Provost's Message: Celebrating our accomplishments as we begin a new year

Dear Colleagues,

As we start a new calendar year, I want to extend a warm welcome and hope that your winter break was filled with friends, family, peace and reflection to begin the year refreshed.

As we look ahead to the possibilities of a new year, it’s also the perfect time to celebrate our collective achievements. You have been instrumental in this time of transformative growth and exciting milestones at UTSA, and I am sincerely grateful for your many contributions to our shared goals.

A National Model of Excellence

We started this academic year with a record freshman class and an overall increase in enrollment, affirming UTSA’s reputation as a destination for new college students. Additionally, this fall, our institution was recognized nationally and globally for our unwavering commitment to student success and academic and research excellence. Among the many recognitions we celebrated were the following:

• Received 2023 Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) International Impact Award for Global Research 
• Awarded the Seal of Excelencia recertification for another three years
• Recognized in APLU's report on advancing publicly engaged research to address challenges in communities around the world 
• Received reaccreditation for undergraduate engineering programs by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) through 2029 
• Named a Fulbright HSI Leader by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) 
• Created a Sigma Xi chapter
• Ranked among the Top 100 Colleges and Universities by the Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine
• Ranked high in social mobility and student experience categories by the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. list
• Jumped 92 spots to No. 280 (the most significant increase of all public universities and the second-most of all colleges and universities) on the U.S. News & World Report’s list of Best Colleges
• Ranked No. 50 out of 1,410 institutions in national think tank Third Way’s annual Economic Mobility Index 
• Advanced 20 places in Times Higher Education’s 2024 World University Rankings

Refining our Strategic Objectives

Our Strategic Plan Refresh process was completed, resulting in a Strategic Planning Refresh Subcommittee report released in August. The report refines the university's strategic destinations and aligns resources to ensure UTSA's continued momentum to become a model for student success and a great public research university. To lead the effort toward achieving the revised third destination, a task force was launched to lead the effort toward enhancing the campus experience for faculty, staff and students, both in-person and online.

UTSA Faculty are Making a Difference 

We are honored to have extraordinary faculty leading the way in the classroom and in their research and scholarly work. Last fall, over 110 faculty were promoted and ten faculty from various disciplines were awarded endowed fellowships for the 2023-2024 academic year. Additionally, we had one UT System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award recipient, one Piper Professor Teaching Award winner, and two new members were inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Researchers.

Many UTSA faculty members were honored during the fall for their innovative academic research to address the most pressing challenges of our time. I am proud that you continue to share this important work with our UTSA students, demonstrating positive change and preparing them with experiences for future career success. This groundbreaking work encompasses a wide range of issues including, but not limited to:

• Construction safety
• NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory
• Detecting traumatic brain injury
• “Felt heat” of San Antonio’s historic West Side
• Preserving the stories of transborder activists
• The study of neutron stars and black holes
• Owl conservation
• Plant’s medicinal power against COVID and glioblastoma
• The use of AI to combat online hate
• Reducing suicide risk for chronic pain patients
• New materials for renewable energy
• The healing power of music
• NASA’s Pandora Project
• Removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere
• Preserving the structural and spiritual integrity of historic religious sites 
• Climate science advocacy research
• Cognitive impairment in cancer patients
• Methods of inhibiting cholera infection

Preparing Career-Ready Roadrunners

As developing technology and community needs evolve, so too are we continuously assessing our academic offerings and services to prepare a future labor force that is skilled and experienced to meet those demands.

We continue the work of our integrated campus-wide Classroom to Career initiative (C2C) to bring career preparation into the student experience from the beginning of their education at UTSA. Our Career-Engaged Learning team launched the first series of experiential learning maps to help students explore disciplines while identifying career-relevant skills and hands-on experiences they can gain at UTSA to meet the needs of our workforce and our community. We look forward to further development of these valuable new resources by the CEL team.

This fall, in a partnership of UT Health San Antonio and UTSA, we announced the launch of the nation’s first dual degree in medicine and AI. The program will allow students to earn a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) from UT Health while simultaneously completing a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (M.S.A.I.) from UTSA. Graduates of this program will be uniquely trained to use artificial intelligence to improve diagnostic and treatment outcomes. 

Looking Ahead

In February, our Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars will honor our faculty by hosting Celebrate Teaching Week. I encourage you to participate in the events throughout the week to celebrate our exceptional faculty. We are also currently accepting staff nominations for our annual University Excellence Awards. These awards recognize faculty and staff for their contributions and achievements ranging from extraordinary teaching and innovative research to exemplary team spirit and impactful advocacy. 

Again, I want to thank you all for your hard work and dedication to UTSA. Your contributions have been the cornerstone of our success. The breadth of what we have achieved together is remarkable. We have much to be proud of, and as we begin a new semester, I hope that it will inspire you to continue to imagine, innovate and implement new ideas for the benefit of our students, university and our community.

Wishing you a successful and fulfilling spring semester!