It looks like “The McConaissance” could be having a second wind. Matthew McConaughey is joining the University of Texas as a full-on professor and will teach this fall at the university’s Department of Radio-Television-Film.
The Beach Bum star has been a visiting instructor at the Austin campus since 2015, and the university said in a statement that the new appointment recognizes his “outstanding work as a teacher and mentor,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
McConaughey, who graduated from UT Austin with a film degree in 1993 (the same year he starred in his breakout hit, Dazed and Confused), will continue teaching a Script to Screen film production class for which he developed the course curriculum.
The university says McConaughey is widely respected for his “willingness to work with students beyond the classroom.”
“It’s the class I wish I would have had when I was in film school,” McConaughey added in the University of Texas statement, which points out that he “has earned respect among college leadership for his personal investment in student success.”
“He has a passion for teaching, and for all things cinematic, that is palpable, even infectious,” said Noah Isenberg, chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film.
McConaughey has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club, for which he won an Oscar and Golden Globe, as well as starring in the first (and best) season of HBO’s True Detective.
And hey, if he ever gets bored of mentoring college students on how to follow in his acting footsteps, McConaughey can always teach a seminar in naked bongo-playing.