There's a letter Joe Muscara '90 has kept for nearly four decades. Dated May 6, 1986, it arrived when he was a high school senior on Long Island, still trying to figure out how to afford his first-choice school. The letter announced he had been awarded a full university scholarship.

"I still don't know why they gave that to me," Joe says. "I have no idea where it came from, and I still haven't found out."

What he does know is the effect it had. "That's a large reason why I do what I do for Maryland. I'm paying it forward."

That spirit of gratitude is what brought the Houston Terps Alumni Network into existence — and for the past decade, kept Joe at its center.

Joe graduated from Maryland in 1990 with a degree in mechanical engineering. An SAE alternative fuels program under Professor Dr. David Holloway led to his first job at General Motors. Michigan, however, wasn't quite the fit he'd imagined. The path to Houston ran through a Maryland friendship — a college friend from College Station, through whom Joe met his future wife Lori — and a wedding that sealed the deal.

His career took several more turns after that — environmental engineering at UH, software, web work, and eventually music ("Musician is Latin for unemployed," he jokes). The common thread, he says, has always run back to Maryland.

Two earlier attempts in the 1990s fizzled for the same reason: building a chapter from scratch required critical mass that proved impossible to sustain.

The third attempt finally stuck, thanks to Joe, Mac Gardner, and a recently graduated alumna named Lindsay Simpson. Lindsay brought fresh energy and the genuine need of someone new to a city looking for community. Mac left Houston in 2015, and Joe stepped into the president's role. He's been there a full decade since.

The turning point came at a small post-COVID gathering Joe almost didn't attend. Scanning the room, he saw faces with the enthusiasm he'd been waiting years to find — Julie, Tracy, Maya, Giuseppe. "I'm looking at all these people and thinking this could be my board."

For the first time, the Houston Terps had at-large members each owning an event. The spring crawfish boil drew 37 of 40 registrants — "usually it's like 50 percent," Joe notes — and became one of the best-attended events in the chapter's history.

"A big part of good leadership is delegation," he says. "Giving people the ability and power to do what they want and need to do."

Joe is clear-eyed that his time as president is winding down — and genuinely excited about it. "The excitement is seeing what totally new thing someone comes up with that I never would have thought of."

His hopes are simple: keep growing, stay fun, keep connecting Terps across the city. And keep showing up — because, as he puts it, that's just what he does.

When asked to describe the Houston Terps in three words, he settles quickly on: Fun. Community. Connections. He said, "Life's better with community." 

Joe Muscara has served as president of the Houston Terps Alumni Network since 2015. He is a 1990 graduate of the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering.

Learn more and get involved  with a regional alumni network, like Joe.