Contact: Monty Jones, (512) 499-4363

Date: August 8, 2002

UT System News Release

U.T. and U.H. Systems Form Partnership to Assist Public Education

EL PASO - Regents of the University of Texas System hailed a "new spirit of cooperation" in Texas higher education on Thursday as they adopted a resolution setting up a series of collaborative efforts with the University of Houston System to help improve the state's public schools.

The resolution creates the UH/UT Alliance for Educational Progress, through which both systems will focus on new ways of enhancing teacher training programs, helping current teachers do a better job, introducing new curricula and instructional methods to classrooms, and other projects. The regents of the University of Houston System are scheduled to approve the resolution later this month.

"Texas universities have often been in competition with each other for resources and programs, but we are now witnessing a new spirit of cooperation as institutions unite to deal with the common challenges facing our state," said Charles Miller, chairman of the U.T. System Board of Regents.

"It is imperative that we work together. Through the combined resources of these two great university systems, and the combined genius of their faculty, students, and staff, we will be able to achieve far more than either system could on its own."

Administrators from each system plan to meet this fall to develop specific plans for collaborative programs and initiatives. Likely areas of cooperation include programs at colleges of education at universities in each system, as well as education-related research at health science institutions in the U.T. System.

The resolution notes that together the two systems have a presence in all of the state's major urban areas, "where the key educational challenges facing Texas are exhibited in their fullest and most complex forms."

Regents of the two systems, according to the resolution, "affirm that one of the central responsibilities of public higher education is to focus their resources on advancing a state's economic strength and diversification as well as its social vitality and coherence, and that these worthy goals are often best pursued through collaborative efforts involving partnerships among diverse institutions."

The new alliance is part of each university system's efforts as part of the statewide "Closing the Gaps" initiative and the U.T. System's "Every Child, Every Advantage" initiative, which seek to increase the number of public school students who are prepared for success at the college and university levels.