I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to the National Academies, specifically the National Research Council, for inviting me to serve on the Committee on Research Universities.  It has been an important and very productive undertaking, and one that will have a beneficial impact on higher education in both the near and long term.  If we members of the Committee have done our job, our recommendations will inspire institutions of higher learning to take innovative actions to better achieve their goals.  And with equal effect, our recommendations will compel federal, state, and business leaders to renew their partnerships with higher education.   

Bank of America Chairman Chad Holliday chaired the Committee on Research Universities, and he called for regional meetings across the United States to discuss our committee’s report.  We were honored that Chairman Holliday asked Texas to host one of the meetings.  We convened in June of this year at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, with a number of leaders in higher education and research, CEOs and CFOs from the business world, and elected representatives, including former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.  

A number of key messages emerged from our meeting in Dallas, including the importance of strategic investments, improved pathways to STEM studies, and greater diversity in higher education.  Let me mention four areas where The University of Texas System is aligned with the messages of our Dallas meeting and with the recommendations of the Committee on Research Universities.

The Dashboard:  The UT System has created a Dashboard that is an online tool for viewing and sharing data about UT System institutions.  Our initial focus has been on 10 Core Indicators – metrics that explore all of our mission areas and provide a high level overview of institutional performances by the numbers. Those 10 Core Indicators track how we’re improving – or not – in

• Enrollment
• Degrees Awarded
• Graduation Rates
• Post-Graduation Success (The percentage of baccalaureate graduates who are employed and/or enrolled in graduate schools.)
• Average Teaching Load Credits (faculty workload)
• Research Expenditures
• Gross Revenue from Intellectual Property (tech transfer)
• Patient Care Net Revenues
• Delta Cost:  Education and Related Expenses (per degree and per FTE student)
• and Endowments

The Dashboard provides a most-recent-year view of the data, but users can drill down into reports that show trends over time and allow users to dig deeper into the data.  The Dashboard supports our leadership teams at the 15 UT System institutions in their decision- and policy-making, and provides performance comparisons with our peer groups and various national benchmarks.

There were a number of factors that led to our creation of the Dashboard. Our Board of Regents was calling for increased transparency and accountability, and asked us to track productivity and efficiency.  In essence, they asked us to get our houses in order.  At the same time, there were significant increases in requests from internal and external constituents for more data.  And our Office of Strategic Initiatives was already in the process of streamlining and automating our data collection and distribution process, so we had a head start and were able to take this challenge to the next level.   

The Dashboard data is now available to the public for viewing, exploring, downloading, and analyzing. And the Dashboard continues to expand, placing The University of Texas System among the national leaders in setting standards for the transparency of institutional data.

The IT Roadmap:  We have also developed an IT Roadmap, which is our robust plan for the future of information technology within the UT System.  As the second largest system of higher education in the nation, as well as a worldwide leader in research, it is important for us to maintain our position as a thought leader in an increasingly technology-dependent age.  To do so, we are investing heavily in information systems, including high-speed networks, high-performance computing, and increased data storage capabilities. 

The UT System has developed an initiative called the UT Research Cyberinfrastructure, which will advance current and future research efforts at all 15 of our institutions by providing a combination of advanced computational systems, large data storage opportunities, and high bandwidth data access between institutions.  The Cyberinfrastructure is enabling our researchers to collaborate with one another and to compete at the forefront of science and discovery.  This initiative is helping us to facilitate and support leadership in computational science research across Texas, to attract more funding, and to recruit world-class faculty and graduate students.

Public-private Partnerships and Technology Commercialization:  I don’t have to convince this audience that research institutions are a prime source of innovation and renewal in our country.  And we need that innovation in order to take on the challenges we now face as a nation in such crucial areas as the economy, sustainable energy, healthcare, and national security, to name only a few. 

But our institutions continue to face declining support from state and federal governments.  And so, as we look to the future of research, we must revitalize our public-private partnerships with business and industry to better fund research and development – and graduate education – in order to produce new knowledge and the research leaders of tomorrow.   These renewed partnerships should include more commercialization of our discoveries, which is becoming a major source of income for our institutions and their researchers.

The UT System Office of Technology Commercialization aides System administration and UT institutions in commercializing the output from applied research.  To promote commercialization, our Board of Regents has allocated more than $20 million to support the UT Horizon Fund, which provides financial support System-wide for high quality projects that have promising commercial applications.  We have assembled a Technology Commercialization Advisory Cabinet of national leaders – with experience in business, marketing, technology, biosciences and geosciences, healthcare, and other areas of expertise – to counsel us on how to achieve greater success in commercialization.   

One of our most recent initiatives in technology commercialization is called the UT FreshAIR initiative, an effort to create successful partnerships between UT System health institutions and the life sciences industry.  Two weeks ago in Austin we brought together researchers from our six health institutions and leaders in the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries to showcase the large capacity for drug and biological discovery in Texas – and to support the development of a public-private collaboration hub for research and commercialization in our region of the country.

Diversity:  In our Dallas meeting, we also discussed how our research institutions should be more fully engaged in increasing the numbers of women and underrepresented minorities in our programs, especially in the STEM fields.  The UT System is deeply committed to diversity in all 15 of our institutions across the state of Texas. We continue to be very active in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, with a population that is 80 percent Hispanic.  For example, two years ago the Board of Regents provided $30 million for education and health initiatives in the Rio Grande Valley – for the implementation of a nationally acclaimed teacher-training program, for funding to attract and retain the best-qualified faculty in the sciences and technology, and for the development of a biomedical research programs and other initiatives.  And a year ago we made the commitment to join our two universities in the Valley to create a new research university with its own school of medicine.  That new university will open its doors in the fall of 2015, and it will immediately become the second largest Hispanic Serving Institution in the nation.   

America’s institutions of higher learning are still the envy of the world, particularly when it comes to research and graduate programs. But excellence is a moving target, and we have to make continual improvements to keep our research universities ranked at the top in global competition.  The 10 recommendations of the Committee on Research Universities are sound strategies for strengthening and advancing our nation’s research institutions, and I am deeply honored to have participated in that noble endeavor.