Centennial Commission 2006 Updates
PreK-16 Educational Collaboration
Recommendation – “Continue and deepen the partnership with EPCC to promote dual credit and shared recruitment, admissions, and exchange of data.”
The University of Texas at El Paso received a $350,000 gift from the Wolslager Foundation to support transfer scholarships for EPCC students during the 2006-2007 year. This funding enabled UTEP to expand the number of transfer scholarships for EPCC students from 40 to 70 per year and to increase the value of each student’s annual scholarship from $3,500 to $5,000. These highly competitive scholarships are awarded to EPCC students who transfer to UTEP with a minimum of 45 college credit hours. By fully covering the cost of tuition and fees, they enable these talented and highly motivated students to enroll full-time at UTEP and make steady progress toward completing their degrees.
Undergraduate Education
Recommendation – “Increase financial aid programs to support student success.”
To help remove financial barriers to enrollment for students at all income levels, UTEP has developed three new financial aid programs: the UTEP Promise, the UTEP Success Plan and the UTEP Guaranteed Tuition Plan. The UTEP Promise targets first-time freshmen with family incomes of $25,000 or less. Drawing on a combination of state and federal aid programs and university resources, this program covers all tuition and fee costs with no repayment requirement. First-time freshmen are automatically considered for participation once they have been accepted to UTEP and have completed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA.) The UTEP Success Plan works with individual students from all income levels to create a personalized financial aid package that combines grants and loans from federal, state and institutional funds. The Guaranteed Tuition Plan sets a fixed cost of enrollment at UTEP (both tuition and mandatory fees) for up to four years. Offered for the first time to entering freshmen in fall 2006, this program gives students and parents a predictable cost figure to include in their financial planning.
Merit-based scholarships also play a major role in student success at UTEP. During 2006-2007, nearly $4 million in academic scholarships were awarded to more than 400 top-ranked students. These scholarships are awarded to students based on their records of leadership and academic achievement in high school (GPA, class rank, and test scores), and efforts are made to ensure that they keep pace with rising costs. The President’s Leadership Scholarship, which is awarded to valedictorians and salutatorians of all high schools in the El Paso, Socorro and Ysleta I.S.D.’s, was increased from $5,000 to $6,000 per year. The Presidential Excellence Scholarship, available to the top 3% of high school seniors (with a minimum 96 GPA and 1220 SAT score) was also increased for entering students from $3,500 to $4,000 per year.
Graduate and Professional Development Programs
Recommendation – “Introduce courses and certificate programs related to the border (including foreign language study) to complement and enhance existing programs across the disciplines.”
The University of Texas at El Paso received a request from the publisher of El Diario to provide a master’s-level program in border journalism for the editors, writers and reporters on his staff. In response, UTEP designed a curriculum which is taught in both English and Spanish and especially tailored to El Diario’s newsroom employees. This is the first such program along the U.S.-Mexico border, and it provides working journalists with the bilingual and bicultural skills needed to cover social, economic and political issues on the border, while also focusing on differences in news gathering and reporting practices and standards in the U.S. and Mexico. It also serves as a good illustration of the UTEP Communication Department’s capacity to take a lead in responding to the rapidly increasing demand for Spanish-language journalists across the United States.
Health Professions Education/Health and Biomedical Research
Recommendation – “Additional funding to hire faculty in UTEP’s School of Nursing and the Pharmacy Program is critical as not all qualified applicants can be admitted due to shortages of faculty created primarily by low salaries compared to the private sector.”
UTEP’s School of Nursing has been awarded more than $900,000 to enhance the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) master’s program and increase the number of students it graduates. The three-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will fund training seminars for nursing students and several new positions, including two part-time faculty positions. Funds will also be used to hire a clinical coordinator who will work to increase the number of clinics where students can practice their nursing skills under supervision. The FNP program will help increase the number of specialized nurses, particularly bilingual nurses, who can serve as primary care providers in the El Paso region. The grant will also help enhance technology and restructure courses to incorporate culturally sensitive skills that are critical to addressing Hispanic health disparities on the border.
U.S.-Mexico Border and International Programs
Recommendation – “UTEP should encourage and support synergies between the Consulates and cultural agencies on both sides of the border.”
As Mexico moved toward the election of a new president, UTEP and the Mexican Consulate in El Paso co-sponsored a series of presentations on Mexico’s emerging political, economic and social trends and their impact on the future of the U.S.-Mexico border region. This “Mexico Today” lecture series brought to the campus distinguished speakers from both sides of the border to share their unique perspectives with large and highly engaged university and community audiences. Speakers included the Honorable Jesus Silva-Herzog, Former Mexican Ambassador to the United States, who addressed the Mexican economy and politics; Alfredo J. Corchado, Senior Binational Correspondent for the Dallas Morning News in Mexico City, who spoke on U.S.-Mexico media coverage; Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who spoke on Mexico’s capacity to participate successfully in global competition; and Alejandro Junco, Publisher, Grupo Reforma, whose talk focused on freedom of the press in Mexico. This series proved so successful that UTEP and the Mexican Consulate have agreed to continue it and expand its scope beyond a focus on the recent presidential election to a variety of issues affecting U.S.-Mexico relations.
Regional Economic Development
Recommendation – “Establish and sustain UTEP as one of the top national research universities in biomedical research and border health-related issues.”
UTEP has recently recruited several highly accomplished new faculty members to the Biological Sciences Department. Among them is the new department chair, Dr. Rob Kirken, who works on the development of novel drugs to treat such conditions as cancer, rejection of transplanted organs, allergies, and autoimmune disorders. Dr. Timothy Miller is utilizing his background in chemistry and biology to more effectively manipulate the nitrous oxide molecule, which plays a key role in controlling blood pressure, brain function, and pathogen resistance. Dr. Manuel Llano’s research involves HIV infection and the molecular mechanisms that promote the disease. Joining the faculty in January 2007 are Dr. June Kan-Mitchell, a leading expert in HIV research and vaccine development, and Dr. German Rosas-Acosta, whose work focuses on the movement of protein in cells, with implications for viral infections such as influenza. These new faculty bring with them significant funding for their research from such organizations as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as a strong commitment to conduct research on diseases that affect the population of the U.S.-Mexico border region.
In addition, UTEP was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to create a Student Research Lab Core Facility for molecular and cell biology research, strengthen the undergraduate laboratory curriculum for biology courses, and thereby greatly enhance the academic preparation of the next generation of health care professionals and researchers in this region.
UTEP’s Neighborhood
Recommendation – “Construct parking garages to concentrate peripheral parking and increase capacity.”
Over the past year, the Facilities Services Department has developed plans for a number of projects designed to improve the traffic flow, land use and the overall “climate” on the UTEP campus and in its surrounding neighborhood. A major step in implementing these plans was taken in January 2006 with groundbreaking for UTEP’s first-ever parking garage. The garage is being constructed in the parking lot behind the Fox Fine Arts Center, which had capacity for 625 vehicles. Once completed, this multi-level, high-tech parking garage will increase to 1,700 the number of parking spaces available to UTEP students, faculty and staff, and to participants in events in the Sun Bowl, Fox Fine Arts and Magoffin Auditorium. The first half of the garage will open in April 2007, and the second half is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of the fall 2007 semester. Improvements were also made to Sun Bowl Drive prior to the beginning of classes in August 2006, and they have already reduced congestion in this high-traffic area near the new garage. Additional improvements to Sun Bowl Drive are planned to ease vehicle flow and accessibility to parking in that high-traffic corridor of the campus.
El Paso’s Quality of Life
Recommendation – “Conduct a feasibility study to determine location, building components, and cost of a men’s and women’s basketball practice facility.”
Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Paul Foster and Jeff and Sharon Stevens in the form of a $6 million gift to UTEP’s athletic program, the university is proceeding with plans for construction of a men’s and women’s basketball practice facility to be located on the current site of the Ticket Center at the corner of Mesa Street and Glory Road. Targeted for completion in 2008, the $10.5 million, 41,000-square-foot Foster & Stevens Basketball Complex will feature a gymnasium, three practice courts, a strength and conditioning center, a sports medicine center, an academic/film room, coaches’ offices, locker rooms for coaches and student athletes, an equipment room, two lounge areas, and a Hall of Honor that will commemorate the proud tradition of Miner basketball.
UTEP’s Image
Recommendation – “UTEP’s attempts to create a positive image should be guided by the notion that image matters—it provides a sense of pride, belonging, progress, and success.”
During the past year, UTEP sought to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunity for institutional image-building generated by the release of the Disney film “Glory Road” and the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ NCAA men’s basketball championship. University Communications collaborated with public relations teams from Disney and General Mills for media coverage of major events, including the El Paso premiere of the movie, the launch of a nationally distributed Wheaties cereal box featuring the 1966 Miner team, and the name change of Baltimore Street on the UTEP campus to Glory Road. Strategies to leverage the publicity included development of a content-rich website (www.utep.edu/gloryroad) that recorded more than 500,000 hits; a 40th anniversary logo; extensive coverage in local, regional and national print media; broadcast/cable coverage; and television commercials produced by Sanders/Wingo. These commercials incorporated a slogan designed to link Texas Western College in the film with today’s UTEP: “In 1966, we changed the face of college athletics. Today, we are changing the face of higher education.” They continue to be aired during televised C-USA athletic events.
Alumni Relations and Development
Recommendation – “The University must begin preparing for its next capital campaign, which should have a goal of raising more than $200 million.”
An experienced development professional, Robert Nava, was recruited to serve as UTEP’s Associate Vice President for Development. A 1979 UTEP graduate, Mr. Nava shares the University’s vision for sustained leadership in fostering the human and economic development of the Paso del Norte region, and he understands the new resources that will be required for UTEP to successfully play that role. He is leading efforts to plan and oversee UTEP’s Centennial Campaign, which will officially commence in 2007 and culminate with the celebration of the University’s 100th anniversary in 2014. Priority is being given to increasing philanthropic commitments to UTEP’s academic programs, with special emphasis on scholarships for talented UTEP students and support for the faculty’s teaching and research activities. To support this major campaign, UTEP has engaged the firm of Grenzebach Glier & Associates, Inc. which has extensive experience in providing universities with technical assistance in fundraising. Development Board members and other UTEP stakeholders have already been asked to comment on the university’s fundraising capacity, and UTEP administrators have presented their needs for endowment and capital investments and other programmatic support. The Development Office is currently compiling and analyzing this information for final institutional review prior to setting a Centennial Campaign goal, which is expected to fall in the $150-$250 million range.