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Dear Colleagues,
I hope you all enjoyed a relaxing Easter weekend and are energized for the weeks leading up to the end of the semester. It has been a very busy spring and I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few brief updates on some of the recent and ongoing activity.
Merit & Market Salary Adjustments
As previously announced, the merit and market plans for FY25 were finalized and you should by now have received notice of any adjustments to your salary. I mentioned in the previous campus announcement that while the leadership team would very much have liked to have more funds to invest in merit raises for rewarding exemplary performance, it was critically important to meaningfully invest in market adjustments so that we can close those compensation gaps for good. In total, we made an investment of over $1M in increased compensation, which included market adjustments for 74 full-time faculty and 56 full-time staff and merit awards for all eligible employees. Our efforts to ensure that A&M-San Antonio employees enjoy both competitive compensation and an excellent working environment will be continual and remain a priority. I hope that the FY25 merit and market plans go some distance toward heStaff lping A&M-San Antonio faculty and staff feel valued, as your contributions are critical to us fulfilling our mission.
Update on Leadership Team Recruitments
I’m looking forward to having Dr. Juan Guardia join the leadership team as vice president for student affairs on July 15 and am confident that he will provide strong leadership to the division of student affairs. Closer to Dr. Guardia’s date of arrival, you can expect to receive an invitation to a welcome reception on campus.
The search for our next vice president for university advancement is progressing nicely and should be concluded by the end of the semester. The search committee, chaired by chief of staff Jessica Loudermilk, will be interviewing semi-finalists late next week and we expect to host finalists for the position on campus later this month. While finalists have yet to be identified, you’ll soon receive placeholder invitations to several open forum sessions at which you’ll have the opportunity to hear from and ask questions of the selected finalists.
Chief of Police Search
I’m very pleased to announce that Roger Stearns was offered and has accepted the position as chief of the University Police Department. Chief Stearns has had a lengthy career of distinguished service, including the past nearly seven years at A&M-San Antonio and several years of experience as chief of police at previous institutions. Campus safety is a critical concern for many of our students and their families, as I know it is for many of you, and I know that we’re in good hands with Chief Stearns and the University Police Department.
Facilities & Construction Updates
I hope you’re all planning to attend the groundbreaking for the Public Health & Education building tomorrow, Thursday, April 4, at 10:00 a.m. The program will feature remarks by Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp and Texas State Representative John Lujan (District 118). Please join us in celebrating this much-needed next addition to our academic facilities.
There are several additional projects scheduled for completion in time for fall 2024: an additional parking lot for student residents, a new employee parking lot near the College of Business & Library Hall, the student recreation center, and our second residence hall. I’m pleased to share that the new residence hall has now been officially named Estrella Hall. This name was selected by students through a comprehensive feedback-gathering process organized by the Division of Student Affairs and is a great complement to our existing Esperanza Hall, to which Estrella Hall is a twin hall.
Texas A&M University System Updates
Provost Abelrahman and I have been working with the A&M System State Government Relations team to prepare our requests for the 89th Texas Legislative Session, which will commence on January 14, 2025, and run through June 2, 2025. The requests have been submitted to System and now go through a vetting and editing process before being approved by the System. Once approval has been secured, I’ll provide a campus update about the content of our requests.
On April 22 & 23, Vice President for Business Affairs & CFO Len Cullo and I will participate in System’s annual Programmatic Budget Review, at which we will present the preliminary FY25 budget. The budget preparation is an iterative process and it is possible that there may be revisions to our draft FY25 budget based on feedback from System officials and the Board of Regents. When the FY25 budget has received final System approval, I’ll share additional information about the adopted budget.
As you may know, A&M-San Antonio has been asked to host the quarterly meeting of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents on May 6-8, 2024. This is a big undertaking but it also offers an excellent opportunity to showcase our beautiful campus and all of the great things happening on it. We’ll have many visitors to campus during the meeting, including the Regents, many System officials and employees, and presidents and other personnel from the other A&M universities and agencies—so if you see some unfamiliar faces on those days, please help make our guests feel welcome.
Festival de Cascarones
I’m looking forward to my first Festival de Cascarones on April 28—and to learning what Fiesta is all about. I’m told that all of the confetti from the thousands of cascarones magically disappears from the lawn by Monday but I’ll have to see it to believe it!
I hope to see many of you and your families enjoying this Fiesta finale. We’re still in need of volunteers so if your schedule permits, you might consider signing up for a brief shift before or after you enjoy the festivities. Volunteers receive access to a special parking area, an official Festival de Cascarones t-shirt and free food during their shift. For more information, click here; to register to volunteer here. ¡Viva Fiesta! ¡Viva A&M-SA!
Presidential Update & Closing the Loop on the Listening Tour
Within the next couple of weeks, I will be meeting with all employees in each division or college as a group, to share the insights from my fall listening tour. As you may recall, subsequent to the listening sessions, I met with several groups including the President’s Cabinet, Faculty Senate, Staff Council, Student Government Association, the TAMUSA “Pioneers,” and a special reflective group set up explicitly for this purpose. With each of those groups, I presented the feedback from my listening sessions and asked the group for their perspectives on how best to prioritize addressing the issues and ideas that had been collected. I look forward to sharing those results with all of you. At the upcoming meetings, I’ll also provide some updates to the campus master plan and of course, answer questions and hear concerns you may have. It’s important that as a campus community, we all have a shared understanding of what our institutional priorities are and how we arrived at them; it’s my hope that the upcoming meetings will contribute to establishing transparency and a shared sense of purpose.
As we near the end of the spring semester and I start my ninth month at A&M-San Antonio, I am more excited and appreciative than ever to have the privilege of leading this institution. I continue to be impressed and touched by your dedication to our students and the heart that you all put into your work. To build and advance a young institution like ours can be especially challenging and we have much work ahead of us if we want to fully reach the incredible potential of this university, but I think we all share the conviction that this is a special place and that the work is well worth doing. I’m grateful to be doing that work alongside each of you.
Mil gracias,
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