Campaign Report 2012: The Campaign for Texas

2012–2013 REPORT

Not since its birth 129 years ago has The University of Texas at Austin undergone a period of transformation as explosive as it has during the Campaign for Texas.

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utting-edge facilities are sprouting up all over campus in disciplines

as varied as communication, liberal arts, computer science, business, and engineering. And the intellectual foundation of the university is expanding just as rapidly, using innovation to tackle the important issues facing the world. Our finest minds are developing treatments for debilitating diseases. They’re shedding new light on the origins of the universe.

They’re cultivating tomorrow’s scientists, engineers, artists, and entrepreneurs.

They’re driving the national conversation about the future of higher education, and they’re developing new ways to do it all more efficiently.

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The world is taking notice of The University of Texas at Austin.

25

th

in the world’s top 100 universities

15

2013 U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY RANKINGS

th

among public universities

1 st 1

2013 U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT PUBLIC UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL RANKINGS

st

college of education

mccombs school of business accounting program

41 56

ut programs rank in the top 10 nationally ut programs rank in the top 25 nationally

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he university ranks 15th in the latest

UT is also winning international

U.S. News & World Report rating of

acclaim. One of the world’s foremost

public universities. UT fares particularly

observers of higher education, London-

well in the magazine’s 2013 graduate

based Times Higher Education, has

rankings, which lists the College of

ranked UT Austin the 25th-best univer-

Education No. 1 among public universi-

sity in the world.

ties. The McCombs School of Business

The university is making these strides

accounting program ranks first as well.

with great efficiency. If you combine state

Other top 10 programs include the

general revenue, tuition revenue, and

College of Pharmacy at fourth, the

revenue from the Available University

School of Social Work at seventh, and

Fund, UT performs its mission at the

the Cockrell School of Engineering at

lowest per-student, per-year cost of any

eighth. At the graduate level, 41 UT

university in its 12-school peer group of

programs and specialties rank in the top

national public research universities.

10 nationally. Fifty-six others rank in the top 25. Another publication, the journal DesignIntelligence, ranks the School of Architecture’s undergraduate program second in the nation.

Our numbers are part of our strength.

52, 00 students per year

13,300 degrees per year

9,000 3,800 500 bachelor’s degrees

master’s and doctor’s degrees

professional degrees

INDIVIDUAL FOUR-YEAR GRADUATION RATE

800

5-year goal: 70%

patents awarded

to the university since 1883

52% 48% 2006

2012

2017

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oing more with less, we are teaching

52,000 students a year, granting

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Graduation rates are continuing to rise. The four-year graduation rate is

13,300 degrees, including 9,000 bach-

52 percent, up from 48 percent in 2006.

elor’s, 3,800 master’s and doctor’s

President Bill Powers has set a goal of

degrees, and 500 professional degrees.

70 percent in the next five years.

Those numbers make UT the state’s

UT is doing all this in the face of

largest producer of bachelor’s degrees

declining state support. Only 13 percent

and the nation’s second-largest producer

of UT’s budget is provided by taxpayers,

of PhDs. UT ranks 10th in the nation in

down from 47 percent in 1984–85.

the number of degrees granted to Latinos.

At the same time, UT works as an

PERCENT OF UT’S BUDGET PAID BY TAXPAYERS

47%

economic engine for the state. Last year UT attracted $628 million in new outside

13%

research funding, up 14.4 percent from the previous year and up 35.5 percent over the past six years. About 800 patents have been awarded to the university since its inception, and licensing revenues in 2010–11 were $25.6 million.

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2006

2012

How did we get here?

29

%

of alumni have contributed to the campaign for texas

O

84+z 84

%

gifts under $1,000

ur donors have brought us

are votes of confidence in UT’s ability to

two-thirds of the way toward the

change the world, and they have come

$3 billion goal of the Campaign for Texas.

from all branches of the university fam-

Since the campaign began, 29 percent

ily. You are giving gifts of all sizes, small

of alumni have joined us as we work to

and large. (Small gifts play a particularly

make UT the best public university in the

important role, as 84 percent of all gifts

country. Your gifts — which come fol-

are less than $1,000.)

lowing an economic recession of historic proportions — speak volumes. They

Some are choosing to give through future gifts, such as bequests in their wills. Many of the beloved icons of today’s University of Texas would not exist without

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Simply put, generosity. campaign participation

116,487 individual alumni

95,612

9,620

individual non-alumni

corporations, foundations, etc.

35

%

of alumni donors are first-time donors

future gifts. Try picturing UT without

would have already succeeded. The

the Tower or Littlefield Fountain. Or the

university’s next most successful

Davis Mountains without McDonald

campaign, We’re Texas, raised

Observatory gracing their peaks. In

$1.6 billion from 1997 to 2004. But

addition to changing the physical face

our goal is not merely to become a

of the university, future gifts have also

great American public university; it

been used to recruit brilliant scholars,

is to become the greatest. Not for

educate students, and foster ground-

greatness’ own sake, but for the

breaking discoveries.

difference we can make.

If our goal were to raise more money than any previous UT campaign, we

Our people During the first two-thirds of the Campaign for Texas, the university’s groundbreaking research and programs took center stage. The last one-third, that crucial $1 billion, gets more personal. Our state-of-the-art research facilities and collections are important tools. Now we need to invest in the people who will use those tools to change the world.

The good news is we’re well on the way, counting some of the world’s best scholars among our students and faculty.

But we need more like them, and we need to keep the ones we’ve got.

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STUDENTS T

oday’s University of Texas provides students with a revitalized undergraduate experience that makes use of new techniques and new technologies. We’re creating a higher-education model that is more interactive, more social, and more collaborative.

And we’re taking that experience to the most promising students possible.

Scholarships and fellowships help UT recruit the best undergraduate and graduate students — students who go on to win Rhodes, Marshall, and Hertz awards. Many would not be here if not for the financial assistance they receive. Of our 52,000 students, 6,714 received endowed scholarships this fall.

Our students are using your gifts to change the world in concrete ways. Take, for example, Harrington Fellows (Photo 1) and Powers Fellows (2), some of UT’s most promising graduate students. These premium fellowships help attract scholars working in such areas as politics and race, sustainable design, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, battlefield innovation, higher-education productivity, immigration and cross-cultural issues, pharmaceutics and gene therapy, mood and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents, and improving the delivery of services to members of military families with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

With the help of scholarships, we’re bringing the benefits of a UT education to a more diverse group of students than ever before. For

example, university supporters in South Texas have banded together to create the Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program (3), which provides $10,000 renewable scholarships to promising students from the valley who demonstrate financial need and show excellence in academics, leadership, and community service. This fall’s inaugural Rio Grande Valley Scholar, Alejandra Guerrero, is an honors graduate of Roma High School, where she excelled in the swim team, student council, choir, academic clubs, and volunteering. An anonymous grant to the program is funding Guerrero’s scholarship, and supporters have raised $160,000 of the $200,000 needed to help a second student from the Rio Grande Valley come to UT. The very best are coming to Texas because of our Forty Acres Scholars Program (4). Now in its second year, the Forty Acres Scholars Program welcomed 14 recipients this fall in disciplines as varied as Business Honors, Plan II, engineering, architecture, social work, and neuroscience. The Forty Acres Scholars Program is the university’s first full-ride merit scholarship, covering tuition, room and board, books, and summer enrichment activities such as internships, study abroad, research, and service learning. When fully funded, it will be one of the nation’s largest merit scholarship programs.

Our exceptional students deserve an exceptional education. The Commission of 125 has determined that UT students must graduate

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not only with knowledge in their majors but with certain intellectual qualities as well: Students should leave the Forty Acres knowing how to write, reason, and learn independently and as part of a group. They should understand and appreciate cultural diversity in the U.S. and abroad. They should be able to lead and to use their knowledge ethically. The School of Undergraduate Studies serves as the university’s champion of undergraduate innovation, working to instill these qualities through courses across the curriculum. This approach, combined with a revamped undergraduate curriculum, first-year Signature Courses, and freshman interest groups, provides a student experience no other university can match.

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FACULTY W

hen you learn of new discoveries at The University of Texas at Austin, you’re hearing about the work of our faculty. They are recipients of such honors as the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and MacArthur “genius” grants. But their contributions don’t end with research. They are also the teachers who impart our students with the tools, knowledge, and enthusiasm to go on to change the world.

We are ranked among the country’s premier institutions of higher learning because of our faculty, and with more like them we can become No. 1. Gifts, particularly endowed gifts, enable us to offer the compensation and incentives that bring the best and keep them here.

Chairs are the most prestigious endowments a faculty member can hold, followed by professorships and fellowships. In addition to supplementing faculty members’ salaries, endowments can provide additional funding for research. Last year, 264 faculty

members held chairs, 347 held professorships, and 291 held fellowships. During the Campaign for Texas, donors have created new faculty endowments in such varied disciplines as piano, entertainment studies, computer engineering, petroleum engineering, law, physics, international trade policy, global health policy, human ecology, urban planning, business, photography, interior design, opera conducting, literature, astrophysics, national security, and many others.

Timing matters in landing world-class faculty. One strategy is to recruit up-and-coming scholars whose stars are just beginning to rise. By the time their careers are at their zenith, they are well established as UT faculty members.

UT’s competitors, however, have no problem with poaching our best faculty members.

Once we have recruited superstars, we must continuously work to keep them. Chairs, professorships, and fellowships allow us to do so.

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FACILITIES F

or our scholars to do their best work, they need the best facilities. The physical face of the campus has undergone a transformation since the Campaign for Texas began, with the goal of these ultramodern facilities not merely to keep up with the times but to define them.

The College of Communication’s new Belo Center for New Media (1) opened this fall on the west edge of campus. The five-story, 120,000-square-foot Belo Center serves as an interactive learning space for students, a landmark gateway to campus at the intersection of Guadalupe and Dean Keeton streets, and home to the KUT Public Media Studios.

With a budget of $54.8 million, the Belo Center includes a performance studio, cinema-grade presentation space, an outdoor stage, and a multimedia newsroom designed to be both an interactive classroom where students acquire state-of-the-art professional skills and a working newsroom that will serve as the editorial nexus for producing the School of Journalism’s news website, Reporting Texas.

The campus’ second student union building, the Student Activity Center (2), opened in January 2011 next to Gregory Gymnasium on the East Mall. Funded by a 2006 student referendum, the SAC includes 149,000 square feet of indoor space and 25,000 square feet of outdoor space. The building includes 13 meeting rooms, a theater, an auditorium, a ballroom, restaurants, and a coffee shop. The Student Activity Center houses offices for graduate

and undergraduate student legislative organizations, several student centers, and the Anthropology Department.

Students are also the focus of the new Holland Family Student Center (3) in the Jackson School of Geosciences. The new center, housed in renovated space in the Jackson Geological Sciences building, opened in June.

Its $8.1 million cost was financed entirely by donors. The 11,000-square-foot facility includes a public commons area, a student study area, student services for advising, tutoring, and career placement, and meeting spaces for students, faculty, and research scientists. One of the highlights is the Magic Planet globe, a six-foot diameter interactive display. The globe shows a wide range of earth systems phenomena, from hurricanes and tsunamis to plate tectonics. It will be used for instruction, public outreach, and visualization of research projects.

More change is on the horizon.

Next door to the Student Activity Center, the College of Liberal Arts (4) is making history. Private donors have chipped in $20 million toward a new $85 million building. The sixstory, 206,000-square-foot new Liberal Arts Building will open in spring 2013. The Liberal Arts Building, which will bring the college under one roof, will include 30 modern classrooms, student study areas and meeting rooms, and laboratories and offices for 250 faculty.

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Cockrell School of Engineering students are expected to achieve technology breakthroughs as they solve real-world problems in critical areas such as energy and human health.

However, the 7,700 students of the Cockrell School are pioneering 21st-century innovations in classrooms and laboratories built for mid-20th-century technology. To implement a more effective method of educating future engineers, the Cockrell School is building the state-of-the-art Engineering Education and Research Center, or EERC (5). The EERC has 430,000 gross square feet of modular, flexible space that will accommodate robust interdisciplinary teaching and research, team learning, and project-based education. Engineers learning in an environment with hands-on practical projects and integrated, cross-disciplinary mentoring will be best prepared to produce a high economic and social return on our investment in them.

The EERC will cost about $310 million, of which $205 million has been committed by the UT System Board of Regents and The University of Texas at Austin. In August 2012, the Board of Regents also approved the design plans for the EERC — a significant milestone. The last step is for the Cockrell School to finish raising $105 million in private philanthropic funding from individuals, foundations, and corporations. Depending on fundraising progress, the construction could begin in 2013, and faculty and students could move into the EERC by 2017.

Like Liberal Arts, the Department of Computer Science is also uniting in a common space. Once spread across campus in seven buildings, the entire department will be housed together for the first time in its history.

Its new home: the Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex (6), opening this winter. The 140,000-square-foot complex will help create a computer science powerhouse in the Southwest, enabling the department to increase its faculty by 40 percent and its student body by 50 percent. The complex, which includes the Dell Computer Science Hall, will be a state-of-the-art facility for computing research, collaboration, teaching, and outreach.

The mingling of research labs and offices with modern, computing-oriented classrooms and labs will ensure that students share in the excitement and entrepreneurial challenges of

cutting-edge and multidisciplinary computing research.

Already one of the top business schools in the country, the McCombs School of Business is aiming even higher. With a goal of being one of the world’s most prominent business schools by 2017, McCombs is enhancing its ability to attract the best full-time MBA students with a new $155 million, 458,000-square-foot Graduate Business Education Center. The new building is the cornerstone of a facilities plan that also includes renovations to the existing College of Business Administration and Graduate School of Business buildings, both of which will be devoted to undergraduate education once the new building opens. The new Graduate Business Education Center will cater to the unique needs of MBA students. The new building will be configured similarly to the office environments in which MBAs work, with space for teamwork and large-group meetings, as well as rooms for negotiations and client presentations. The building is slated to open in February 2017, on Whitis Avenue between MLK Boulevard and 20th Street across from the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center.

A $6 million renovation and revitalization plan for the Briscoe Center for American History (7) will create a new cultural hub worthy of the center’s internationally known trove of historical material, which includes 6 million photographs, 160,000 books, more than 84,000 linear feet of manuscripts and archives, 57,000 sound recordings, 31,000 maps, 17,500 film and video recordings, 5,500 newspaper titles, and 18,000 artifacts of material culture. The renovation of the center’s space on the first floor of Sid Richardson Hall will be marked by distinctive exterior signage and an inviting, modern exhibit space with a changing display of rarely seen historical photographs, maps, documents, journals, and manuscripts. A public programming room will play host to an ongoing series of intellectually stimulating lectures, screenings, classes, and book talks. Just as the Blanton Museum of Art and the LBJ Library are cultural attractions drawing visitors from the campus, local, and global communities, the rejuvenated Briscoe Center will be a destination that attracts not only educators and researchers but also history devotees from around the world.

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PROGRAMS & RESEARCH W

hat are our faculty doing with these premier facilities? They’re working on treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. They’re paving the way for the businesses that will lead Texas into the future.

They’re creating better doctors, using classic art to sharpen their powers of observation.

They’re developing social programs to help veterans reintegrate into society after their service, and they’re innovating custom prosthetics for injured veterans. They’re close to breaking new ground in human understanding of the nature of the universe.

Modern medicine has helped to extend our lives, but it hasn’t yet found a way to prevent neurological decline. Today, more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and their care costs about $183 billion a year.

Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Adela Ben-Yakar and College of Natural Sciences Professor Jon Pierce-Shimomura are forging paths toward an Alzheimer’s cure (1) by asking a basic biological question: Why do we age?

Together they are studying the effect of different Alzheimer’s drugs on C. elegans worms. The worms’ genetic makeup is similar

to humans, and their short life span enables faster understanding of which drugs are most effective.

At UT, the “real world” isn’t postgraduation.

It’s one thing to learn about business models in the classroom, quite another to work side by side with local entrepreneurs to get a startup off the ground. That’s why graduate students are jumping at the chance to participate in the Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs (2), a program that pairs emerging business leaders with teams of graduate and PhD students in business, law, engineering, and natural sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

The student teams share their knowledge base, help write business plans for the fledgling companies, and get hands-on experience in bringing innovation — and jobs — to the marketplace.

Future doctors are learning to dissect art (3) at the Blanton Museum of Art. They’re part of an innovative pilot program at the Blanton that allows University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) students to hone their diagnostic skills and powers of observation. The Blanton and UTMB’s Internal Medicine residency program at Seton Healthcare Family

have been working together to bring small groups of third-year medical students to examine beloved works of art. The goal is to teach these future doctors to become attentive and thoughtful observers of patients’ unspoken visual cues.

Soldiers who have returned from war with missing limbs are now facing another grueling battle: learning to regain their mobility — and their lives — through the use of prosthetic devices. UT is paving the way for more customized prosthetics (4) and orthotic devices. Professor Rick Neptune and a group of mechanical engineering students are using UT Austin’s own technique called selective laser sintering — a process that begins with a computer design and ends with a sturdy yet flexible prosthetic device that is tailored to the wearer. And in the School of Social Work, training programs and research in military social work will help fill the mental health needs of active-duty troops and their families as well as America’s newest veterans returning from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What if Sir Isaac Newton was wrong? UT research is challenging what we thought we knew about the origins of the universe and the principles of physics.

Since the big bang the universe has been expanding. According to the law of gravity, that expansion should slow down and everything should start coming back together. But instead the universe is not only continuing to expand, it’s doing so at a faster rate. The mysterious force causing this phenomenon is known as dark energy (5), and it constitutes 70 percent of the universe. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) at McDonald Observatory is the first major experiment to probe dark energy. In the coming years and decades, astronomers will study exploding stars, map millions of galaxies, and plot the gravitational influence of dense galaxy clusters.

Particle physicists will probe conditions near the time of the big bang. And all of them will tweak their models of how the universe began, how it has aged, and how it will end.

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The destination

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hanks to the Campaign for Texas, one of the country’s finest

universities is on its way to becoming the best. We’re attracting the minds, both faculty and students, who will solve today’s challenges and shape tomorrow’s possibilities. We’re giving them the tools and the inspiration they need to conduct their pioneering work.

Our vision for The University of Texas has taken — will take — commitment, but with it comes rewards we are just beginning to comprehend. We are, after all, changing the world.