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Two
reasonable and obvious questions present themselves to any candidate for President
of Texas A&M International University: why would you want the position? If
appointed, what would you do? For me the answers are connected, closely related
to my perception of where we find ourselves as an institution. This university
today embodies an extremely complex mixture of old, well-developed, and superior
programs, coexisting with new initiatives and projects only just begun. Even
our programs in teacher preparation and international business, disciplines we
were founded to pursue, have today evolved far beyond their character of even
five years ago. As Provost, I have initiated and championed growth, change, and
expansion at every level of University life. I believe that my deep roots, both
at the University and in the Laredo community, position me to lead Texas A&M
International University to a new level of excellence, a new sense of what we
might be, coupled with a clear understanding of who we are and what we have been.
Any discussion
of the Office of President of a university must begin with an unclouded recognition
of the President as the Chief External Officer of the institution. It is the
President who exhorts students and faculty, recalling our origins and pointing
toward our possibilities. It is the President who describes, interprets, proclaims,
and defines the University—its mission and activities—to the community,
the region, and the world. The President must communicate passionately and
forcefully the strengths of the University; then, in conjunction with the Office
of Institutional
Advancement, the President must coordinate and lead efforts to secure new and
additional resources.
American
higher education increasingly perceives that, as Columbia University’s
Michael M. Crow has stated, “knowledge is a form of venture capital.” The
University must partner with local businesses and capitalists, offering the vast
array of goods and services that both academic programs and continuing education
provide. My intimate familiarity with both our own inventory of programs and
with the burgeoning Laredo community will enable me to seek out and form those
vital partnerships. A central priority for me, as President, would be to link
for mutual benefit Texas A&M International University and the Laredo business
and professional community.
A second
external opportunity, at present in need of scrutiny and expansion, challenges
us to form a closer and more direct connection to principals and counselors in
Laredo’s schools. Bluntly stated, we must reach Laredo’s college-age
youth in a way we have yet to do. Last spring, over 2,300 students graduated
from high school in Webb County. Our freshman class that next September numbered
297. The University provides access, but the overwhelming majority of young
Laredoans are not continuing their education beyond high school, and of those
that continue,
only a small number elect to attend our University. The President must see
his or her role as increasing participation in higher education in Laredo.
At present,
in Laredo, we have access without significant participation.
As Provost,
I committed the University to participate in Gained Early Awareness and Readiness
for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP), a federally funded initiative. I petitioned
the grant coordinator to fund Faculty Fellows from the University to mentor,
model, and guide fledgling Advanced Placement programs at one Laredo high school.
This program, unique in the state, has received national recognition as a necessary
link between what happens in high school and what is expected in a university
classroom. But the responsibility to connect school and university is far too
broad a mandate to leave solely to expanded efforts by faculty and staff. The
President must lead the effort to establish vital connections to our local
schools, to break down barriers, real and perceived, and to invigorate collaboration
in
the pursuit of common goals. As President, I would establish a Council of Principals
to meet regularly at the University and in the schools, to dialogue and to
devise strategies to improve both preparation for and participation in higher
education.
As a
part of the process of improved school-university integration, the President
must become a familiar sight to teachers and students in Laredo’s high
schools. Counselors and principals tell me that a large percentage of Laredo
students still view the University with apprehension and uncertainty. “Do
I even dare to dream that I might become a part of that?” they ask. This
unfortunate perception can only be addressed by a physical presence. My own
experience as a faculty member, partnering with local teachers to team-teach
Advanced Placement
courses in Spanish literature, gives me both a personal and academic connection
to Laredo schools. As President, those relationships will provide a sincere
and direct invitation to participation in our University.
If two
major external opportunities, in the community and in the schools, remain for
the President to pursue and to develop, the internal life at Texas A&M International
University is at present, by contrast, well-defined and positioned for sustained
growth. When I became Provost, however, a daunting internal challenge was to
recognize and then to protect and to nurture the wide and disparate range of
personnel, programs, and projects simultaneously housed under this roof. Nothing
reveals our protean reality more clearly than our faculty. A large portion of
our faculty was recruited to carry a heavy teaching load and to craft their careers
around becoming generalists in their fields. Until very recently, all faculty
carried 12-hour teaching loads that often required as many as three or four preparations
per semester, topics often not in that teacher’s principal field of training.
With
access to doctoral studies now about to become a reality in three of our four
colleges, expectations have changed. Today, dossiers for promotion and tenure
which as recently as five years ago would have perhaps been judged adequate
might today be rejected by faculty committees and deans. Newly recruited faculty
in
select fields must arrive prepared both to serve as superior teachers in their
fields and to carry research agenda adequate to the demands of doctoral programs.
To protect and support teachers and scholars prepared to make significant contributions
to their fields, we instituted a two-track plan to allow tenured faculty to
choose to emphasize either teaching or research. This dual focus, difficult to
administer,
at times even misunderstood, must continue and even be strengthened. The table
must be large enough and the embrace generous enough to include both career
teachers who have invested a large portion of their professional life in this
institution
and scholars who regularly publish in their field.
Our academic
structures and procedures now undergird the variegated growth we experience.
Tireless efforts by faculty and staff have put in motion a prodigious array
of programs developing in all segments of university life. To recognize what
is
already thriving and healthy is at least as important as to recognize challenges
which call for change. Having served as Provost of this University, I know
now what is already firmly and appropriately in place, what must be allowed to
continue
to unfold with uninterrupted support.
First
on our collective agenda is accreditation for the College of Business Administration,
followed by a beginning of the doctoral program in International Trade. Cooperative
programs in Curriculum and Instruction and in Hispanic Studies will bring doctoral
classes to two other colleges. Indispensable projects now well under way but
in need of the President’s understanding and support include:
*creation
of a Freshman Year Experience, together with an enhancement of our efforts
at retention
and academic enrichment;
*an International Justice Center to draw under one intellectual roof
the myriad state and federal programs and agencies charged with administering
justice in Laredo;
*a greatly expanded program in Distance Learning, already provided
for in the Center for the Study of Western Hemisphere Trade;
*enhanced opportunities for study abroad, already begun by our Office
of International Programs, including reciprocal programs with universities
throughout the world;
*an effective plan to fulfill our commitment to partner with the University
of Texas Health Science Center extension at Mercy Hospital, to provide
as our part of that initiative a comprehensive program in Allied Health
and master’s level work in nursing;
*support and resources for efforts to combine in new and vital ways
programs in social work, public administration, health, and business
administration;
*a child
care program linked to the study of early childhood in our College of Education;
*an aggressive development of the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric
Trade, with Laredo to become a locus of scholarly and entrepreneurial
efforts for the hemisphere;
*a greatly expanded offering in science and technology, focusing first
on graduate programs for teachers of math and science, and articulation
agreements to allow prospective engineers smooth and immediate entry
into existing programs.
At present,
Texas A&M International University, thanks to aggressive effort by the A&M
System, the University administration, and our legislative team, is close to
seeing appropriations for Phase IV or a finished campus. Thirty years of dreams
and sweat, by Laredoans of every stripe, have brought Texas A&M International
University to its present moment. The new President will inherit an institution
positioned for explosive expansion at all levels. He or she must establish priorities
which undergird a passionate commitment to the life of the mind, and then charge
the Provost and deans to guide and to execute the academic program. The President’s
external role, by contrast, is one only he or she can discharge. The new President
must fully understand and support all the projects and initiatives described
above, and at the same time labor in the community, region, and the state to
carry the University’s message and to secure additional resources to
make our dreams a reality. Both Laredo and its University are unique organisms,
idiosyncratic
in their evolution, pointed today toward a glorious flowering. The work to
date has been exemplary. The stage has been set. We need now move boldly forward
to
occupy the role prepared for us, to fulfill the promise we and the State of
Texas made when we were brought into being.
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