In her 23 years teaching finance at the University of Texas, Heidi Toprac has taught more than 35,000 students — and she has a spreadsheet where she’s kept a count of every semester’s additions.
Despite this impressive statistic, Toprac’s attention to detail is more about the students than the numbers.
“She’s supportive, both to students and to myself,” says Sara Lundqvist, a finance lecturer who teaches a May term finance program with Toprac. “She really wants the best for the students, for the lecturers, for everybody.”
Toprac, a professor of instruction, extends her mentorship to everyone she meets, from her colleagues in the Department of Finance to the thousands of students she assists as director of the undergraduate internship program at the McCombs School of Business.
It’s even evident on her LinkedIn profile, where she frequently posts congratulatory messages for former students.
Hailing from Minnesota, Toprac began teaching after an impressive resume of private business work, including senior accounting and finance positions at companies such as Dell and Texas Instruments.
However, she says she always knew education was in her future.
“I have always wanted to teach, and as an undergraduate, I really struggled with what to major in because part of me wanted to be a schoolteacher and part of me wanted to do business-related things,” Toprac says.
The stars aligned when Toprac met a faculty member in UT’s Department of Finance at an event for her husband, Paul Toprac, now a professor of instruction in the Department of Computer Science. Three weeks later, she was teaching the foundational finance class at UT.
Toprac says UT has fostered her entrepreneurial spirit, giving her the space to develop a career that includes teaching, mentorship and business. After several years of teaching, Toprac had a desire to connect more with the campus community.
“I went to my department chair at the time and said, ‘How can I do more things? How can I get more involved? How can I take on additional roles to help support students?’” Toprac says.
She really wants the best for the students, for the lecturers, for everybody.
In 2010, the associate dean of McCombs appointed Toprac as director of the school’s undergraduate internship program. With her background in business as her foundation, Toprac streamlined the program — standardizing the academic experience for students and reducing the annual expense of the program by 45%.
Where Toprac goes, innovation follows, and that trend is most evident in her classroom. As a fan of research, Toprac frequently attends educational conferences in search of new methods to integrate into her teaching.
“That phrase on the main building, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,’ to me means you need to keep pursuing what the truth is,” Toprac says. “In the world of teaching, that involves learning about how to be a more effective teacher so that you can help your students succeed even more than you did before.”
Toprac’s exploratory academic style centers on one key idea: making her class as engaging for students as possible. Her methods range from theming her exams around fictional worlds like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings to employing a flipped classroom method, a teaching strategy where students familiarize themselves with new material via recorded lectures before class so class time can be used for discussions, problem-solving and interactive activities.
Toprac says her flipped classroom gives her the time and opportunity needed to meet every student where they’re at.
“There’s still an ample supply of students who are concerned about their ability to succeed in the class, but I think it’s my job to bring along the whole fleet,” Toprac says. “I want them all to win, so I’m constantly pursuing new ideas and methods to try to make sure that we can help all the students at McCombs and all the students at UT succeed.”
When UT began to introduce May term courses, Toprac saw an opportunity to bring her class, Finance 357, abroad. She says it took several rounds of proposals to get the class approved, but her hard work paid off in 2017 when it became the first May term course offered by McCombs.
Toprac originally taught the course in Athens, Greece, but in May 2025, it was offered in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the first time. The course is split into two halves, with Toprac leading the first segment and Lundqvist teaching the second half.
Lundqvist says Toprac has become a personal and professional mentor, offering her support in times of need.
“You quickly learn that she’s structured, but she’s not harsh by any means,” Lundqvist says. “She’s got a great mix of soft and hard qualities that I think make her great as a teacher, as a professor, but also as a colleague and a mentor.”
Looking to the future, Toprac says she continues to have new projects in the works and is excited to find new ways to improve the university.
“I feel like I’m always incrementally improving things,” she says. “So many of the things and dreams I’ve wanted to do at UT have already come true. It’s just been amazing.”
