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|Rotary Club of Fort Worth
Friday, October 5, 2007
I’m here to tell you about a university on the move. Today, UT Arlington is making a dynamic mark on the North Texas landscape – we provide an excellent educational experience, we’ve built a vibrant campus life, we’re attracting more talent and more resources than ever before, and we’re establishing new partnerships to serve our neighbors and our state.
And we’re making a difference right here in Fort Worth. Enrollment at our Fort Worth Center – located just a few blocks away from here in the old Santa Fe Station – is up 34 percent over last year, and it’s up 45 percent at the graduate level. We’re now educating almost 1,000 students, right here in Fort Worth. And that number is growing as I speak.
In just a few months, the first 20 Executive MBA students will graduate from UT Arlington’s Fort Worth Center. As part of their curriculum, they just returned from China, where they met and networked with students, government officials and business leaders in one of the world’s fastest-growing and most-important economies. Another offering at our Fort Worth Center, the Master of Science in Healthcare Administration, is the third largest program of its kind in the nation and is preparing the next generation of hospital administrators. The women and men enrolled in this program will shape the future of healthcare in our community for years to come.
Wayne Corum, who many of you know is the director of equipment services for the City of Fort Worth, earned his Professional MBA from the Fort Worth Center five years ago. “The tools that I learned in the classroom have enabled me to be successful in my career,” he has said. “And the reputation of UT Arlington has assisted in adding credibility to my résumé.”
We’re proud of alumni like Wayne Corum, and the 15,000 others who live here in Fort Worth. We’ve made a long-term commitment to this city. That’s why we’re expanding our programs here, including offering a 16-month master’s degree in Information Systems that begins this spring, and a new Center for Criminal Justice Research and Training. The Center will host a symposium on immigration next month.
Last month, we learned that UT Arlington would receive a $3.5 million federal earmark, thanks to the leadership of Senator Hutchison, that will allow us to establish a Texas Microfactory on the east side of Fort Worth. This funding will move UT Arlington and Fort Worth onto the national stage of manufacturing research and development at the micro and nano scales. This new center will help create cutting-edge technologies, enable manufacturing research and application of that research, and will – no doubt – result in many new high-tech manufacturing jobs for the Fort Worth region.
Add it all up, and UT Arlington contributes more than $1 billion annually to the North Texas economy, according to an American Council on Education study. But you can’t put a price tag on the advances that we’re making through our Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, located at our Automation & Robotics Research Institute in East Fort Worth, which offers assistance and expertise that benefit the bottom line of Texas’ manufacturing industry. Or our breakthroughs in biotechnology and bioengineering in collaboration with scientists at UNT Health Science Center and elsewhere in North Texas, which are changing the way medicine is practiced. Or the innovations we’ve made that have helped the region become a nationally recognized leader in nanotechnology research that will aid our nation in military defense.
All this I’ve described is part of our strategic and concerted effort to grow as a research university. In fact, our highest priority for UT Arlington is to continue to enhance the national prominence of our scholarship and research. Not research just for the sake of research, but research that benefits society, solves problems, and improves our lives. We’re beginning to see the benefits of that, both for our University and our community. And at the heart of all of this vibrant academic activity – in the classrooms and laboratories across our campus, in Arlington and in Fort Worth – is our commitment to providing a first-class education for our students.
That’s why we’re working to strengthen our faculty, both in size and in scope. We’ve added about 100 new faculty positions in the last three years. Among them is Harry Stephanou, the director of our Automation and Robotics Research Institute here in Fort Worth, who came to UT Arlington from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In his distinguished career, Dr. Stephanou had also held staff positions at the National Science Foundation and the Exxon Production Research Company, he has partnered his academic research with more than 100 other industry partners, and has generated more than $40 million in research grants. And how, he’s continuing this work…right here in Fort Worth.
Dr. Stephanou is just one example of the many talented women and men among our faculty who will make important contributions to their disciplines and their classrooms.And ultimately, the work and prominence of our faculty will make a difference in our community We have made significant investments toward this goal, and I’m pleased that we’ve made real progress in the past year. I believe that few universities can lay claim to such an impressive array of achievements. Consider the following:
- During the past year, we saw a 30 percent increase in the number of research awards, compared to the previous year.
- Total research funding for the past academic year is more than $40 million, and we have every reason to believe this year will yield even more impressive results.
- This past year, we also saw a record number of invention disclosures, demonstrating our drive to rapidly move UT Arlington discoveries from the laboratories into the marketplace.
A month ago, we held the grand opening for the Smart Hospital, which is literally a facility unlike any other anywhere. In this facility, our nursing students will learn to diagnose and care for 30 high-fidelity simulated patient mannequins in a realistic, hospital-like setting. These incredibly life-like mannequins can tell our students what their symptoms are and respond in real-time to prescribed treatments, creating a state-of-the-art teaching environment that experts predict will revolutionize nursing education.
In the coming months, we’ll break ground on a massive new engineering classroom and laboratory facility. This building will be a first of its kind at UT Arlington because we are intentionally planning and designing research space that will house faculty from the both the College of Engineering and the College of Science who are engaged in multi-disciplinary research. This reflects a growing trend in higher education toward more collaboration across traditional academic boundaries and disciplines.
And, of course, back in January we relocated our Fort Worth Center downtown, just a few blocks from here. I hope you’ll visit this impressive facility–and take advantage of its public meeting space.
Our Chemistry and Physics Building – which opened last year – has provided our faculty the resources to conduct bio-chemistry research that might one day cure such diseases as cancer and tuberculosis. This building is also home to our planetarium, which is one of the largest and best anywhere in Texas.
Indeed, we have many reasons to be proud, but we recognize that our mission isn’t complete. It’s never complete. And along the way, we’re going to face our share of challenges. First among them is the continued financial health of our University. The last legislative session began with a somber outlook as we learned that UT Arlington stood to lose about $16 million in state revenue for the biennium under the proposed funding scheme – the largest drop in funding for any Texas university. Much of our work during the last legislative session was spent working closely with our local legislative delegation (including Senator Brimer) and other legislative friends to simply restore these anticipated cuts. While we consider ourselves fortunate to have restored this funding and gotten back to Square 1, we didn’t make any progress. We didn’t reach the level of additional funding we had hoped for…and need.
Let me tell you the reason for all this. The current method the state uses to fund its universities seriously under-values instructional areas like engineering, nursing and education, which are among UT Arlington’s areas of greatest strength and high enrollment. The formula, as it’s currently used, is like a blunt instrument that doesn’t recognize these areas of instruction that are critically important to Fort Worth –and all of Texas. And so, our highest priority between now and the next legislative session is to gain support to better fund these fields we consider such “critical needs.”
During this last legislative session, as our funding was restored, we were pleased to learn that UT Arlington has supporters all across the state. Their hard work is a sign of trust in our University, and it’s an expectation that their investment in us is an investment in our collective future. Rest assured, we are very serious about this responsibility, and we want to work with all of you in a strategic way to continue the growth and progress our aspirations demand and our community deserves.
It’s an honor to be part of this community and to work with all of you. UT Arlington has tremendous forward momentum, and I look forward to even more growth and many more partnerships here with our friends in Fort Worth.
Thank you.
