The interim principal of San Antonio’s Thomas Jefferson High believes that the current juniors will be the school’s first with a 100 percent graduation rate and that many will go on to respected universities. One key factor: Allison Najera, a 2010 University of Texas graduate placed at Jefferson through a new program: the Texas College Advising Corps.
Texas A&M University-College Station
Posted in
Higher Education
TribBlog: Big 12 Spenders
Texas universities are likely facing massive budget cuts in the upcoming legislative session — so how are they spending the money they have now, and is there even any room for cuts? A new report offers some clues.
Posted in
Higher Education
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom (with Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News) on high-speed police chases on the Texas-Mexico border, Hu and Hamilton draw a roadmap through the tangle of the Speaker’s Race, M. Smith on the trouble with electronic supplements to science textbooks, Ramshaw interviews patient privacy advocate Deborah Peel, Aguilar on Cuba and Texas and trade, Hamilton on the latest in biotech from Texas A&M University, Stiles on who’s in the money in Congress, Hu on the controversial renewal of the state lottery contract, yours truly on Tom DeLay’s victory in the face of his conviction on money-laundering charges, and E. Smith with a Thanksgiving cornucopia of TribLive videos: The best of our best from November 22 to 26, 2010.
Posted in
Higher Education
The Third Coast of Biotech?
One hundred miles from the nearest major city, where there was nothing but flat earth seven months ago, a 145,000-square-foot facility has sprung up on the Texas A&M Health Science Center campus. Starting in January, its cavernous rooms will be filled with racks of tobacco-like plants expected to produce as many influenza vaccines in a single month as a traditional lab does in one year, at a fraction of the cost. Dr. Brett Giroir, the vice chancellor for research at the Texas A&M University System, calls it the most exciting project of its kind in the world, the potential savior of the next pandemic. And, he says, “it’s in Bryan. Go figure.”
Posted in
Higher Education
TribBlog: A&M Student Senate Votes On Immigrant Tuition [Updated]
Texas A&M University’s Student Senate is set to take a final vote this evening on a controversial measure to oppose in-state tuition for undocumented students.
Posted in
Higher Education
College Orientation
More than a quarter-century has passed since a landmark suit against Texas A&M University established the right of gay student groups to form on college campuses. Yet all these years later, half of the university systems in the state — the Texas A&M University System, the Texas State University System and the Texas Tech University System — do not include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies.
Posted in
Higher Education
TribBlog: Why UT Wasn’t Ranked Among the World’s Best
On Friday, Times Higher Education, a British magazine, released its 2010 rankings of the top 200 universities in the world. Rice University, ranked 49th, began touting the fact that it is “the only university in Texas” to make the cut. So where were the others?
Posted in
Energy
Green Horns
When Longhorn football kicks off at home this month, so will a brand-new marketing effort urging boosters to buy, of all things, green electricity. Colt McCoy’s family has already signed up with Texas Longhorns Energy, which promises customers 100 percent power from Texas wind. The Aggies will roll out a similar deal on Friday. The programs are another sign of the universities’ branding heft — even though they may not be the best deal within the confusing Texas electricity market.
Posted in
Higher Education
Off-Base?
The Texas commission charged with aiding economies hit by military base closures will spend millions for a vaccine plant in Bryan-College Station — even though the region’s military base closed nearly five decades ago.
Posted in
Higher Education
The Tracks of Our Tiers
It could take years before the seven emerging research universities in Texas (Texas Tech University, the University of Houston, the University of North Texas, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Texas at El Paso) transform themselves into top-tier research campuses — if they do at all. But the state now pays them for demonstrated progress toward that goal, pitting them against one another in competition for limited funds. Officials from all seven will appear before a joint hearing of the House and Senate higher education committees today, seeking to show off progress to lawmakers and to size up where they stand against their peers.
