Message from the President
September 17, 2018
As we begin our fourth year as UTRGV, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your hard work in creating the university and in making it a success. As you will see below, we have much to be proud of as we enter our 4th year.
Many students who began as part of UTRGV’s first freshman class in Fall 2015 will graduate this academic year. Almost two-thirds of the students who began in Fall 2015 are still with us (a very good percentage, by the way), and over 5% of those who started in Fall 2015 have already graduated. As our first class continues, we should have graduation rates (an important measure of student success) that are competitive with some of the best universities in the state. Our student success is the result of the collaborative efforts of our students, faculty, and staff; please congratulate yourselves. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
Retention and graduation rates are only one measure of success, however, and UTRGV has been equally successful on a number of other measures. Our Fall 2018 census day enrollment was 29,012, a record for the university and 931 students more than we had on Fall 2017 census day. Crucially, these numbers reflect not only growth in the number of new freshmen and transfer students, but also a reversal of the decline in graduate enrollment that contributed to a significant reduction in our state appropriations. This year, of course, is a “counting year,” so the increase in enrollment (and especially the increase in graduate enrollment) could not have come at a better time. More importantly, the enrollment growth comes at a time when we face increasing competition from universities from outside the region, something which suggests we are becoming a university of choice.
We are also becoming a university of champions. As most of you know by now, our chess team won the National Collegiate Chess Championship; a group of business students defeated 500 teams from 37 countries to win the 15th annual CME Group Trading Challenge; and our Opera Theater’s Bravo Opera Company won first place in the National Opera Association’s Opera Production Competition. We have also had significant success in athletics, as well. Women’s tennis won our first team WAC Regular Season Championship in any sport, our track & field program added seven individual WAC Championships, and our men’s basketball team went to its first post-season tournament.
These accomplishments come at a time when the overall success of UTRGV is being recognized in a variety of national rankings. For a number of years, Washington Monthly has ranked universities based not on exclusivity, reputation, and size of endowment, but rather on impact on social mobility, research, and community engagement – on criteria that match our core values. Moreover, unlike other rankings, Washington Monthly relies on IPEDS data rather than on self-reported information. We did exceptionally well in the Washington Monthly rankings that came out earlier this month, placing 79th out of 316 national universities. Only two Texas public universities, UT Austin and Texas A&M, ranked higher. The data on some of the individual criteria that comprise the rankings is even more impressive. We rank 15th in the performance of our Pell Grant students, 9th in the performance of our first-generation students (something particularly important to me as a first-generation student), and 1st in net price for students (the schools that rank 2-5 in net price are Stanford, Princeton, Cal State-Fresno, and Harvard). I encourage you to examine these rankings in detail at your leisure. Washington Monthly rankings are not the only ones on which UTRGV did well this year. BestColleges.com, which also came out in early September, ranked UTRGV as the 4th best university in Texas, behind only UT Austin, Rice, and Texas A&M. Interestingly, UTRGV is only three one-hundredths of a point behind Texas A&M (73.71 vs. 73.68). But that’s not all: our online master’s degree in Social Work is ranked 2nd in the country, behind Boston University and ahead of Columbia, Southern California, and Case Western.
With its 3rd class beginning in Fall 2018, our School of Medicine (SOM) has been a significant part of the overall success of the university. The first three classes of medical students are excellent (we could admit only 1% of a pool of superb applicants), and those classes are among the most diverse in the country. Our practice plan, UTHealth Rio Grande Valley, is a crucial part of the SOM and is now fully operational. Not only will the practice plan help transform healthcare in the Rio Grande Valley, especially for those with limited access to healthcare, but it also provides benefits for UTRGV employees. Starting this fall, employees and retirees of UTRGV and its legacy institutions who participate in UT Health System’s benefits plan (UT SELECT) can receive discounted copays and other benefits when they visit UT Health RGV clinical sites and our local health systems-affiliated graduate medical education residency centers as part of the UT System’s UT Health Network. The placement of all of our health-related programs, including the SOM, as a single unit under an Executive Vice President of Health Affairs is important for expanding the scope of our practice plan and for creating synergies as we develop new professional programs in health-related fields. The creation of this new unit within the parameters of the general academic institution, rather than as a separate institution, has parallels elsewhere in the United States (e.g., UCLA and UC San Diego) and is the wave of the future in Texas as well.
We have good news even on things that have been challenges for us. At the December 2017 SACSCOC Board meeting UTRGV learned that, while we had successfully addressed the items originally cited in the January 2017 probation letter, the SACSCOC Board wanted validation from an external auditor that issues cited in our FY 2016 audit have been fully addressed. The Texas State Auditor’s Office (SAO), who usually conducts such audits for public institutions, completed a review of UTRGV’s financial-aid cluster in June 2018. The SAO has determined that all issues from the FY 2016 indeed have been fully addressed, the best possible outcome for UTRGV. These results have been provided to representatives of SACSCOC. We greatly appreciate the hard work of the many staff who made this outcome possible.
While our enrollment growth, assuming it persists in the spring, will provide a little financial flexibility this year, remember that we are still dealing with a $12 million reduction in state appropriations and must continue the hiring freeze. Although the reductions in state appropriations have made the last few years tight financially, we have nevertheless worked hard to put resources into equity and compression adjustments for faculty and staff. Since UTRGV opened its doors, we have reallocated $11.5 million into equity and compression adjustments. Most of this reallocation came from a 9.6% reduction in administrative costs (Source: University of Texas System Operating Budget Summaries, FY2019). As the hiring freeze continues, much of our focus will be on the continued reduction of those costs. Although we have not completely eliminated all equity and compression issues, the most egregious problems have been addressed. As a result, this year we plan to allocate $3.5M for an average merit increase of 2% for faculty and staff. You will be provided with details of the merit program at a later date, but the plan now is for letters to be sent to those receiving raises early in December and for raises to appear in December paychecks (deposited in accounts on January 1, 2019).
Again, thank you for everything you have done to make UTRGV a success. We still have much work to do, but as this letter suggests, we have made significant progress, and the progress is being recognized around the country. You should be proud of what you have achieved.
Guy Bailey
President