McConaughey Officially Joins University Faculty

After years as a visiting instructor at the University of Texas, True Detective star Matthew McConaughey is now a true professor. The university announced Wednesday that the Oscar-winning actor has been appointed as a professor in its Department of Radio-Television-Film and will be teaching classes at the Austin campus this fall, the Houston Chronicle reports. The university says McConaughey, who graduated from UT in 1993, will be teaching the Script to Screen film production class at the Moody College of Communication alongside film professor Scott Rice. McConaughey, an Austin resident, has been a visiting instructor since 2015. Noah Isenberg, the chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film, says the star takes plenty of time to work with students in his class, despite his busy schedule.

The university said Wednesday that the appointment as a professor of practice—a professor qualified to teach because of their professional experience—reflects McConaughey's "outstanding work as a teacher and mentor," the AP reports. The films the class will be studying this semester include director Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, which is scheduled for a Jan. 2020 release. "That is how the class is really groundbreaking," Rice tells the Daily Texan. "We study films that no one has seen yet. He really thought about what the class should be down to the tiniest detail. The fact that he is able to get these filmmakers to be part of the class is a really big deal too." (More Matthew McConaughey stories.)