Discussion on Texas A&M’s Vision 2020 and a new billion-dollar fundraising campaign dominated Monday’s Faculty Senate meeting, as several committees presented progress updates that included research into A&M’s outsourcing process.
Karen Watson, Texas A&M provost and executive vice president, opened the meeting as a guest speaker and encouraged Faculty Senate to help A&M accomplish Vision 2020’s goal — to create a pervasive culture of excellence.
“If we have such a culture at Texas A&M in every thing we do, we will be recognized as one of the top-10 public universities,” Watson said.
Watson said Texas A&M approaches a critical time in accomplishing its 2020 goals through a series of multi-year strategic plans. The latest plan will end in 2015 and a new one is in development to complete A&M’s 2020 goals.
“The fourth lap is coming up, and we have got to have the energy to kick or we all need to declare we are happier with where we are,” Watson said. “And we’re still going to press hard just to stay where we are, but if we really intend to try to meet this vision, then it’s time to kick.”
Mark Klemm, capital campaign director at the Texas A&M Foundation, spoke on A&M’s third capital campaign.
“The focus of this campaign is, ‘Partner with us to solve big problems,’” Klemm said. “Instead of inward looking, it’s going to be more outward looking.”
The campaign, called “Lead by Example,” is in its “silent” phase and will officially launch November 2015. Klemm said $1.4 billion has been raised since January 2012, a sum raised over three years that places the campaign on target to surpass the last campaign’s total by year’s end.
The meeting continued with discussion on academic class name changes and several committee updates. Gregory Heim, budget information committee chair and Mays business school professor, said his committee is preparing a report to assess the results of Texas A&M’s job outsourcing.
Heim said the report, which is in its draft stages, hopes to analyze the ongoing outsourcing process by answering several questions. He said the committee was interested in whether outsourcing’s estimate savings will be achieved, whether the outsourcing businesses are effective, and what happened to university employees who previously held outsourced jobs.
Faculty Senate met to discuss Vision 2020, the capital campaign and academic class name changes.
Photo by Allison Bradshaw