RTF Staff

Rachel Walker

Administrative Manager

E-mail: rachel.walker@austin.utexas.edu
Office: CMA 6.120D
Phone: 512-471-4058

Rachel Walker assists the Department Chair, managing all of the administrative functions of the Department. She is responsible for the instructional budget, course scheduling, human resource management, faculty promotion and award nominations, and miscellaneous projects of all kinds. Rachel also works closely with the College's academic advisors for academic planning and course management.

Rachel earned her B.A. in English from the University of Texas. An avid music fan, she can often be found in the front row of a live show around Austin. She lives in a log cabin east of town and loves fussing over her chickens, ducks, cats, sheep, honeybees and Great Pyrenees dogs.

Wendy Stuessy

Financial Analyst

E-mail: Wendy.stuessy@austin.utexas.edu
Office: CMA 6.120B
Phone: 512-471-4136

Wendy serves as a full-time accountant and purchaser for all the department accounts.

Marisela Campos

Office Manager

E-mail: marisela.campos@austin.utexas.edu
Office: CMA 6.120
Hours: M-F 8 am - 5 pm
Phone: 512-471-4191

As RTF's office manager, Marisela Campos serves as the first point of contact with students, faculty, visitors, and the general public, responding to inquiries via department phones, email, and walk-in traffic. For RTF students, she helps them find campus filming locations and obtain production insurance, and she manages the student engagement website/social media pages. For faculty, she provides support with obtaining room keys and business cards and organizing calendars, course instructor surveys, grade reporting, and peer teaching reviews. RTF's physical space is her domain as well, as she manages room reservations, furniture requests, office equipment maintenance, and supply orders.

Marisela recently received her B.S. with High Honors from the University of Texas at Austin RTF program in Spring 2019, where she focused on producing. Some of her producing credits include short films, The Adventures of… from director Sophia Loffreda, and The 11th Order from director Joshua DeFour. She is excited to be part of the department and hopes her unique perspective as a recent graduate allows her to connect and support faculty, staff, and students.

Lee Sparks

Media Librarian/Administrative Assistant

E-mail: Lee.Sparks@austin.utexas.edu
Office: CMA 6.168
Hours: M-F 10 am-4 pm
Phone: 471.1906

Lee, a 1997 Summa Cum Laude graduate of RTF, has served as the RTF Media Librarian since 1998. In addition to serving the RTF Graduate and Faculty communities, he coordinates RTF film and video class screenings and is the RTF Media Library purchasing agent. Lee also manages faculty travel, visiting speaker arrangements, reimbursements, pro card purchases, and vendor payments.

Recreationally, Lee is an avid consumer of American comic books and hates the pretentious term 'graphic novel.' When not enjoying genre films from other countries, he cleans up after his cats.

Mallory Nimis

Graduate Coordinator

E-mail: mallory.nimis@austin.utexas.edu

Mallory Nimis began working as the RTF Graduate Coordinator in January 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. With an advanced degree in International Education Management, she comes to RTF after seven years in higher education administration. She spent the previous four years as the UT Austin Education Abroad Program Coordinator, managing the recruitment, advising, selection, and orientation for a large portfolio of UT students.

In her spare time, Mallory enjoys Francophone films and playing pickleball.

Elana Wakeman

Senior Programs & Communications Coordinator E-mail: ewakeman@austin.utexas.edu Office: CMA 6.104 Phone: 512-471-6617 Elana manages all content updates for the RTF website, coordinates department-sponsored summer camps and workshops, manages social media outreach, coordinates the Longhorn Denius showcase and other RTF initiatives, and produces promotional materials for departmental events. RTF feels like home to her: she has a background in film and worked in the industry in various roles after earning her M.F.A. in film production from Florida State University. She also holds a B.A. in English, with a concentration in film studies, from Duke University. Before coming to the department in August of 2012, she worked as Publications Manager at UT's Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. In her spare time, she has been studying Hakomi, a form of mindfulness-based psychotherapy and raising her energetic son.