Quick Facts on Charles Ramírez Berg

• Grows up in El Paso, Texas, in an area called Sunset Heights, just west of downtown theaters. After school he often walks to a theater on the way home to see an afternoon matinee.

• Remembers seeing “The Ten Commandments” and thinking there couldn’t be a better movie. Then “Ben Hur” is released. Then “The Guns of Navarone.”

• Sees the movie “Vertigo” and is so mesmerized by it that he watches it every day after school for a week. Movies become his world, his escape.

• Enrolls at Loyola University, New Orleans, to study pre-med. Earns his B.S. in biological sciences and is accepted to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

• Drives from El Paso to Galveston to attend medical school, getting as far as San Antonio. Realizes he isn’t following his heart, turns his car around and returns to El Paso

• Teaches high school biology and chemistry for less than a year and then enrolls at UT Austin to get a master’s in radio-television-film. Signs up for all the production, screenwriting, film history, and theory and criticism courses UT offers. Earns his M.A. in communication in 1975

• Begins teaching at UT-El Paso in 1979; then as an assistant instructor at UT-Austin’s RTF department from 1983-1987; goes on to earn his Ph.D. in communication from UT Austin in 1987 and becomes an assistant professor in RTF, becomes a full professor in 2003

• Through his teachings of film, theory, and criticism helps students develop critical thinking and how to communicate it concisely

• Receives many accolades for his work: inducted into the UT Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 1996; earns the College of Communication Teaching Excellence Award, and the Texas Exes Texas Excellence Teaching Award

• About his enthusiasm in the classroom, he says, “I profess to show what it looks like when you love what you are doing.” He encourages his students to find something they love doing and make a career of it.