UT regents approve $30M action plan for RGV

A “true game-changer,” as University of Texas-Pan American’s president called it, will transform higher education in the Rio Grande Valley after the UT System Board of Regents approved a $30 million South Texas investment plan.

As part of a larger “Framework for Advancing Excellence,” the regents unanimously affirmed UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa’s initiative to plant the seeds for a medical school in the Valley, raise the number of doctors in the region and expand the quality of education along the U.S.-Mexican border.

“I’m in a very good mood today,” UTPA President Robert Nelsen said following the vote. “This is something we’ve been working on since I got here” in January 2010.

“I really do believe this is a game-changer,” he said. “The UT System not only planted a flag in the Valley. They ran it up the flag pole.”

Though Texas lawmakers dramatically slashed funding for medical residencies across the state – eliminating the primary-care residencies altogether – the regents Thursday approved $1.5 million to expand residency opportunities in the Valley for more than 100 future and existing medical students.

That, Nelsen said, should directly boost the Valley’s average of 104 doctors for every 100,000 people, which lags behind the national and state averages of 220 and 160 doctors per 100,000 people, respectively.

“You are 60 percent more likely to stay at the actual location where you did your residency here in the Valley,” he said, “and 80 percent (more) likely to stay in the state of Texas itself. It means we’re going to have a lot more doctors here now.”

The commitment to residencies and a $1 million allocation to strengthen UTPA and UT Brownsville’s philanthropic efforts should create fertile ground for a medical school in the Valley soon, Nelsen said.

He was also excited by both universities’ ability to tap $4 million that regents set aside to train local teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, and another $9.5 million to create a recruitment program to draw quality STEM faculty and researchers to the region.

“What I love about this plan is it will have an impact on classrooms from K-12 all the way up to the doctorate level in higher education,” Chancellor Cigarroa said in a statement.

And he recognized the Valley as one of the fastest-growing areas in the state.

“I’m from South Texas, and, again, this has been very important to me … over 33 percent of our student body is south of San Antonio,” he said. “There is great potential here.”

On Thursday, the regents also approved the end of university open admissions in Brownsville by fall 2013. The changes in admission will be phased in over the next two years – but will be seen as early as fall 2012 – as UTB continues to split from Texas Southmost College.

“We have to stop and imagine what this new university will look like,” UTB-TSC President Juliet V. Garcia said. “I think the new admissions standards are fair in the way they’re laid out. They’re staged (but) they’re also not going to be apologetic … They’ll be expectations.”

UTB-TSC is the last UT System school to operate without admissions standards as a community university. Garcia said research was conducted to create the new admissions standards, and the move kicked into high gear this summer with early moves in the dissolution of the partnership with TSC.

Beginning in fall 2012, stage one of the new admissions standards will require that all UTB students – including transfer students – be college-ready as defined by the Texas Success Initiative COMPASS scores for all three sections, in reading, writing and mathematics, a news release said.

The next stage will require students to be college-ready, graduate in the top quarter of their high school class and submit ACT or SAT scores, the release said.

Minimum ACT and SAT scores will eventually be required, but the news release did not specify when.

The release said students who did not graduate in the top quarter of their high school class must meet additional requirements to be considered for admission.

The new standards will also apply to transfer students.

SIMULATED HOSPITAL

Along with a $4 million biomedical research program, UT regents also approved $10 million to establish a simulated teaching hospital in Harlingen.

UTPA had originally requested $5.2 million for such a venture from the state Legislature but ultimately lost out on the appropriations amidst the calls for budget cuts.

“We will actually bus our students back and forth (to Harlingen) now,” Nelsen said. “This is in lieu of the $5.2 million we didn’t get (but the) UT System stepped up to the plate and funded it themselves.

“The regents really believe in the Valley and what we’re doing. That’s obvious.”

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4472.

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Jacqueline Armendariz writes for The Brownsville Herald.