75-day progress update

My first 75 days as president of UTA have passed so quickly, yet I've gained such a wealth of knowledge and valuable perspective in that time that it's hard to imagine it was only 75 days.

Since my previous update, I’ve been fortunate to have no shortage of opportunities to engage with members and friends of the Maverick Family. Each of you has been so generous in sharing your ideas, answering my questions, and demonstrating your passion for UTA. I leave each engagement invigorated about what lies ahead for our University.

The conversations we’ve been having across campus play a vital role in defining the strategies and tactics that support our strategic themes: People and Culture, Student Success, Research and Innovation, and Alumni and Community.

I’m pleased to share that your insightful feedback has informed my decision to develop a fifth strategic theme: Finance and Infrastructure. I’ve included more information related to this new theme below, but first, there’s a few important updates related to People and Culture.

As I’ve said before, our employees are one of the University’s greatest strengths and assets, and we must invest in them. I really appreciate how this community has come together to support prioritizing compensation as a key priority. As a result, we were able to allocate funding to provide merit raises for eligible employees at the start of the next fiscal year—a recognition of your contributions that I’m proud we can offer.

We recognize that the current economic climate and rising costs of living are impacting many members of our Maverick Family. In the coming days, we will announce an economic relief payment to help relieve finance-related stress for eligible employees. Thank you to the many who have shared thoughtful feedback on this topic, as it has played a large role in shaping this support initiative.

Additional developments and plans that will help us shape and support our People and Culture theme are:

We recently announced Jon Fagg as our next director of athletics. Both he and Tamara Brown, our next provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, will be starting their new roles at UTA on August 1.
Last week, we announced Kate C. Miller as our new vice president for research and innovation, effective Oct. 1.
I continue to attend department meetings to engage with our employees on People and Culture. Your feedback and input have proven invaluable. If I haven’t met with your department yet, I hope you’ll start thinking about the questions or comments you’d like to raise.
I’ve been touring our departments and research facilities and seeing more of what UTA has to offer. I look forward to meeting with our academic departments this fall.

As a University, we have and continue to develop ambitious and forward-looking goals as part of our vision of becoming one of the nation’s most inclusive and impactful research universities. It’s imperative to our success that we develop our resource strategies and align our infrastructure plans to achieve our goals. To help ensure our success in these areas, we will be focusing on:

Developing operational and financial strategies to create effectiveness and efficiency of business functions and processes
Strengthening the fiscal health and financial future of the University
Updating our campus master plan to focus on updating and building facilities that support and enhance teaching and learning to enrich the student experience
Increasing the impact of research and creative activities to transform the innovation ecosystem

I’m so appreciative of the feedback we’ve received as we continue to develop and define our strategic themes. Your voices help us make UTA even better than it already is, and I am honored to be doing this work with each of you. Mav Up!