Biography | John Hanke — The Tower Where a Plan II Student Left Cross Plains Behind

The Main Building at the University of Texas at Austin rises 307 feet over Inner Campus Drive, a limestone tower finished in 1937 and still the image most alumni carry of the place.

John Hanke arrived here from Cross Plains as a Plan II honors student and took a bachelor's degree in 1989.

Plan II is the university's selective liberal-arts program. He chose it on purpose.

A 2017 Texas Monthly profile recorded that math and computers had come easily on his own. The work he wanted on this campus was reading, argument, and a wider map than Callahan County.

The Tower functions as campus axis: library stacks, a carillon, and the hill Paul Cret placed at the center of his master plan.

Hanke's documented degree is the Plan II B.A., not an engineering diploma. That fact is easy to lose once the résumé fills with mapping software and games.

After 1989 he spent four years with the United States Foreign Service, in Washington and in Myanmar, on foreign-policy work.

The Austin years are the hinge between a town of one blinking light and the first job that put him on the other side of the world.

Visitors can walk the South Mall and look up. The building that anchored his undergraduate life is still the building that anchors the university.

Photo: Chevsapher, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (UT Austin Main Building staircase, 2025). Portrait of Hanke: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2016).