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Introduction | The show hits the road
Sticking around | It's all about options
Winning the West

Winning the West

UTA/Fort Worth began offering classes in 1999 in the building that has housed the University’s Automation & Robotics Research Institute for 15 years. In addition to the M.B.A., on-site offerings include master’s degrees in education and health care administration.

Last fall, UTA/Fort Worth partnered with Tarrant County College to offer upper-level undergraduate business and communication classes at TCC Northeast. An initial enrollment of 102 students led the Fort Worth campus to initiate a similar partnership with TCC Northwest beginning this fall. Also new for the fall is a master’s in engineering management at Bell Helicopter/Textron and a cohort M.B.A. at Vought Aeronautics.

Since fall 2000, total course enrollment has increased more than 370 percent to nearly 600.

“Our mission is to be the state university that serves the Tarrant County region with excellence in accessible, affordable and state-of-the-art education,” said academic affairs Assistant Vice President Mary Lee Hodge, who oversees the Fort Worth campus. “There are students who can’t get to Arlington. If they can’t come to us, we wanted to come to them.”

For Shellene, convenience was crucial. He lived and worked in Fort Worth for the first 22 months of the program. For his Monday night classes, he drove 10 minutes from his downtown Fort Worth job as manager of business/education partnerships for the Chamber of Commerce. His Saturday morning commute was even easier.

“My house was just three minutes from campus,” he said. “The only thing missing was a Starbucks close by to load up on your morning fixation for caffeine before darting to class.”

The program’s cohort-based format also appealed to Shellene, who was an original member of UTA/Fort Worth’s advisory board. Cohort groups take all their classes together, from enrollment to graduation, often developing close friendships along the way.

“The cohort program requires students to pick teams, find a project in the business community and develop a proposal that’s beneficial to that company,” he said. “It’s all centered around the course curriculum. Then you present your project in its completed state — all within four to six weeks.

“That’s not much different than real-life corporate America.”

Fort Worth is not the only city reaping the benefits of UTA’s outreach efforts. About 100 students are taking classes at McLennan Community College in Waco. In addition to social work, nursing and education courses, the University offers bachelor’s degree programs in business and criminal justice.

Last summer, Waco resident Vicky Edwards began pursuing a business management degree on the MCC campus. She hopes to finish by 2005 and, armed with her diploma, improve her marketability with her employer, Glazer’s Distributors.

She, like Shellene, believed the opportunity to get a quality education without leaving her hometown was too good to pass up. “I wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree at an affordable price without having to drive 100 miles to take evening courses,” she said.

The UTA-MCC collaboration will produce its first graduate in December.

A proud graduate, no doubt, just like Martie Garcia.

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