UT Tyler President Kirk Calhoun, MD, FACP, provides his quarterly update to the UT Tyler Radio Podcast. Dr. Calhoun addresses growth plans for the university, construction progress for the School of Nursing expansion, and the latest activity in the Texas Legislature.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Years ago when iconic entertainer James Brown was being introduced, the announcer would describe him as “The hardest working man in show business.” Our guest today is easily one of the hardest working men in the University President business. We welcome UT Tyler President, Dr. Kirk Calhoun. Can’t you just hear that announcer bringing you on stage right about now?
Kirk Calhoun: Oh, yes, indeed. Thanks, Mike.
Mike Landess: The hardest working man. Now you’ve had so much going on since we last talked in January, traveling back and forth to Austin, addressing issues and concerns during this legislative session. And bringing in the first class for the new medical school, construction underway for the nursing school, just to name a few things that are going on in your life right now. So tell me about what’s the latest one that’s on the front burner?
Kirk Calhoun: We have a few priorities that we believe are very, very important. One is the University is in a growth phase. There’s an uptick, substantial uptick, in our freshman admissions every year. We’re currently about 10,000 students. I think we’re gonna go to about 15,000 students over the next 5, 6, 7 years. It’s not gonna happen overnight. And we’ll accomplish that by convincing more high school seniors that opposed to going across the country, it might be better to stay closer to home. That there’s a quality university education waiting for you right here in northeast Texas. And so come to UT Tyler and continue to experience the freshman enrollment growth that we have. But there’s more that can be done. For instance, if you recruit people, you really need to retain them and achieve student success. And so I’ve asked our provost, Dr. Mirmiran, and the team as a whole, to really focus on advising, counseling and supporting our students. And making sure that when we accept a student at UT Tyler that we are doing everything we can to make sure that they are successful and they complete their entire baccalaureate or higher degree program here. That will grow enrollment just by retaining the people you recruit in the first place. Third, our graduate school, we’re having a number of new graduate programs that are coming on board. And as you see the graduate school grow, people working on their masters, their Ph.D.’s, certain certificates and certifications and so forth that are higher require university to be involved. That will grow us. And then finally, online programs, online education really boomed during the COVID event and people weren’t getting together. And we’ve discovered that for many people who work, who have children, have other demands that don’t allow them to come to an in-person class on a regular basis, that we can achieve a high degree of success by offering advanced online degree programs that they can accomplish from home. And really growing our online offerings in a substantial way as a priority.
One of our greatest challenges is making college education affordable. And when we get this kind of support from Chairman (Kevin) Eltife and the (UT System) Board of Regents to be able to offer more scholarships to these community college transfers, it only enhances what they can do and achieve and get that baccalaureate or higher degree. So we’ve invested in all those priorities to move UT Tyler forward and to grow our enrollment, which will allow us to have the economies of scale to make this a better university.
Mike Landess: Are there things that UT Tyler could be doing better?
Kirk Calhoun: One of the things that I believe we ought to do better in higher education is educating the public to the benefits of higher education. Whether it’s our community college system or our four year universities. Our legislators have provided a tremendous amount of support and investment in our great public universities, but I feel that we have a responsibility to keep proving our value. The med school’s a great example of that. We sold the med school on the premise that we were focused on accepting students from East Texas, and if you were to look at the 40 students in this first class, something like 34 of them are from Smith County and our surrounding counties. There are a couple, a few students, a handful of students, six or so, that are from more distant areas like Dallas. Everyone’s from Texas. Every one of our students in the new med school are people from Texas but just a few from outside the region. But every single one of those who are outside the region, they have deep ties, family members, parents, someone here in East Texas. They bring that to the table with our goal of being able to meet the medical needs of our region by recruiting young people from our region, keeping them here, educating them here all the way through their residency training programs and having them return to their local communities and practice high quality medicine. I remember someone once told me, “You’re not gonna have very many kids from the region who have the capability of of being successful in medical school.” That requires a lot of a lot of book learning, so to speak, if I want to use that term. In that group of 40, we exceeded the average score for on the Medical College Admissions Test; we exceeded the average score for medical schools around the country. Our grade point average exceeds the average grade point for kids accepted in medical schools around the country. Each year we’re producing plenty of young people from northeast Texas, many young people from northeast Texas, who can do great things in medicine and engineering and business and education and all the different offerings of UT Tyler. So our medical school’s gonna do incredibly well, and I’m so pleased that we’ve had so much support from the local community and in moving it forward.
Mike Landess: Two classes paid for locally.
Kirk Calhoun: That’s right. Two classes that the medical students will not be burdened with heavy debt, which is one of the reasons that people may leave a more rural community because if they’re trying to pay off loans and that sort of thing. Our students from those first two classes won’t face that. And if I can say it over the radio, I wanna get the next two paid for, too. Two or three medical schools around the country where the cost of getting a medical education actually becomes a barrier to them choosing primary care specialties or wanting to work in their local communities. We wanna eliminate that. And to the degree that there are folks out there who can help us fund the endowments and so forth necessary to make that happen, I really would love to see that happen while I still have a few years left here at UT Tyler.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been UT Tyler President Dr. Kirk Calhoun. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)