple hours this conversation will become a fully formed song, performed in front of several dozen students in attendance.

“Even things like the song, that aren’t incredibly technical, add a bit of fun to what we do,” said Saracho, an assistant professor in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering who specializes in soils. “At the end of the day, that’s also why I do what I do. I find it fun and interesting, and a song is a good vehicle to communicate the spirit of it to students.”

When people imagine an engineer, they might see someone who works with numbers, equations and code. Many engineers do those things. Through Smith’s Longhorn Songscape project, Saracho and the engineers who participated have proven themselves and the field to be about more than that.

They’re dreamers, storytellers, and they use creativity to solve problems just like an artist or songwriter would. They showed that creativity isn’t an intangible trait that some have and some don’t—it’s a muscle that everyone can exercise and express.

“Engineers don’t think they’re very creative, but they are,” Smith said. “I really love the opportunity to show people that they’re creative, because everyone’s creative at something.”

Civil engineering professor Alexandra Clarà Saracho and Former Songwriter in Residence Darden Smith write a song live at Cactus Cafe.

Interactive Songwriting

Smith is a decorated musician, releasing 17 critically acclaimed albums over his 35-year career. In recent years, he has honed the craft of collaborative songwriting, working with police officers, unhoused teenagers, veterans and hospice patients. He doesn’t believe the songwriting process should be limited to musicians.

“I met all these people with these really diverse backgrounds and stories that you wouldn’t expect happening at UT, and so I had this idea. What if I could bring this collaborative songwriting idea to a community on campus, and we could explore this one little, tiny community?”

— Darden Smith, UT’s former songwriter in residence

That led Smith to the Ramshorn Scholars. Last fall, he wrote five songs with the eight engineering students who participated in the project.

Darden Smith.

Collaboration in Action

Though Smith’s been a musician for more than three decades, he says he still learns so much from his fellow songwriters. Smith found his songwriting session with third-year mechanical engineering major Liliana Vasquez particularly enlightening. After performing the song with his signature folk sound, Smith asked Vasquez what she thought of it.

“Well, yeah, there are some things I don’t like,” she said.

He asked, “Well, what do you not like?”

“All of it. The music,” she said. Smith was shocked, and then Vasquez asked: “Can I play your guitar?” She never said she could play guitar.

He handed her the guitar, and she played the song in a completely different tone, giving it her own unique twist and making the music her own. They reworked the melody to match the chords she came up with.

The end product: “Used To Be,” a dark, string-heavy ballad about being confronted by change and coping with the loss of who you once were.

“I learned that sometimes I don’t express my opinions until it’s too late, or later than when I should,” Vasquez said, reflecting on the process. “And also, that I like working with different people, because it makes something that’s not just for myself, but from other people’s perspectives too.”

Where Music Meets Engineering

Two of Jayda Burr’s loves in life are engineering and music. The two rarely collide outside of her internship as an engineer and DJ at KVRX, UT’s student-run radio station. So, when she heard about Longhorn Songscape, she quickly got involved.

“It’s interesting to see people who are in science fields or math fields being creative, and I think a song is a really interesting way to bring that out of engineers.”

— Jayda Burr, second-year civil engineering student

Before arriving at UT, Burr attended a small private school in Dallas. There she was introduced to engineering, specifically through robotics competitions. However, the small school caused feelings of isolation.

Burr co-wrote “Big Dreams” with third-year civil engineering major Naomi Abrego. The song is about impostor syndrome and rationalizing the pressure of student life with the aspirations that all engineers share.

The Cockrell School has given Burr the engineering community that she’s always wanted, and one that includes and uplifts women. Burr and Abrego found common ground here as young women studying a traditionally male-dominated field.

“I was the only girl in many of my engineering classes,” Burr said about her introduction to engineering in high school. “It was pretty much just me, but coming to UT, it was completely different.”

A Teaching Moment

Saracho is not a songwriter, but music has always been an important part of her family. Before becoming a chemist, Saracho’s dad was a musician, and she claims he has perfect pitch and can play songs on the piano by memory. When she goes back to Spain for the holidays, Saracho and her family, all 30 of them, gather around the piano and sing together.

“Music is the thing that brings people together,” she said. “It’s a different way of collaborating and getting excited about a common thing, like creating a song about someone and building the music that goes around it.”

Watching Smith and Saracho at the Cactus Café feels less like a songwriting session and more like an interview. She tells him about geotechnical engineering, which is her specialty within civil engineering.

When asked to describe geotechnical engineering, Saracho answers, “Well, it’s soil.” From her answers, he pulls phrases and moves them around so they rhyme, such as: “Structures that will last beyond our time,” “We build for now and for the future,” and “Engineers are explorers, problem solvers.”

Saracho considered the Songscape project an opportunity for engineers to be introspective and translate their profession to a broader audience.

“Engineers can be very creative. A lot of our students are involved in arts as well. It’s a very nice way to merge science and art very beautifully.”

— Alexandra Clarà Saracho, assistant professor, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

An Ensemble Production

The six-month process from the first songwriting session to the Cactus Café performance was a team effort, beyond Smith and his songwriting partners.

The Engineering Chamber Orchestra, or EChO, was part of Smith’s performance. The orchestra, which was founded in 2009 and includes students, faculty and staff across UT, also joined Smith in the studio to record strings, percussion and piano for the songs. Before the tracks could be laid down, student composers from UT Austin’s Butler School of Music scored them.

From the very beginning, Smith’s work has been all about the idea that everyone is interesting and everyone has a story. From working with students, to the on-stage performances that bring these ideas to life and ultimately recording tracks, it was a Forty Acres-wide effort that brought together art, engineering and much more.

“If you were able to hear the songs and stories of people on campus that you would not have normally met, you might not only see how diverse and how fantastic the campus is, but you might also find yourself in that other person’s story.”

— Darden Smith