UT Planning For Major Expansion in Houston

The University of Texas has always called Austin it’s main campus, but the system is looking to complete a major expansion in Houston.

“We will broaden our footprint in the city of Houston to take advantage of its size, strength of institutions, and talent of the professionals in science, business, health care and the arts,” read the UT’s strategic plan for 2015-2020 titled “Leading in a complex world.”

The Houston expansion is one of eight ”quantum leaps” outlined in Chancellor William McRaven’s plan for the UT system. McRaven called Houston the state’s most populous and international city, and said it’s the “brain hub of so many critical industries, such as energy, finance and health care.”

As part of the expansion plan, UT will acquire more than 300 acres of real estate off Buffalo Point just 3.5 miles from the Texas Medical Center in Houston. The expansion efforts — including planning, securing land, erecting buildings and recruiting for partnerships — will take decades but will eventually provide UT students and professors with research opportunities and partnerships currently unavailable in the UT system.

Although the expansion efforts will take a long time, Chancellor McRaven is assembling a team of civic leaders, legislators, academic and health presidents, faculty, students, regents and other constituents in 2016. They will be responsible for beginning the planning for the expansion.

“When you consider the vast assets of the UT System and Houston’s spirit of innovation and ingenuity, we have an opportunity to create something new for Texas that will make it even more competitive on the world stage,” Regents Chairman Paul Foster said in a Nov. 5 statement.

Here is the full list of “quantum leaps,” in the UT strategic plan:

• The Texas Prospect Initiative to foster unprecedented levels of engagement and collaboration between higher education and preK-12, with a focus on improving literacy;
• The creation of the American Leadership Program, which will make leadership and ethics training part of the core curriculum for all students at UT institutions;
• Renewed investment in bringing world-class faculty to UT institutions;
• A laser focus on enhancing fairness and opportunity for women and minorities in leadership positions at UT institutions;
• Developing a UT Health Care Enterprise to leverage UT System’s size and expertise to improve the health of Texas and beyond;
• Expanding research into brain health by investing more into the existing, revolutionary programs at several UT institutions, establishing another at UT Austin, and tying efforts together to accelerate discoveries and treatments for diseases of the brain;
• Building a UT Network for National Security, a system-wide alliance that will confront the world’s most vexing problems facing our nation.