Name: Citzler, Annette
Title: Fmr. Professor at Texas Lutheran University
Texas A&M Class: 1985
Inducted: 2022
Biography
Dr. Annette Citzler grew up in La Grange, Texas. A graduate of La Grange High School, she attended Texas Lutheran College (now University) and graduated in 1972 with a B.A. in English. After a year in Switzerland as a Fulbright Student Grant recipient, she earned an M.A. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976, and ultimately graduated with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University in 1985.
It was in 1977 that Dr. Citzler discovered what became her lifelong passion: teaching at Texas Lutheran College, as an Instructor of Economics. She returned to Texas Lutheran in 1986, and became Director of International Education and President of the Mid-Texas Association of International Education, a consortium of six San Antonio and Austin-area private colleges that secured funding from the Department of Education for a multi-year grant to internationalize their curricula. Dr. Citzler directed faculty programs at all six universities. In 1995, she was named a Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Professor, one of the highest state-wide awards that recognize college-level teaching excellence. She served a stint as Dean of the TLU Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences College from 1997-1999, but returned to the classroom soon after, to continue her first love, working directly with students. A professor who prides herself on student comments that say she is “really tough, but fair,” Dr. Citzler worked especially hard in the early 2000’s to overhaul the finance curriculum at Texas Lutheran.
Annette has served as an advisor to numerous student organizations at TLU (e.g., nine years as advisor to the Student Government Association), and has been a keynote speaker for a number of women’s national conference events. Dr. Citzler’s advanced post-doctoral studies include graduate level finance courses at the University of Texas San Antonio, graduate economics lectures at the University of Chicago General Electric Summer Institute, and the 1993 Bryn Mawr Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education.
Dr. Citzler has served in varied roles in more than 20 different associations and conferences, including the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association’s Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics and the Teaching and Learning section. In 1988, she received the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Award before attaining the Claryce M. Bohls Professorship in 2002, which she still holds today. In 2005, four of her former students contributed sufficient funds to name the “Annette Citzler Faculty Office” in Tschoepe Hall in her honor (the first and still the only active faculty member to be so honored at TLU). In 2009, the TLU SGA awarded her “Faculty Member of the Year.”
As founding president of both the Guadalupe Valley Habitat for Humanity Chapter in Seguin and the Fayette Community Foundation in La Grange, Dr. Citzler currently serves as board member of the Seguin Public Library Foundation and the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation (San Antonio).
Today, with homes in both Seguin and La Grange, Dr. Citzler continues to teach at Texas Lutheran University while maintaining a very active role on campus and in the Seguin community. Besides her business and economics courses, she enjoys teaching a graduate school preparedness course especially for first-generation students, and (irregularly) a senior honors course on food and culture. She is also involved with her 1980s doctoral program peers in the Texas A&M University Department of Agricultural Economics, mentoring graduating students and advising them on their career paths.