In the 1ooth episode of the UT Tyler Radio Podcast, we asked special guest Dr. Kirk A. Calhoun, FACP, the president of UT Tyler, to provide his quarterly update on the university and explain how it’s contending with a rapidly changing educational landscape.
Calhoun shares exciting news about UT Tyler’s meteoric rise, despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, to rank among the 10 fastest-growing universities in the country. Learn more about the demographics of the medical school’s student body and how UT Tyler works to enhance student life and graduation rates.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. For the third year in a row, the Chronicle of Higher Education has recognized UT Tyler as one of the fastest growing doctoral universities in the country. And with that growth, and perhaps because of that growth, change is inevitable to maintain momentum. And our guest today is UT Tyler president, Dr. Kirk Calhoun. Welcome.
KIRK A. CALHOUN: It’s always good to be here, Mike.
LANDESS: Love having you here. Your speech at the faculty and staff convocation mid-August chronicled the many successes and milestones that have been reached at UT Tyler over the past year. Your speech was centered, however, on change. Tell me about that.
CALHOUN: Well, I was trying to reach out to our faculty and staff and our students also, but particularly our faculty and staff, about some of the challenges that are facing higher education and health care. And when I talk to the faculty, what I hear repeatedly is, “Why are things changing so quickly?” For example, if you look at my own field of medicine, and you look at physicians who have become disenchanted with their profession, it’s frequently because of two reasons. One is, “It isn’t what I thought it would be,” or “It isn’t what it used to be,” and those are the key reasons. And I don’t think that’s just limited to medicine; it’s limited to many professions, and it is certainly touched health care. So, I wanted to have the faculty and staff here at UT Tyler reflect upon that, reflect upon change and how we’re going to cope with changes that are going to occur in the future. Just look at AI, for example, or other forms of technology that we’ve had to adapt to over the last few years, very dramatic changes in how we do things: how we teach, how we do our research, how we do our business. And I wanted to make sure that everyone at UT Tyler had the tools necessary to cope with rapid change.
LANDESS: The convocation ceremony was followed by a group discussion on stage in which fiscal year 2024 was discussed. Tell us about the highlights of that discussion.
CALHOUN: Well, one of the changes that we’re dealing with here at UT Tyler, and you alluded to it when you referenced the Chronicle of Higher Education almanac, and the fact that we’re one of the Top 10 fastest-growing universities in the country. Interestingly enough, there are four UT Institutions in that Top 10: Rio Grande Valley, Dallas, Tyler and Arlington. All of us are experiencing a very rapid growth, particularly coming out of the COVID pandemic. For us, one of the very interesting things related to that growth is how many new students we have on campus. And I was just looking at it — this fall, we have 3,000 new students at UT Tyler, a record-breaking freshman class of over 1,300, about a thousand new transfer students who have transferred to UT Tyler, and our graduate school has grown by approximately 700 students who are here to take more advanced courses for a master’s or doctorate degree. That’s a pretty dramatic growth. We’ve had to struggle with housing a little bit to make sure we could house all these students and make sure that we maintain what has made UT Tyler so popular, which is, like Tyler, it has a community feel about it-green, open, friendly campus-and we want to grow, but we want to maintain that kind of environment here because it’s a very wholesome environment for young people to come and learn.
LANDESS: Can you give us a quick update on the progress of the UT Tyler Medical School and the building expansion of the Nursing School? You had to walk right by that building expansion coming in today.
CALHOUN: Absolutely, and I drove by the medical school building that’s going up in the medicine center yesterday. There’s a lot of dirt being moved around in both sites, and it’s really quite exciting. You know, health care in Tyler is a big business. And part of our responsibility as a regional university is to make sure we meet our workforce needs, and so we are meeting the workforce needs in areas of health education, particularly now medicine, and in nursing. The medical school is off to a great start. They first go through EMT training, and they all passed there…
LANDESS: Which, when you told me about that, you told me about that, golly, almost a year ago, and I remember thinking to myself what a smart thing to do. And in talking to Dr. Brig Willis, I mean, it just makes such perfect sense you can save a life right off the bat.
CALHOUN: That’s right. The first thing at UT Tyler you learn to do as a physician is how to save a life. And that is one of the unique things about our med school and one of the many innovations we put into the UT Tyler Medical School to make it something special. You know, last year we had about 4,900 applicants for 40 slots. I’m told we’re well over 6,000 applicants so far this year for year two in applicants for the medical school. Ninety-five percent of the first class are from Smith County or around Smith County, East Texas roots. And, interestingly enough, the selection committee is blinded to race and sex and so forth. When you do that, 75% of the class came out as women. So, when you just look at the academics and the other qualifications, women do very well in the application process. And about a quarter of the class are UT Tyler graduates. So, we’re happy to see that the education that you can receive at UT Tyler prepares you well for medical school. Out of that freshman class, when you look at things like MCAT scores and grade point average and college, actually beat the national average. And it’s our very first class. So we’re already recruiting students from East Texas who have qualifications well above the average. We want to improve our graduation rates. We want to retain more students. We’re going to do that by increasing the number of advisors we have on campus, increase the support services we have for students, but also focus on student life and the environment here and making sure that there’s adequate recreation and engagement with students and focus on the needs of each individual student. So, no matter where you come from or what your background is, we want to make sure that you’re comfortable at UT Tyler and that you will succeed here.
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.)