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Convocation 2016

August 26, 2016

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UNIVERSITY UPDATE, PRESENTED BY PRESIDENT RODNEY H.

MABRY

Welcome to Convocation 2016! I’m very glad to be here today,

although also a little sad that this Convocation is my last as president.

For the 50+ new people here today, let me say that the days are

counting down until the fourth president in this university’s history will

take the reins in January. It is important to me that this leadership

transition be as smooth as possible, and you can count on me to keep

any disruption for you to a minimum.

So, let’s get going.

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At any Convocation, my three goals are simple:

• to congratulate you for your accomplishments over the past year,

• give you any news we have,

• and note important priorities for the year ahead.

However, since this is my last time to address this group, I want to start

today with a look not just at the past year, but at the past 18. Surely

you’ll grant me leeway in that regard.

You’ll see, as a group, exactly how much you have contributed to the

transformation of the University of Texas at Tyler. Plus, for those who

are newer, understanding our past will help explain what trails we want

to blaze in the future.

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To take this look back, we decided to take a walk down memory lane—

by visiting the larger construction projects that we’ve watched change

our campus. Turns out, memory lane is really long, so this is the ultra-

quick tour.

See, I told you it was a long walk.

Believe it or not, in the video you saw only our most transformative

projects. Jennifer cut that video down by more than half from its original

length. We originally made so many stops on the tour, that we couldn’t

include them all. If we had, we’d have been here all morning.

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As you can see behind me, we have, indeed, accomplished some

amazing things in the past 18 years! For me, my greatest

accomplishment has been to provide support for your collective

dreams—your dreams to work and teach in state-of-the-art new

facilities, develop new and improved academic programs, give our

students a better student-life experience, and move our University and

East Texas region forward.

Ten new academic buildings and facility expansions added new

classrooms, laboratories, and faculty and staff offices on the main

campus and in other cities. Those new buildings are testimony that

we’ve dreamed big and made those dreams a reality.

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We created important new facilities for students, too—new recreation

and fitness facilities, a UC expansion that doubled its size and a full

renovation of the old UC that included adding the UC Theater.

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We also added campus icons—such as the Riter Millennium Carillon

and the Spence Fountain—as well as beautiful natural spaces for

reflection and study.

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Of course, over this period, you can see how your dreams took shape in

the form of new programs, too. We formed new colleges and added two

Ph.D. programs and two professional doctoral programs. We created

the University Staff Advisory Council and Star Awards program to

recognize and support our staff.

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We’ve also focused on building an engaging student life for our young

scholars. We’ve added Greek life, recreation programs, clubs, an

alumni organization and a powerhouse athletics program.

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We added an NCAA Division III athletics program to give our best and

brightest students an opportunity to continue playing the sports they

love—and to play them at the highest possible level in the best facilities

and on the best fields. And, with the best, most dedicated coaches

anywhere.

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We’ve made our campus larger, too. We’ll talk more about that in a

moment, but I’ll simply note here that we’ve added unimproved land

and also acreage associated with the buildings we acquired for student

housing and our Innovation Academy charter school. Of course, we

also added land for campuses in Longview and Palestine.

Completing just one of these many items—adding buildings, major

academic programs and student programs—every two years would

cause others to describe us as “moving forward” or “successful.” But

together we have gone far beyond that, taking on two or three “major

items” each and every year and creating the platform for a major

university.

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We’ve also had some fun along the way. That picture is from when we

asked local philanthropists Jim and Bonna Bess Vaughn to fund what is

now the Vaughn Recreation and Therapy Pool.

The picture is fun, but it’s also an example of how we’ve always been

willing to move outside the box to build a better university, and as a

result we have been rewarded with some amazing achievements.

By the way, when I visited the Vaughns with that snorkel gear to ask for

$800,000 to help build our pool, he laughed so hard he couldn’t help but

say “Yes!”

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Enough of the past, let’s look at some of our remarkable

accomplishments over just the past year.

In addition to what you see on the slide, the College of Engineering

successfully hosted the ASCE National (actually international) Concrete

Canoe Competition. For a few days over the summer, we were host to

students from around the nation and Canada. It was an extraordinary

event!

This is also the 20th year of the College of Engineering, and Dean

McGinnis tells me we will be hosting a few events to celebrate. Stay

tuned.

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The Ben and Maytee Fisch College of Pharmacy is now in year two, and

doing well. Students are still lining up – Dean Lane and his remarkable

faculty had nearly 700 applicants vying to be included in this year’s

second cohort. They’re at capacity with a full class of 107 new students

and about 191 students overall.

The College of Nursing and Health Sciences, has received a significant

federal grant to advance nurse practitioner programming in our region.

The grant is anticipated to total $2.1 million over three years and will

create a partnership between the university and several health

organizations, including Walmart Clinics.

That College has also added the Doctor of Nursing Practice program

this fall. Dean Wang, Dr. Haas, and Dr. Peterson and so many nursing

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faculty who are involved in graduate programs have done a phenomenal

job putting this new program together.

And, once again, our nursing on-line graduate programs rose in the

rankings— from 9th to 7th. And the faculty involved were ranked 4thin the

nation.

I know we honored this group in February when we gathered to review

our strategic plan, but let’s do it again. Would the entire nursing faculty

and staff please stand? Congratulations!

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In addition, our College of Business earned a ranking of 15th by The Best

Schools for its MBA with a Health Care emphasis. Would those

associated with this program please stand?

In the past year, we have sent students to study culture in Israel and

Ghana, assisted with archeological studies in Belize, and conducted a

service learning project in Costa Rica.

Our faculty partnered with countries, such as Scotland, China, and

Taiwan, to provide professional training opportunities.

Dr. Robert Sterken just returned from his Fulbright trip to Thailand,

where he capped his visit by delivering a lecture at the U.S. Embassy in

Bangkok.

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Biology professor Dr. Neil Ford received the 2016 Research Excellence

Award from the Southwestern Association of Naturalists. His colleague

in the biology department, Dr. Jon Seal, has been awarded an NSF

grant to study the roles bacteria play in a certain type of ant.

Kathy Kapka, CPA and MBA and a senior lecturer in Accounting, began

her term this year as the statewide chair of the Texas Society of

Certified Public Accountants.

These are just a few of the many faculty accomplishments of the past

year. I am proud of you and I apologize to the many I left out. Your

accomplishments bring pride and honor to our University, the University

of Texas System, and indeed all of Texas.

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Our athletes also had a banner year. We had an all-around stellar

performance across all of our sports. In all, Patriot team sports

amassed a staggering 210-68 record for the year. Patriot teams also

won eight cross country meets outright and eight golf tournament titles.

We have a few of our Patriots here today. I want to ask them if they will

come up and line up along the front of the stage as I talk about

everything they accomplished this past year.

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Our softball team brought home a national championship trophy for the

first time in the program’s history. Their win comes on the heels of a

second-place finish last year. Kelsie Batten, whom you saw on the last

slide, and Laura Lindsey from our women’s golf team, became the first

athletes in Texas at Tyler history to earn All-American status all four

years. Four-time All-Americans!

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Whitney Simmons, a junior from White Oak, won a national title for the

hammer throw. She threw that 8-pound hammer 59.13 meters, (or 65

yards). I can’t even imagine that!

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For the second time in just three years, the Women’s Golf Patriots were

the national runners-up team.

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Our women’s basketball team also finished the year with their best

record yet, finishing in the Elite 8, losing a hard-fought battle in the finals

of the Central Regional played in Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minnesota).

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Both our men’s and women’s teams represented the university well,

contributing to our eight conference titles.

In June, the ASC named 10 student athletes to the Winter/Spring

American Southwest Conference Distinguished Scholar-Athlete Team.

Five of that 10 were from Texas at Tyler: Michelle Obach in women’s

basketball, Raven Rodriguez in softball, Frankie Fisher in men’s tennis

and Conner Benson and Krista Painter in men’s and women’s track and

field.

In addition, several of our coaches received accolades of their own. VP

Howard Patterson was named the 2016 DIII Athletics Director of the

Year.

Please join me in applauding all our great coaches and scholar athletes.

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Now, let’s look at enrollment. Earlier this week, when we made this

chart, we were at 9,317 up 12% from the same time last fall! Although

the final increase will be different as the numbers come in, we are still

clearly still growing rapidly.

Congratulations to Sarah Bowdin and the undergraduate enrollment

management team and to Dr. Alecia Wolf and her graduate admissions

team—and to all of you in every individual program all across campus

who helped make this happen.

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You’ve seen the previous enrollment graph before, but not this one.

These two lines show what our future growth will look like. The orange,

lower line is the conservative projection. It shows what each fall

enrollment will be if we average just 4% going forward. 4% growth puts

us at just over 13,100 students in 10 short years (by 2025).

But for the last four years, including this year, our growth has been

between 7 and 10%. Using 7% yields the higher blue line, indicating we

could reach 17,400 students by 2025.

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Lastly, it wouldn’t be Convocation if I didn’t provide updates on our

current construction.

We are making progress on the alumni house, but we are a little behind,

pushing completion to early 2017, not this fall as originally expected.

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Our second current project, the new home for the College of Business &

Technology, is also in progress. This will be our largest building, and

I’m glad that construction will start soon. We have a groundbreaking

ceremony set for September and major construction is will begin in

October.

Following the construction of the business building, we will move on to

renovate the current Business Building into a new home for Arts &

Sciences. We will be playing musical chairs, or in this case offices, for

awhile. We will also lose the parking in Lot 18 as they begin construction

of the parking garage that is part of that project.

It’s been a few years since we really have had to do that, but this

particular undertaking will involve two buildings and two complete

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colleges, making it one of the largest undertakings, if not the largest, in

our history.

I have already charged our vice presidents with coming up with a plan

that will help us make an organized and well-communicated transition.

As we progress, we will keep you in the loop as to what to expect.

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And, for our last project. Well, it’s not exactly a construction project, but

it’s close.

I would like to introduce you to the beginning of our new East Campus.

I know, it doesn’t look like much now, but stick around.

I think you’re going to find that in five years, there’s a lot happening on

that side of Old Omen Road. Just this week, the Board of Regents

approved our purchase of 117 acres, what we’re calling the East

Campus Purchase.

In addition, they also approved the purchase of University Christian

Church on Old Omen (next to the OAC) and its accompanying 7 acres.

We’ve given that space over to the Innovation Academy for the near

term, since they are enrolling students as quickly as we can make room.

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The University of Texas at Tyler is now a nearly 400-acre campus. Our

new space will enable us to construct additional academic buildings on

our current campus as well as needed housing, recreation and athletic

fields, and research facilities. I am delighted to be leaving a large

amount of undeveloped land available for the growth you’ll experience

and the dreams you’ll have in the future. And, as you can see on the

slide, there are still a couple of blue spaces we would like to acquire if

they become available.

I want to thank our Chief Legal Officer, Michael Donley, for leading the

way on these recent acquisitions and negotiating two good deals.

I also want to thank EVC for Academic Affairs Dr. Steve Leslie, Deputy

Chancellor Dr. David Daniel, and Chan. McRaven for supporting our

land acquisition vision. In addition to persuading others in Austin that

these purchases were best for our university, they also agreed to

provide $2 million in funding to make the purchase fit our budget more

easily.

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PROVOST’S UPDATE, PRESENTED BY DR. AMIR MIRMIRAN

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Thank you, Mr. President! And THANK YOU for serving this university

for the last 18 years! It has been an incredible run and a period of

unprecedented growth for the university, providing a life-changing

opportunity to over 32,000 alumni, tripling student enrollment, doubling

our number of full-time faculty, increasing research funds manifold,

adding 10 bachelors’ 8 masters’ and 4 doctoral programs, and the Fisch

College of Pharmacy, Longview University Center and Houston

Engineering Center.

This is a joint creation of YOU – Mr. President together with YOU –

faculty; a dream you dreamed together, a dream coming to fruition each

and every time that a student walks across the stage at

commencement, and each and every time that a faculty member

receives tenure or a teaching award, or an academic program gets

national recognition.

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It has been a great honor for me to serve as a member of the faculty and

as your Provost for the last 13 months. Last fall, I had the privilege to

get to know faculty at their home departments and colleges, and at

three well-attended strategic planning town halls, which turned into

monthly town halls sometime grabbing a bite together, which I hear

some have termed them as “Provost Bites.” No, I don’t!

But seriously, 2015-16 has been a great year for us to come together

with a sense of joy and pride for the institution and with a greater

expectation of what we can accomplish together, and I underline

together, which has allowed us a soft re-boot in various fronts from

advising restructuring of advising and University College to the new

learning management program-specific Provost Fellow – all in a

collaborative style with direct faculty input through town halls, task-

specific committees, and monthly reports to the Senate, and all with the

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intention of promoting communication, accountability and shared

responsibility.

I invite you to take a look at highlighted accomplishments of our faculty

and students as well as last year’s initiatives in Provost’s report that is

now posted on the web.

I would only mention one – Scholar Works, a joint effort of Library and

Graduate School to create a digital repository of our faculty and student

scholarship, which I am proud to say has had downloads from all over

the world. If you are interested in adding your work, please contact our

University Archives.

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For the coming year, student success remains a high priority for us. We

need a holistic approach to student success and a true collaboration

across campus from classrooms to tutoring centers, from admission to

advising, and from finances to campus life.

We have reshaped the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

around learning communities and the concept of “for faculty by faculty”

with a new leader (Dr. Delello) and a new space for faculty to come

together along with Academy of Distinguished Teachers and Faculty

Senate.

This year, we also need to come together to reinforce who we are as

one voice, while amplifying the talented voices of our faculty from each

corner of the campus in what makes them so unique, just as different

musical instruments in an orchestra. As I go around the campus, I hear

the notes calling for a higher emphasis on teaching excellence, and I

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hear the notes seeking support they need to develop their scholarship

portfolio to the fullest. We must honor both!

This is also the year we will begin our campus-wide conversation on the

next QEP with broadest representation from all our stakeholders,

facilitated by our Provost Fellow (Dr. Wooldridge). In the process of

attending to these priorities, we will continue to build a stronger

community together.

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In closing, as we look back at the history of this institution, the faculty

has shown that if we believe in our dream, we can build it together. Let

us here and now invite our students, alumni, friends, and community

leaders to invest their trust in our dream, and join us for the next leg of

this exciting journey!

Thank you!

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CLOSING, PRESENTED BY DR. MABRY

Let me close with two comments.

First, I want to thank all of you for making this university special. Thank

you for your wholehearted dedication to students. Thank you for your

relentless dedication to quality. Thank you for your dedication to

creativity and creative solutions that help people through education.

Developing satellite campuses, centers in Houston, innovative charter

schools and, yes, even a private college of pharmacy are testaments to

your creativity.

Second, let me say . . . . I love every one of you, and I love this

university. After 18 years, the respect I have for each of you and how far

you’ve moved this university knows no bounds. I am so often blown

away by what you have accomplished—and can accomplish—often

with few resources initially.

Someone recently asked me why I have stayed so long. Yes, I’ve had

chances to leave. Bill Funk, the headhunter who brought me here from

the University of Tulsa, came back almost every year with possibilities

for New Mexico Sate, Murray State in Kentucky near my hometown,

even a likely path to Houston and Auburn.

I tell you this because I want you to understand that I love this place.

This place is made up of happy, productive people. Don’t ever lose that

joy of creating something important, side by side.

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I love the wonder—and sweat and tears—of helping you build new

academic programs and finding the resources and creating the facilities

to support them.

Those other jobs at the other universities I just mentioned would confer

instant prestige, and opportunities to move again later to even better

known universities.

But I would have become bored, as Merle reminded me often. She

didn’t want to go because those positions at fully established

universities offered only political challenges, or resource challenges.

Plus—and with reflection I’m only understanding this point now—it was

never about me. It has always been about the sheer joy of building

something great that matters, something that will increasingly impact

our region in untold ways . . . and raise standards of living for

generations of East Texans.

Who could pass that up? Not me.

I will be around another four months, though, and then I’ll be watching

to see if you carry out my last charge:

Remember what The University of Texas at Tyler stands for—great

teaching, equally great research, trailblazing innovation, fun at

work and quality, quality, quality.

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NEW UT TYLER FACULTY

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UT TYLER FACULTY AND SERVICE AWARDS

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