Good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you, Bob.  As James Huffines mentioned, your many years of outstanding service to higher education in Texas will serve the UT System and CCEC quite well, and we’re grateful for your willingness to serve again. 

I also think it’s wonderful that the Chancellor’s Council, after 54 years of existence, finally has a chairman who is known as “Bubba.” We are honored to have you take the helm of this distinguished group. 

And, James, thank you, not only for serving as our Chairman for the past year, but for your decades of service to the UT System and for your wise counsel to me over the past year.  And James is not taking a breather; the UT Southwestern Medical Foundation is now fortunate to have you as chairman of its board for the next few years.    Bob and James, I am grateful to work with both of you.

Thanks to all of you for being here today, for taking time out of your busy lives and a very busy weekend, and for the support you’ve given Nana and me during the past year – our first as Texans.

We’ve loved it, and after a year, I’m even more energized and excited about the UT System and what it can do for the people of Texas – with the support of you and other influential supporters – in the years ahead.

I know of no organization in the country quite like the Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee.  It’s a resource any university system and chancellor would be thrilled to have.   Its rich history, longstanding commitment to higher education, and guidance and support on issues mean so much to the 14 institutions of the UT System.

The Chancellor’s Council and the CCEC have changed over the years and will no doubt continue to evolve as the UT System does.  

In the Beginning: 1965

The Board of Regents and UT System Development Board created the Council and the Executive Committee in 1965.

The purpose, as set out in the bylaws, is essentially three-fold:  to advise the Chancellor, to be advocates for the System, and to be ambassadors for the System in their communities and across the state. 

And as the UT system has evolved, the role of the CCEC has only become more important. 

You all know that today the UT System consists of fourteen institutions including eight academic and six health institutions, but in 1965 there were only three academic institutions.   That year UT Arlington became the System’s third academic institution, joining UT Austin, and Texas Western – originally called the State School of Mines and Metallurgy and then renamed UT El Paso in 1967.

Overseeing the System in 1965 was a Board of Regents that included five attorneys, four oilmen, a doctor, and a rabbi.

Like most university systems in the country, there were serious growing pains between the original campus and the system administration.   I’ve read the histories of the University of California System, the University of North Carolina System, and now the University of Texas System.   Originally, in the young systems, they couldn’t quite figure out how to differentiate the roles of flagship campus head and system head, but as the systems grew and became more complex, it became clear that the roles were and had to be very different. 

At the UT System – in the late 1960s – the offices of the chancellor and the UT president were on the same floor in the tower.   Of course, there was little doubt where the real center of power was:  chairman of the board, Frank Erwin also had an office on that floor, and he would walk the campus everyday giving orders to anyone he met.   There wasn’t a lot of attention given to the distinction between governance and administration:  Frank reportedly said he was the general and everyone else was a Lieutenant!

The Chancellor at the time was Harry Ransom, who not only served in that role from 1961 to 1970, he was simultaneously President of UT Austin from 1960 to 1961 – and was, effectively, President again from 1963 to 1967, when there was no office of President at the university.   See what I mean about role confusion!

Of course, Texas was a much different place in 1965 also.

At that time, the state’s population was ten million – about a third of today’s.

In 1965, less than one in ten Americans age 25 and up had earned at least a college degree.  At that time, it was far easier to build a solid career, be part of the middle class, without a degree.

One thing the 1965 that Texas had in common with today was a Governor committed to education.  Texas’s 39^th Governor, John Connally, oversaw a great expansion of higher education.  He signed into law the creation of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  And, he appointed regents who forced that all male bastion in College Station to finally admit female students.

I imagine it was not too hard for Governor Connally, a Democrat, to get the legislation he wanted passed, considering the make-up of the Texas Legislature at the time – which included a grand total of one Republican throughout the entire Senate and the House.

Times Have Changed

So times have changed, to put it mildly, for Texas – and no less for the UT System.

After UT Arlington joined the UT System in 1965, the System’s growth accelerated, with the establishment of UT Dallas, UT Permian Basin, and UT San Antonio in 1969.  The UT reach extended to the Northeast part of the state in the late 1970s, with the additions of UT Health Center at Tyler in 1977 and UT Tyler in 1979.

And then, starting in 1989, to the southern tip of the United States, with UT Pan American, followed by UT Brownsville in 1991 – with the two combining, as you know, to become UT Rio Grande Valley in 2015.

So in the first half century of the Chancellor’s Council, the System grew from eight institutions to fourteen.  But the growth has been more dramatic than that.

Since 1965, our student enrollment has grown from approximately 45,000 to 240,000 – a more than five-fold increase.  Think about that.  For every UT institution student in 1965, today we have five.

And that’s pales in comparison to how much we’ve grown when it comes to research.  In 1965, research spending at all UT institutions combined was $21.6 million.   Today that number is $2.9 billion!

Today, our six health institutions account for two thirds of our budget.

MD Anderson, universally hailed as the world’s best cancer center, leads the way with a budget that is over one quarter of the entire $21B UT System budget, and about 50% larger than UT Austin.  In 1965, MD Anderson had fewer than 1,400 employees and did less than $10 million in research.  Today its staff exceeds 20,000 and annual research is nearly $800 million.

After MD Anderson and UT Austin, the four biggest UT institutions by budget are all health institutions including UT Southwestern, UT Medical Branch, UT Health Houston, and UT Health San Antonio.

The evolution that’s taken place at the UT System since the Chancellor’s Council was created in 1965 can be seen and felt from one end of this state to the other.

Yesterday I was in El Paso, hosting a reception for our new president, Heather Wilson, a summa cum laude graduate of the Air Force Academy, Rhodes Scholar and PhD from Oxford in International Relations, member of George H.W. Bush’s national security team, head of a large state agency, 10 year member of congress, secretary of the Air Force, and now in her 3^rd week at UTEP.   By the way, that campus is one of the most beautiful in the entire country, and we need to have a CCEC meeting there soon so you can see it and get to know our remarkable new president.  

In many other ways, this remarkable university  system has become larger, stronger, and has had a greater impact on Texas and the world than I think anyone could have imagined in 1965 – and Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee members, past and present, deserve a lot of credit for helping make it happen.

More to Do

But of course, there is more to do.  A lot more.  We need to prepare to serve a Texas population that may double in the next 30 years.  A population we’ll need to equip for a world that, history has shown, will bear little resemblance to today.

We must play a leading role in creating a Texas that is not only better educated, but healthier.  Today our state ranks 35^th in educational attainment and 37^th in health.  That doesn’t bode well for our future.

But the good news is we have a unique ability – along with a unique responsibility – to do something about it.

As part of our efforts, we must redouble our commitment to research – which is crucial to the prosperity and health of our state, our country, and the world.  We need to do everything we can to support UT Austin, while boosting our emerging research institutions in Dallas, Arlington, San Antonio, and El Paso.

Fall CCEC Meetings

I’m deeply grateful for the commitment of the Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee; to have your counsel, your advocacy, your ambassadorship – needed now more than ever.

Immersing ourselves in the work, the aspirations, and the needs of 14 highly differentiated institutions is no easy task, and since the CCEC gathers only three times each year, we hope to take full advantage of the opportunity to keep you educated and informed of challenges and opportunities that can use your expertise.

This group does not typically convene in Austin in the fall.  For more than two decades the CCEC has met out of state in the fall, in conjunction with a UT Austin football game.  I know these were terrific events, that many of you enjoyed.   And no one loves a college football game more than I do.   Growing up in Nebraska, I share two important attributes will all good Texans: I love college football, and I hate the University of Oklahoma.   I can still remember where I was sitting – I was in junior high school – when Johnny Rodgers ran a punt back for a touchdown in 1971 to beat Oklahoma.    I am so happy to be in a great state where I can be part of beating the Sooners every year!  

But back to the CCEC meetings.   As I reviewed, when the Chancellor’s Council was formed, there were few academic institutions in the UT System, and many of the events naturally centered around UT Austin.   The fall meeting associated with a UT Austin football game was one of those events, and over the years it became a wonderful tradition. 

In recent years, the UT Austin’s president’s office, the athletics department, the Texas Exes, and other campus entities have begun using the games to a much greater degree, as they should, hosting a number of their own events associated with big out-of-state games.  This make sense—athletics is said to be the front porch of the university, and it’s that way across the country, as it is at all of our campuses that have athletic programs.   As there is more and more pressure to increase private fundraising at our campuses, they need to use every asset at their disposal to support that activity.  And it is the role of the system to support our campuses, to help them be as successful as they can be.  

The campus asked us to rethink our fall plans, and allow the UT organizations to be the ones to host events at games.  I’ve heard from people – probably many in this room – who received multiple invitations to events around UT athletics, and that there could be confusion and conflicting invitations.   And competition for tickets has become much greater.   I believe it’s our role to support all fourteen of our institutions and to take seriously their concerns as well as their aspirations.   

I’ve talked at length about this with James and Bob, as well as with the group of past Chancellor’s Council Chairs, and while we know this change will be a disappointment to some, we remain committed to continuing to offer you an experience in the fall that will bring us together as a group.  We promise to orchestrate unique and special opportunities that we can do as a group.

And we will have a chance to interact with expertise from multiple UT institutions at our future fall meetings, because if we just learned about one university a year—as we typically do at our winter meeting, it would take us 13 years to make the rounds. 

We’re going to do some additional things to connect meaningfully with CCEC membership, including events throughout the year in different communities.   Next week, Nana and I will be hosting a dinner for CCEC members in Fort Worth, and we’re planning events in other sites in the future, as well as continuing the very popular “Deep Dives.”   We’re going to use this opportunity to make lemonade and strengthen the CCEC for its important work in the future. 

A little later in this meeting, under New Business, Chairman Shepard will discuss work underway for our 2020 Fall meeting, one that I think you will really enjoy.  Thank you.