Finding Family and Giving Back

When asked to picture a university dorm room, what typically comes to mind isn’t much more than a place to sleep. Yet, for many college students that room becomes more than four walls, a bed, and a desk. It becomes the heart of a new world, where students not only learn about who they are and what they can become, but also a place where they create relationships that last the rest of their lives. This was true for Ande ’13 and Travis Burks ’13, whose time living on campus was not only the start of their life together, but the beginning of lifelong bonds with friends and mentors. The Burks’s story highlights how the foundational relationships built in on-campus communities provide a support system for a lifetime of success and meaningful service.

Travis isn’t a native Texan. Growing up in a military family he moved every few years and didn’t arrive in Texas until high school. Even then, he grew up rooting for the University of Texas at Austin Longhorns, as several people from his immediate family were graduates of A&M’s rival university. Then, during his junior year of high school he took part in an FFA state competition on the College Station campus that would change his life. Both of the group’s advisors were proud Aggies and they took their students on a tour of the campus introducing them to some of the A&M traditions.

“I knew right then what I wanted to be,” said Travis, smiling excitedly as he remembered his first time visiting campus, “it was a like a lightbulb, and I instantly switched from being a Longhorn to an Aggie.”

As an Aggie, Travis found his home in the Corps of Cadets as the lifestyle and traditions of the Corps appealed to his background growing up. Later, in his sophomore year, Travis suffered a tragedy when his father passed away unexpectedly. During that time of need he found that the structure and friendships he had formed in his outfit became the support that would help him endure that crisis.

“I found out my father passed at 10 or 11 p.m.,” said Travis. “I remember being on campus and I was just fraught. One of my buddy’s dads came and picked me up and then drove me home that night into the early AM. [He] dropped me off and then went back. He got back [to his home] at like 5 a.m. He just drove through the night to get me home to be with my family.”

Travis was moved at the compassion and support shown by his friend’s father. From then on, Travis knew that the relationships he was creating at A&M were more than just casual. They would be a foundation and support for his entire life.

Unlike Travis, Ande’s attendance at A&M was almost a forgone conclusion. With both her parents, two aunts and an uncle all having attended A&M, she described her family as Aggies that are “generationally wide, if not deep.”

At the start of her freshman year, she found herself living on the fourth floor of Aston Hall as part of the Leadership Living Learning Community (L3C). Living Learning Communities, known as LLCs, are residential clusters of students living in specific halls, who share academic or common interests. The L3C exposes its members to theoretical concepts of leadership and relational leadership models designed to help build community through coursework, workshops, leadership retreats, and social and educational activities.

“Even though it was only one year, for me the L3C was kind of like the Corps. We lived together; we took classes together… I have a lot of lifelong relationships that come from the L3C program.”

Ande excitedly described her trip visiting one of those former L3C members in Portland, Ore., and how she still does girls trips about once a year with some of her former roommates. Then, with a laugh she told the story of how one roommate even became her sister-in-law.

“She was my maid of honor. Travis’s brother was his best man. They met at our proposal and started dating shortly after the wedding.”

In March 2013, during their senior year, Travis proposed under the Century Tree. His brother was there, wearing his Marine Corps dress blues and standing with ten other cadets from Travis’s outfit to form a saber arch. Rose petals covered the walkway, occasionally stirred by the wind. It was a proposal with all the romance found in the deep Aggie tradition. The proposal also included another unusual guest, then president of the university, Dr. R. Bowen Loftin.

The relationship with the university president started with a simple class assignment.

“I had a leadership class where the assignment was to interview a leader we didn’t know, and I picked President Loftin.” said Ande. “He invited me to lunch and our conversation developed into building a professional relationship. We had to meet again to revisit the leadership components. Those interactions helped to build a lasting relationship.”

Her leadership experience through the L3C not only built relationships but helped develop skills that would serve her well throughout her academic career and beyond. Her L3C advisors saw her natural interpersonal skills and pushed her to cultivate them.

“[Dr.] Craig Rotter and [Dr.] Lori Moore were running it [the L3C]. Craig pushed me outside my comfort zone. He picked me, a freshman, to speak to a committee to get more financial support for the program. Opportunities like that pushed me to do more.” Dr. Rotter became another part of Ande’s Aggie Family, a relationship that she says she calls on even today for advice and mentorship.

Ande also had the unusual experience of attending A&M with her mother.

“My mom is Class of ’79, and she got a job offer her senior year  prior to graduating. She thought she only had a semester left and came back to school while I was a sophomore. We were in school at the same time. The three of us. My mom and I ended up graduating together on-stage back-to-back.”

She and Travis were only dating at the time, and they laughed as they acknowledged the potential awkwardness of Travis taking classes at the same time with his then girlfriend and her mother, with Ande saying, “We used to joke that if he could survive that, then he was the one.”

After graduating, the Burks continued to center their lives around Texas A&M. They both started jobs with the university and held multiple positions with A&M throughout their professional careers.

“One of my favorite positions,” said Travis, “was working directly with students and managing and teaching the [Geosciences] Living Learning Community.”

As the advisor for an LLC Travis would handle the details that he described being “behind the curtain.” He would work directly with the Department of Residence Life on LLC members housing needs, planning and coordinating the logistics and budgeting for different high impact learning experiences, such as camping or ice-skating, or planning and teaching the freshman seminar course designed to help students transition successfully from high school to university life.

“It was really about establishing and getting all these students together to interact and create those bonds with each other… establishing a support group that could help them fill in the gaps when I couldn’t be there.”

Travis worked hard to create a similar environment that Ande experienced in her LLC, and that he felt as part of the Corps, building a community where the students not only had access to the university resources needed to thrive, but whose members could count on one another and establish lifelong connections.

Ande started her career in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and then moved through positions in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, the George H. W. Bush Combat Development Complex, the College of Engineering, and the Provost’s Office. In each position she worked directly for the top administrator in that office or area and says that she has really enjoyed working with so many university leaders. In every position Ande also brought the same energy, interpersonal skills and problem solving that she cultivated during her time with the L3C, making her trusted and calming influence.

“Some of the best ones have pushed me,” said Ande speaking of the administrators she has worked for, “and they have let me do more than what would be typical of my position. It’s handling the chaos and thinking of the problems before the boss knows there’s a problem.”

Now she works for Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Ethan R. Braden of the Division of Marketing and Communications and was promoted to Chief of Staff in January.

In addition to their positions at the university, the Burks are engaged in entrepreneurial pursuits that not only fulfill one of Travis’s passions but serve to give back to the Aggie community. In 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Travis turned a woodworking hobby into Burks Creations, a full-time business crafting custom gifts and other products. Travis describes how his love for crafting and woodworking started early.

“I’ve been building things my whole life,” Travis says. “My dad was handy, building things or working on cars. My brother got the car thing, and I got the woodworking thing. During high school, we had woodshop with FFA and would sell what we made at the county fair. It was intensive, I even came out of high school a certified welder.”

However, like many people, he didn’t actively pursue those interests after high school. Then during the pandemic, Travis and Ande were a young family with a newborn. Not able to go anywhere because of social distancing, Travis found himself needing something to do to occupy his time.

“I started having some fun in the garage,” he said, looking back fondly, “I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole as epoxy resin and charcuterie boards were becoming a craze, and thought, ‘You know, I can do that.’”

After some experimentation he started selling his wood products on Etsy and quickly became one of the top search results on that platform. The breakthrough came when they were contacted by the Kansas City Chiefs and Dell Technologies within a week of each other, both wanting large bulk orders for high profile members of those organizations. The orders totaled over 200 charcuterie boards to complete in only two and a half months.

“At the time I was working at night while working at A&M during the day,” Travis said. “It was just a side hustle, making some fun money and maybe paying off some student debts. Those orders came in and I knew I couldn’t do both anymore.”

After some intense conversations with each other, Travis and Ande decided to take the plunge and accept the orders. Travis quit his full-time job with A&M and dedicated himself to fulfilling the orders with Ande assisting with the business’s logistics.

“We didn’t want to look back asking if we could have made something really good, or special, or make our own successful business. We didn’t want to ask the what ifs.”

After those large orders, they started going to shows and markets and began making a name for themselves. They attribute the Aggie network as a large factor to the business’s success. Grateful for that support, they have been using Burks Creations to give back. They have donated their products to scholarship silent auctions and other events, and worked with the Aggie Mom Boutique in the MSC, where 20% of their sales have gone toward scholarships. Together, their efforts have resulted in $15,000 – $20,000 in donations toward scholarships at A&M.

“That $15,000 is a drop in the bucket compared with the impact that those groups and A&M has had on us,” said Travis as both he and Ande talked about how scholarships of different sizes helped them to cover the costs of their education.

The couple’s tradition of giving back goes beyond their donations through Burks Creations. Both regularly give their time toward different service organizations, with Ande having over 4,000 hours of volunteer experience.

“It was instilled in me as a little kid to do volunteering,” said Ande. “After college I was looking for an outlet and joined the Junior League of Bryan-College Station, and I have been a member ever since.”

In addition to outside causes, they both have given back to the university through the Association of Former Students, the 12^th Man Foundation New Grad Advisory Board, the Residence Life LLCs, and many others. In each case, they have jumped at any opportunity to help and say “yes” through the Aggie network.

It is this quality of selfless service that became a major factor for both being selected to receive the university’s 12 Under 12 award. Every year this honor highlights 12 Aggies who have graduated in the last 12 years for their community and professional contributions as well as their service to the Aggie Community. They are the only married couple where both have received the award, with Ande recognized in 2023 and Travis in 2024.

“It’s humbling,” said Travis, growing serious when asked about how it felt to be numbered with the other award winners. “I don’t think of us as special. I think we’ve been very blessed by the opportunities of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

Ande’s feelings were similar. “To us, we’re just doing our job,” she said. “We’re giving back and doing what we can to help. Maybe we can’t go name a building after ourselves, but we can go and give our help and our support, and to us that’s just doing the right thing.”

When asked what’s next for them in the next 12 years, the Burks’s response was family minded. Yet amid excited conversations of children’s sports and parenting, they both have a desire for their children to continue in the Aggie tradition.

“Our oldest went to the A&M United Methodist Church daycare, and Reveille would come and visit them,” said Ande proudly. “Now when we drive by campus, she tells us, ‘That’s the Aggie place.’ We’re not trying to push it on them, but we hope they come here.”

Their love for A&M continues, and Travis has returned to work on campus  as a Director of Development for the Texas A&M Foundation, supporting the A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, while taking Burks Creations “back to its roots as a side venture.” The Burks also continue to serve selflessly, most recently as Class Agents, who act as liaisons for their graduating class, working on newsletters, sending out information, announcements or news about fellow former students and coordinating class activities on campus.

Ande and Travis Burks are true examples of the Aggie Spirit, demonstrating how quiet service and saying yes to opportunities to help others can make a difference and be a force for good. They also stand as examples of how the foundational relationships formed in on-campus communities can make the Aggie Network more than just another professional or former student group, but turn them into an extended family.