Message from the President
January 24, 2019
Dear Campus Community,
Welcome back, and thank you for all of your hard work in making the start of the new semester a success. Spring 2019 enrollment is running almost 5% ahead of our largest Spring ever, and our graduate enrollment is running about 9% ahead of our best graduate enrollment ever, regardless of the semester. As pointed out below, these increases will position us well for the upcoming legislative session and help relieve some of the financial pressures the institution has faced. The enrollment growth we experienced this past Fall helped make the merit increases that many of you just received possible. Merit increases are among our top institutional priorities, and as we embark on the Spring 2019 semester, I would like to update you on our progress in meeting this and other key priorities.
Merit Program
Eligible employees received merit increases in their December paychecks, which were issued in January. With this merit increase, we have now strategically invested more than $15 million in equity, compression and merit since the inception of UTRGV: 87% of employees have received some sort of compression or equity adjustment and 74% received merit adjustments in their most recent paychecks. Competitive pay is crucial for retaining and recruiting the best faculty and staff possible. This year’s investment in our faculty and staff has been made in spite of a $24-million cut in our state appropriations last session. As a consequence of those cuts, we had to implement a hiring freeze, reduce administrative costs (down nearly 18% in our FY19 operating budget), reorganize our academic enterprise, rebuild our graduate enrollment, and most important, focus on student progress to degree. As I have stated since arriving, our goal is to institute an annual merit program for UTRGV. If we continue to focus on organizational efficiency, student success, and smart enrollment growth, as we have done this past year, we will be well positioned to do this.
Academic Reorganization
In 2018 we reorganized our academic structure. When UTRGV opened, we began with a Provost/EVPAA, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, and an Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs (who also served as Dean of the School of Medicine). Last spring, we replaced this structure with three Executive Vice Presidential positions: Academic Affairs, Research and Graduate Studies, and Health Affairs (also serving as Dean of the School of Medicine). This reorganization has saved the institution nearly $1M a year in salaries, but more important, it has allowed us to focus squarely on the needs of our students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. One example of this focus is the reversal of a multi-year downward trend in graduate studies: we had a more than an 11% increase in graduate enrollment last fall and an increase this spring of almost 20% over Spring 2018. These increases are truly a team effort, led by the Graduate College in coordination with the colleges, deans, programs coordinators, digital marketing, and many others. In addition, new graduate and professional programs are moving forward. Among the programs moving through the approval process are three professional doctoral programs (Podiatry, Physical Therapy, and Nurse Practitioner) and a Ph.D. program (in Human Genetics) currently under review by the University of Texas System and two master’s degree programs (Business Analytics and Bioethics) currently under review by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
SACSCOC Probation
In December of 2018, we received the positive news that UTRGV had been removed from probation. The removal was based on UTRGV’s receiving a financial aid audit with no findings, something that is rarely achieved. A team that included the Deputy President, Chief Audit Officer, and leadership and staff from Strategic Enrollment and Finance and Administration worked diligently to ensure that UTRGV reexamined every financial aid process. As a result, we now have processes that could serve as a model for universities everywhere.
Student Success
Student success remains our first priority. Student success hinges on ensuring that students have what they need to achieve their goal of earning a college degree. We have high expectations of our students, and they are meeting and exceeding them each semester. Every week I meet with our enrollment management team, which consists of the Deputy President and leadership from Academic Affairs, Health Affairs, Research and Graduate Studies, Strategic Enrollment, Finance and Administration, and Strategic Analysis and Institutional Reporting, to discuss each of our four entering classes of students and their progress toward degree. We work to remove barriers, identify opportunities, and allocate needed resources to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to assist students in reaching their goals. I deeply appreciate the hard work of the faculty and staff in the Graduate College, Academic Affairs, Health Affairs and Strategic Enrollment for making a real difference in the lives of our students. Our fall 2015 inaugural class graduates this year. Ten percent, or 418 students, have already graduated and 458 more have already applied to graduate this spring or summer. We anticipate that many more will apply before the deadline. As a result, we are on track to achieve a very good four-year graduation rate, but we know we can do more for our students. The longer students stay in school, the less likely they are to graduate and the greater the opportunity cost to them. To maximize our students’ success, we are developing our first Strategic Enrollment Plan for UTRGV, which will inform our efforts moving forward. Thank you to the three working groups of faculty and staff who are developing our inaugural plan. It should be released in Fall 2019. Updates regarding this and several other strategic initiatives that are underway are provided in the strategic initiatives updates.
We have many of the best and brightest students in the state. As you know, we won the National Chess Championship last year and have again advanced to the Final Four (along with Harvard, UT Dallas, and Webster University) this year. Here’s a look at just a few of our other recent student achievements:
- Earlier this month one of our men’s intramural flag football teams claimed the National Flag Football Championship.
- In November, our women’s volleyball team won its first Western Athletic Conference regular-season championship and finished with a program-record 22 victories.
- Also in November, the Vaqueros Men’s Soccer Club qualified for the NIRSA National Soccer Championships in Alabama.
- In October, the student-led Superhero Project earned the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association’s Best Practices/Institutional Impact Award.
- In September, a music performance major won first prize in the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Young Artist Competition at the Texas Music Festival.
- The cumulative Fall GPA for our student athletes was 3.16, and 37 student athletes earned a 4.0 GPA.
Funding
Last academic year, I visited each unit on campus and gave a presentation on Trends in American Higher Education and Their Impact on UTRGV. This presentation outlines the funding of our university in relation to demographic and economic developments affecting the future of higher education more generally. It also discusses the two primary funding sources for Texas public institutions of higher education in some detail: tuition and fees and state appropriations, the latter of which includes formula funding (our primary source of state revenue) and non-formula funded items (which were formerly called “special items” and account for a much smaller percentage of our revenue). Our capacity to raise tuition and fees is quite limited, so our primary mechanism for creating additional revenue is through the state funding formula. As the campus presentations pointed out, the formula funds credit hours through a weighting mechanism that differentiates those hours by level and discipline, with graduate and upper division hours given a higher weight than lower division ones. The progress we have made in enrollment growth, and the increases in graduate enrollment in particular, have us well-positioned for the current legislative session: our funding should be much better. As the graduate and professional programs currently under review by the University of Texas System and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board move to implementation, we will do even better in the future. Many thanks to our faculty who have worked hard to prepare these programs.
Again, best wishes for a successful semester, and thank you for all that you do. Because of your hard work, we can all be excited about our future at UTRGV.
Guy Bailey
President