TowerTalk

Signing a cooperative agreement with Brazilian educators and officials. Standing at left are UT liberal arts dean Randy Diehl and Juan Sanchez, vice president for research.

Yesterday I returned from a trip that took me southeast to Brazil and northwest to Colorado.

In Brazil, I led a delegation of UT Austin faculty members and administrators who met with educators and government officials in Brasilia as part of a symposium called “The State of Higher Education in the Americas” organized by UT’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. It featured presentations by faculty members from UT Austin and several Brazilian universities.

During the trip we forged new exchanges in science and technology, and to that end I signed a partnership agreement with the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education. The agreement will include an exchange of students and researchers as well as joint research projects as part of Brazil’s Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science without Borders) initiative, primarily funded by the Brazilian government.

I also was honored to deliver an address on the state of global higher education to the Brazilian Senate Committee on Education, Culture, and Sport.

In Colorado, I participated in the Aspen Symposium, an annual gathering where higher education leaders share best practices and examine common issues within America’s rapidly changing educational environment.

Everywhere I go, the University’s reputation precedes me and makes me proud to be a Longhorn.

I hope your summer is going well.

Earlier this month, Governor Perry appointed Longhorn undergraduate Nash Horne of Austin to serve as the next student regent on the UT System Board of Regents beginning June 1. Nash is a political communications major and currently serves as the external financial director for UT Austin’s Student Government. His term as student regent will expire May 31, 2014.

Student regents serve a valuable function on the board, offering insights that only current students could have. I’m proud of Nash and look forward to watching his service on the board.

Hook ’em Horns,

On Saturday night, members of UT’s Class of 2013 became alumni. As always, I was inspired by their stories, their smiles, and the pride of their families and friends. I know our faculty was proud as well, as these graduates are the fruit of their labor. And our staff members, especially the dozens of specialists involved in putting on this majestic event each May, have my thanks for all it has done during this school year.

As our graduates go out into the world, I want to be sure all of you get a chance to see these remarkable stories  of how our newest alumni are making a difference. I’m proud of all of them.

Now it’s on to summer. For many, it will be another round of intensive classes. Others will expand their horizons with travel and study abroad, internships, service, and other activities tailored for this season of regrouping and continued growth.

What starts here changes the world.

I’m thrilled that Brent Iverson has agreed to lead UT’s School of Undergraduate Studies, starting July 1. Dr. Iverson is a well-known and widely respected figure on campus, an award-winning teacher and researcher in organic chemistry. As someone who was part of the initial conception of the School of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Iverson is the perfect person to build on the successes of the school, creating pathways for leadership and excellence in undergraduate studies. He is a recognized teacher, researcher, and scholar, with a proven commitment to providing our undergraduates with the best academic experience possible.

Undergraduate Studies is key to our student success initiatives and classroom innovations. It has responsibility for the core curriculum, as well as more than 2,000 students who have not yet declared majors.

Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Iverson is an inventor on 18 issued U.S. patents. Working with George Georgiou and Jennifer Maynard of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, he helped develop a commercialized late-stage cure for exposure to anthrax.

Thank you, Brent, for your leadership. Our undergraduates have a bright future with you in this key position.

From left, President Powers with Keith Johnston, George Georgiou, Joseph Beaman Jr., Sharon Wood, John Goodenough, and Provost Steven Leslie (Photo by Brian Birzer)

Last night I hosted a reception honoring five UT faculty members inducted into three national academies. We should all take great pride in these inductions, as few honors embody our identity as a top research university as these do. The Tower was lighted orange in their honor.

National Academy of Engineering

Joseph J. Beaman Jr., the Earnest F. Gloyna Regents Chair in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was elected for innovation, development and commercialization of solid freeform fabrication and selective laser sintering.

Sharon L. Wood, the Robert L. Parker Sr. Centennial Professor and chair in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, was recognized for her design of reinforced concrete structures and associated seismic instrumentation for extreme loadings and environment.

Keith P. Johnston, chemical engineering professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to engineers worldwide.

National Academy of Sciences

John Goodenough, a mechanical engineering professor who is widely credited for the scientific discovery and development of the lithium-ion rechargeable battery, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Institute of Medicine

George Georgiou, a professor whose technology developments in the engineering, medical, biochemical and cellular fields could help treat tens of thousands of patients with diseases such as cancer and osteoporosis, has been elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

In addition, two new alumni members of the National Academy of Engineering were inducted:

Rex Tillerson, B.S. in civil engineering ’75, was recognized for engineering leadership in the production of hydrocarbons in remote and challenging environments. Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, has been a member of the Cockrell School’s Engineering Advisory Board for the past six years and is a member of the UT Development Board.

Gregory Deierlein, Ph.D. in civil engineering ’88, is the John A. Blume Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering. He was recognized for the development of advanced structural analysis and design techniques and their implementation in design codes.

Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for the honor you bring to the University.

The University of Texas at Austin has raised more than $300 million from donors during the current fiscal year, which does not end until Aug. 31. If it continues at the current pace, UT Austin will have its best fundraising year in history, surpassing the $366 million it raised in 2008.

I’m so grateful to our alumni and friends for the strategic investments they are making in UT Austin, and I’m very proud of the fundraising team we have in place that is succeeding so dramatically during these still-challenging economic times. I know we can reach our goal, and when we do, those funds will fuel UT’s ascent to the top tier of global public higher education.

Highlights of this year’s efforts include:

• UT Austin has raised $302 million year-to-date compared with $222 million at this point last year.
• The amount of total alumni giving year-to-date has virtually doubled, from approximately $87 million to $174 million.
• Gifts from estates have increased year-to-date by more than 150 percent, the result of increased efforts to encourage planned gifts when supporters write their wills.
• UT Austin has collected more than $1 million, on average, every business day in donations.
• The University has received more than 123,000 gifts made this fiscal year.

Major gifts and pledges contributing to this year’s success have included:

• $50 million from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation for the creation of the Dell Medical School at UT Austin
• $25 million from the Robert Rowling Family toward the construction of a new building for graduate studies at the McCombs School of Business
• Five estate gifts of $5 million or more

The numbers bode well for the “Campaign for Texas,” the University’s ambitious $3 billion, eight-year capital campaign. Only two other public universities in the United States are attempting to raise $3 billion, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Virginia.

To date, UT Austin has raised more than $2.1 billion for the campaign. Before the “Campaign for Texas,” the most successful capital campaign in the state was UT Austin’s “We’re Texas” campaign of the late 1990s, which raised $1.6 billion.

Thank you, and Hook ‘em Horns!

As we head into the homestretch of our academic year, I want to update you on some of the successes we’re seeing at UT.

Many of you know that we are in the midst of an intensive campaign to raise our four-year graduation rate to 70 percent. David Laude, our senior vice provost for enrollment and graduation management, and his team are doing a great job. Out of the more than 8,000 full-time, first-time freshmen who entered in fall 2012, 98.6 percent continued into the spring. This is a significant improvement over previous years. The fall semester course failure rate for this cohort was almost half of what it was in 2009. On average these students are taking more hours than past freshmen. Grades of first-year students in their first semester are improving, and the percent of freshmen who receive a failing grade is falling. We have significant work left to do, but we are moving the needle.

I also want to relay the remarkable success of our new free online course offerings. Nearly 39,000 people around the world have signed up to take one of UT’s nine MOOCs (massively open online courses) in the coming academic year. As part of the UT System, we are aligned with Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley in the edX consortium. This is an exciting new frontier in higher education, and we no doubt will learn much from our first year in this educational space.

Finally, I’d like to share a short video that summarizes what we’re accomplishing in our Course Transformation Program, which uses technology and teaching innovations to enrich the classroom experience. Thanks to the Texas Exes for partnering with us to create this video.

http://www.utexas.edu/what-starts-here/transforming-education/college-changing-fast

Here’s to a strong finish to our academic year, and congratulations to all those graduating this month.

Being a leading university means leading in many diverse areas. I’m delighted that Professor Dean Young of our English Department has been named the 2014 Texas Poet Laureate. Recognized nationally as one of the most influential poets writing today, he holds the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at UT. He’s published 12 books of poetry and one volume of prose on the aesthetics of poetry. His numerous awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Levinson Prize, the Colorado Poetry Prize, a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his poems are regularly featured in the Best American Poetry annual series.

Below is his poem “Age of Discovery.” Congratulations, Dean. We’re proud of your designation and know you will be a great ambassador to the state.

Age of Discovery
by Dean Young

On the 182nd day of the 34th year
of my education,
I wake to a snow that seems falling faster
than snow, so blossom-heavy,

but I know that classic experiment
atop the Tower of Pisa, Galileo’s proof
how, regardless of mass, all things drop
at the same rate. What falls falls,

I’d like to write, in continuous swoon
but that is only music just as
there is only music in the old claims
of soul leaving the body in a powdery
whoosh, an unwedging at the scapulas
scattering birds from belfry and roof,

a whir like radium half-lifting.
I’ve scoffed at the man who’s spent his life
trying to photograph ghosts, the woman
who teaches how to breathe from the tips
of toes but surely there’s a plethora
of forces bound and unbinding within us.

Cheating is unacceptable, in sports or any other area of life, and tonight our campus will be the site of an important discussion of this topic as it relates to elite cycling. The annual McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society, created by UT alumni and philanthropists Cappy and Janie McGarr, will be held tonight (Monday, April 22) from 7-9 p.m., in the second-floor auditorium of the Belo Center for New Media, 300 W. Dean Keeton St.

The panel — “The Real Price of Winning at All Costs: A Discussion about Elite Cycling” — will feature three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond; Greg’s wife, Kathy; Betsy Andreu, wife of cyclist Frankie Andreu; Bill Bock, general counsel to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency; and Reed Albergotti, white-collar crimes reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Michael Cramer, director of UT’s Texas Program in Sports and Media, will moderate.

This is a great example of how alumni enrich not only the education of our students but also the life of our community as well. Thank you, Cappy and Janie, for the McGarr Symposium. The event is free and open to the public. I hope you all will attend.

This week has seen two tragedies of national scope: the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon and, much closer to home, the industrial explosion in West, the toll of which is still being assessed at this hour. As Americans, we stand with Boston in its resolve to answer evil with goodness. And we stand with our fellow Texans in West — and with students, faculty, staff, and alumni with ties to that community — as they rebuild after this tremendous loss.