The University of Texas at Austin recently announced its Change Starts Here plan, a 10-year strategy to become the world’s highest-impact public research university.
As an incubator for world-changing leaders, Texas McCombs seeks to help realize the university’s aspirations in several ways. After gathering strategic input from McCombs’ faculty, staff, students, and alumni, we propose a five-year strategy to support UT’s ambition. We look to our core mission and values for inspiration as we establish the goals, initiatives, and metrics that will push us forward as we seek to become the world’s highest-impact public business school.
Our mission
To be a premier source of future business leaders and ideas that will positively transform industry and society. Our research and discoveries will help leaders prepare for the opportunities of tomorrow, and the world-class, inclusive education we provide will produce entrepreneurial, innovative, analytical, and ethical thinkers to solve the challenges of today and prepare for the challenges of tomorrow.
Our values
Putting People at the Heart of What We Do
In a place like Texas, where the state motto is literally “friendship,” we understand how important it is to place people at the center of all we do. It’s with this in mind that we focus not only on those who make business run, but also those whom business serves. At Texas McCombs, we don’t just teach accounting, finance, or marketing; we cultivate within our students, faculty, and staff the spirit and tenacity to make significant contributions to humanity and the world, no matter their final career destination.
Fostering a Collaboratively Competitive Spirit
At Texas McCombs, we view business as a team sport that needs a diversified set of skills to form a championship lineup. Each of us brings our own strengths and views to the table, which fortifies our bonds and makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Our relationships are among the most valuable ingredients in our collective energy. It is within this context that we find ourselves able to compete and collaborate, and ultimately, become bigger than ourselves.
Innovating for Impact
UT Austin’s legacy of launching new ideas is rooted in the hard work, determination, and creativity required to see those ideas to fruition. At Texas McCombs, we’re part of a built-in community of innovators, both curious about and excited by the challenge of bringing new theories to life – and ensuring those ideas make a significant impact. By leveraging the university’s resources, as well as the entrepreneurial ecosystem and nationwide cachet of Austin, we thrive on supporting our students, faculty, and staff in creating knowledge and realizing their visions.
Preparing Students to Lead Through Disruption
We empower our students to stretch beyond the world as it stands today, to feel comfortable in complexity and uncertainty, and to make a positive impact wherever their journeys lead. With our exceptional faculty, groundbreaking research, future-forward curriculum, and top-ranked programs, we anticipate changing market needs and prepare our students to be agile leaders in a world we can’t yet imagine. Texas McCombs is a shining example of UT Austin’s promise that “What starts here changes the world.”
Our plan at a glance
Texas McCombs is primed to continue in its role as a transformative leader on campus, across the nation, and in the world. Our impact derives from a powerful combination of excellence and scale. We serve more than 6,000 students each year — plus another 6,000 who receive one of our business minors — and our community of faculty, students, staff, and alumni cares passionately about knowledge creation, education, and cutting-edge business practices.
To develop the college’s strategic plan and aspirations, we held multiple forums across our school with faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The information we gathered formed this plan and will help us realize the university’s broader strategy goals. During the months ahead, we will continue to evolve the initiatives described here, and we commit to developing and publishing metrics to judge our success. Throughout this process, we will rely on our mission and our goal: to support a new generation of leaders who will change the world because they, themselves, have been transformed by the education, research, and experiences at Texas McCombs.
Our North Star
Become the highest-impact public research business school by amplifying our vast expertise, our unmatched experience, and our uniquely innovative ideas from the heart of Texas to the world.
MCCOMBS 2022-2027 STRATEGIC PLAN
Learn more details about each initiative in our strategic plan below.
1. Supporting our people
We aspire to build an exceptional community of learners and scholars, leaders and innovators.
Texas McCombs aims to attract and retain outstanding faculty and staff members, cultivate excellence and ambition among our students, and engage our inspiring alumni. We’ll do this with initiatives that:
1.1 Foster a supportive culture that inspires all of our talented people to bring their varied and dynamic perspectives to the table
Completed Initiatives
- Built a Wellness Center to spark critical conversations about well-being and mental health, and to increase access to existing campus services.
- In Fall 2022, McCombs opened our Wellness Center, the first of its kind on campus, which delivers services to students closer to where they study and learn. Over 800 sessions have been provided to 180+ students since its opening. Through bridge financing, generously provided by Bryan Stolle, McCombs was able to add a second wellness counselor, which allows the Wellness Center to have an additional wellness intern. While the initiative to launch the Wellness Center was completed this year, future operations will expand beyond the initial launch. We are currently piloting a Mind Body Lab and yoga space.
- Developed and deployed faculty and staff experience surveys, with a 70% response rate. We want to continuously strengthen a sense of belonging at McCombs by seeking honest feedback and responding with appropriate resource commitments and activities.
- The experience pulse surveys will be deployed periodically to understand the sentiment of our community and to identify areas where we can continue to grow and evolve. We recognize that this is an on-going effort and are excited about the creation of this continuous feedback mechanism.
Work Underway
- Fundraising for the McCombs Success Scholars Initiative, to attract and support lower income and first-generation college students with the programming, resources, and opportunities needed to excel within McCombs and beyond. As of November 2023, MSS has received $228k in current use funds and $1.4M in endowment donations.
- Create mentoring programs for underserved students that guide them along the path to a Ph.D. We see an opportunity to get more varied voices, ideas and thinking into academia, by creating pathways for first-generation and underserved student communities to pursue Ph.D. programs. Achieving these pathways aligns us with today’s business culture and builds on the fact that unique experiences/perspectives, across multiple backgrounds, is the engine behind high-impact idea generation in business and beyond.
1.2 Create an engaged McCombs community for life
We aim to reinvigorate the pride that faculty, staff, students, and alumni feel for McCombs, a pride that has been at the core of our vision for the past century. We are bonded in our mission to transform business, education, and the lives of all who encounter McCombs’ many trailblazers.
Completed Initiatives
- Amplified the McCombs story throughout 2022 to ensure that our centennial celebrates prior successes and inspires future change-makers. A major accomplishment was the Voices of McCombs, a partnership with NPR’s StoryCorps to create 19 paired conversations between faculty, alumni, students, staff and friends.
- Used the McCombs Connect community platform to enhance alumni networking and outreach. This enabled automated, nimble connections for mentorship, alumni, career engagements and resources – and rich internal and external affinity networks for alumni, students, faculty, and staff.
- McCombs Connect was created to provide a virtual community with ease of connections between alumni, students, faculty and staff for mentorship, alumni career engagements and resources. We set a goal to secure 5k users within the first 5 years. In the first year, we secured 3.8k+ users and are on track to exceed our initial goal and stretch toward 10k users in 5 years.
- We drove this engagement with the following: BBA and MBA Mentoring Programs with over 200 participants in each program and more than 20 community groups. Four of these community groups have more than 100 students involved with specialized focus on industries, locations, and affinity.
Work Underway
Enrich our Study Abroad and Global Connections initiatives in partnership with the Center for Global Business, to help transform our students into ambassadors, forging important relationships between the Forty Acres and our global alumni.
- In Summer 2023, our largest ever number of students traveled abroad. The 565 students who traveled to enrich their educational experiences represent 49.3% of our student body, nearly achieving our 50% 5-year goal.
- Our portfolio of study abroad and global connections opportunities continues to expand with summer abroad, semester abroad, and faculty-led May term. Additional planned experiential opportunities include a pilot program of Wall Street for McCombs for first generation students and an immersive supply chain May term traveling from Austin, Texas to Limerick, Ireland to Rotterdam, Netherlands.
- Additional experiential opportunities include a plan to launch May term in London in 2025 for MSS.
Plan and implement a strategy to elevate curricular instruction including classroom modality, digital content delivery for the student of the future, and professional development for faculty.
- McCombs Office of Instructional Innovation has been successfully positioned as a resource to faculty, providing onboarding to faculty including 357 hours of faculty consultations with 70 faculty members. We have hosted 12 workshops on instructional support topics and 2 symposia on applications of learning science.
- Our Teaching Fellows program launched 2 years early, with a new cohort beginning in Spring 2024.
- Over the Summer 2023, we conducted 3 artificial intelligence (AI) workshops, with 36 faculty attending. In the Fall 2023, 1 additional AI workshop was held. These workshops are positioned to inform thinking about helping students learn to use AI as a professional in their field, and to aid faculty in AI applications for teaching assistance. AI-specific resources have been created and are available to faculty on our MOII resources site.
Strengthen staff credentials, skills, and learning agility by offering more opportunities for professional development and crafting clearer pathways for promotion.
- This year, we launched our ‘Rising Leaders’ program for Assistant Director and select Directors. The program focuses on leadership development, people management and strategic planning. Our inaugural class of 30 began the program in August 2023, with a new cohort planned for the 2024 – 25 Academic Year. We are continuing to identify new learning & development opportunities to prepare staff for career growth at McCombs and across the University.
2. Amplifying our place
We aspire to help realize the unmatched potential of Austin, Texas, and become a global center for business innovation.
We seek to become a hub where students, top scholars, alumni, and business leaders connect to shape the future of business. We’ll do this with initiatives that:
2.1 Establish McCombs as the convening place for learners and future leaders
Work Underway
Fundraising, planning, and building world class facilities in Mulva Hall will connect our undergraduate student communities with faculty and staff. Our Centers and Institutes can act as a front porch where business school meets business practice, presenting the opportunity for students to experience real-world business challenges.
New Ideas in Progress
Develop and implement an event strategy that uses McCombs facilities to welcome the next generation of Austin innovators to our community of scholars and business partners. Connect those organizations moving to Austin with our programs, talent and thought leadership.
We aim to leverage the explosive growth of Austin by creating value for national and international companies that hire out students and engage our thought leaders.
2.2 Make McCombs an integral part of the value proposition for all companies starting, relocating to, or already doing business in Texas
Completed Initiatives
Established McCombs as the primary hiring source and premier degree program and Exec Ed location for top Texas companies
- McCombs continued to partner with the 820 employers in the McCombs ecosystem. This partnership included hosting annual employer recruiting strategy meetings and providing customized support for their recruiting needs and through consistent relationship management.
Work Underway
Deepening corporate relationships to solidify McCombs as the essential place for thought leadership. Inspire companies to seek McCombs out for executive education, research collaboration, and curricular enhancement, including cases and speakers.
- McCombs teams worked together to drive recruiting, engagement, and investment with our corporate partners. A series of corporate engagements was launched to build and cultivate new and existing McCombs corporate partnerships.
- In May 2023, we held the inaugural Corporate Partners Forum as part of McCombs Corporate Connect Program. The Forum was attended by 50 partner companies.
Continue to enhance our branding to elevate our reputation as the “highest impact public research university.” Develop and test our brand awareness annually among Austin, Texas, U.S. and global premier businesses as well as peer universities, prospective students, alumni and media.
- We are finalizing a brand perception survey that will be completed with a full report by Q1 2024.
- Our CMCO team created a new editorial process for major publications with an Editorial Advisory Committee.
- Representation of McCombs in UT News articles doubled from 10 in 2021-2022 to 21 in 2023-2024.
- McCombs increased our research visibility in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, and Fortune. Media mentions in tier 1 publications increased 300% between 2021-2022 and 2023-2024.
3. Ushering in a new era of experiences
We aspire to create transformational experiences.
Life at McCombs will be greatly enriched by co-curricular and extracurricular experiences that bring classroom education and business practice together. We aim to foster this vision of fully embedded, lifelong learning through initiatives that:
3.1 Emphasize the full arc of the McCombs journey
Work Underway
Realizing the potential of our Entrepreneurship portfolio to launch student ideas into reality and connect entrepreneurs and venture capital to Texas McCombs, including Energy, Tech, and Health Ventures.
- A generous gift from The Blair and Bubba Moffett Family has led to the Summer Entrepreneurship Academy (SEA), which provides an 8-week in-person intensive for undergraduates to innovate and partner with local start-ups, corporate sponsors, McCombs alumni, and entrepreneurial mentors. In Summer 2023, Harkey Institute funds provided $12,000 in scholarships funds for 11 SEA participants. With the naming gift, the Institute has the opportunity to expand the scholarship program to include full scholarships based on need.
- The Harkey Institute partnered with the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) to launch the Women in Entrepreneurship (WiE) specialization. Students complete a KS WELI sponsored course and graduate with the Entrepreneurship Minor to complete the specialization. Since its launch in 2022, nearly a dozen sponsored courses have been offered and more than 250 students have registered in sponsored courses.
- The Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community (ENT LLC) is a community of students living on campus in Jester West. The focus of our LLC is to expose our students to the entrepreneurship ecosystem on campus and build the students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy. In 2022-2023, 84 students selected the ENT LLC as their top choice, with 37 selected. The ENT LLC is scheduled to grow to 70 students in the 2024-2025 academic year.
- Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs (TVL) received a $100k grant to pilot the Small Business Impact Program, extending project acceleration into the broader Austin, Texas-based business community.
- TVL hosted our Energy Ventures course in Spring 2023 as a cross-University collaboration between Energy Institute, Kay Bailey Hutchinson Energy Center, & Cockrell School of Engineering. This Energy Ventures course also receives community support from TEX-E, Ecliptic Capital, and Siemens Energy. The course enrolled 30 students and will be offered again in Spring 2024.
- The Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center received a gift of $1M to fund the Freed Family Pitch Competition in perpetuity. The annual competition, now the largest non-dilutive funding opportunity for undergraduates at UT, empowers students to develop their businesses further and enables meaningful experiential learning.
- The Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center’s Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator Program, a semester-long practicum in which student founders learn how to establish product-market fit and build their businesses on sound footing, has endowed 7 of its 20 cohort seats as of Fall 2023.
Expand experiential learning and thought leadership in Energy through the Global Sustainability Leadership Initiative (joint with Moody College of Communication) and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Business (joint with UT Law). This brings business measurement, analysis, and discipline to many heartfelt issues while exciting stakeholders about world-changing solutions
- In partnership with Texas Executive Education, the GSLI launched new executive education offerings, including adding a sustainability elective to the Energy Executive Leadership Development Program. GSLI partnered with the MBA program earlier in the year to host ClimateCAP, a major MBA conference that was attended by 226 MBA students from 26 schools, and which focused on Climate Innovation to tackle issues such as hard-to-decarbonize industries. Within the GSLI LIFT program, some student teams have been working on semester-long client projects in the energy sector, such as working with Talos Energy on their carbon capture and sequestration efforts.
- The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center added Cockrell School of Engineering to its partnership and is renamed Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center for Business, Law, and Politics.
Expand our Real Estate Center into a bold new Real Estate Institute, which will offer cross-disciplinary education and research toward solving global housing challenges in the post-pandemic world.
- The Real Estate Center obtained a commitment in Summer 2023 from Ben Friedman to initiate the Friedman Fellows, designed to recruit individuals with expertise in engineering, architecture, and urban policy to work with McCombs to create the intellectual content that will become the basis of new classes in real estate. We are also using part of his gift to support student fellows to help with research around the intersection of real estate and other disciplines on topics like transportation, urban design, architecture, public policy, etc.
- The dean’s office continues to cultivate an alumnus for an 8-figure gift to fund the proposed Real Estate Institute.
Prepare students to lead the future of work by enhancing co-curricular experiences; providing coaching and advising; elevating student experience on campus through enriched student services; credentialing skills and experiences with badges across programs, including TEE.
- We are enhancing co-curricular experiences through mentoring, community groups, alumni visits, and recruiting. Our mentoring programs are built within McCombs Connect supporting undergraduate and graduate programs requiring a 1 semester commitment and our community groups support alumni and student connection based on industry, location, affinity groups and other interests to connect casually when available. We bring alumni to campus and virtually to help students explore career possibilities, including our “BBA Industry Spotlight,” “MS Industry Fridays,” “MPA Industry Night,” and MBA industry alumni panels. Our recruiting efforts include one-on-one office hours, information sessions, coffee chats and career fairs or networking events across all programs, which are tailored to student and employer needs.
- We offer year-round unlimited career coaching across all programs to provide a roadmap for career navigation and support to accomplish career goals throughout each program.
McCombs’ focus on the future will energize innovation and meaningful connection across our research, learning, and experience communities. We want to create a culture of delight, appreciation, and shout-outs for internal and external stakeholders through initiatives that:
3.2 Model nimble processes
Completed Initiatives
Led the way in faculty management practices at UT by adopting best-in-class workforce tools.
- This year, a new system (Watermark) for tracking faulty productivity and workload launched. The system captures all faculty activities and can be used to better manage faculty life cycle. As we head into our second year, many improvements have been made to the system to relaunch this coming year. UT considered adoption of Watermark campus-wide and McCombs partnered in the selection process in 2023.
Developed and awarded badges for micro-credential learning achieved through co-curricular experiences and TEE courses.
- We targeted 10 select courses and 6 certificates for completion badging for micro-credentials. Our Open Enrollment courses and 2 Leadership Certificates are now badged. Additional badges for online executive certificates via Emeritus are available. Badging for boot camps is in progress, with plans for awarding them in Spring 2024, beginning with edX. We have awarded 239 badges as of 2023.
Work Underway
McCombs 360 is the organization’s enterprise operations management application that will enable critical business processes, support communication with strategic partners, and track key data points that provide a comprehensive view of McCombs’ operations and the experience of our students. Future phases of this project will continue the assessment of McCombs functional operations needs, and the design and implementation of application components. Planned focus areas include marketing, program operations, development, career and alumni relations, and centers/institutes. These technology solutions will help harness customer relationships and improve experience to drive demand for McCombs offerings.
- We are currently in the process of gathering requirements and building the roadmap for the next phase of McCombs 360. Our Technology Governance Executive Committee will assess recommendations and decide on next steps in Spring 2024.
Develop and implement a robust strategy in information systems for strong systems governance and system enhancements to produce data-driven decisions throughout McCombs. This starts with hiring a CIO, building an integrated systems/data strategy, and delivering dashboards and information to assist key decision-makers.
- The information technology department has reorganized and adopted a new name, McCombs Technology Solutions.
- An inventory of technology assets and applications has been catalogued and a modernization plan is being developed.
- Under our new McCombs CIO, we have adopted a governance strategy that emphasizes an enterprise perspective that seeks to align technology resources to organizational goals and objectives. The McCombs Technology Advisory Council (MTAC) meets quarters to discuss technology issues and establish priorities. The MTAC includes representatives from operations and administrative departments, including BBA, Career Management and Corporate Relations, Development, Graduate Programs (MS and MBA), Instructional Innovation, Financial Affairs, Marketing and Communications.
4. Education for the future of business
We aspire to teach our students to change the world.
We aim to help students face the complex business problems of today and prepare them for the jobs and economies yet to come. We’ll do this with cutting-edge teaching and initiatives that:
4.1 Educate our students to shape and lead future industries
Completed Initiatives
Evaluated the resources needed to grow McCombs’ undergraduate enrollment from the 2019 baseline to support UT strategy.
- Proposed a plan to grow both resident and non-resident enrolled undergraduates, with revenue sharing of non-resident tuition to support increase in enrollment. Evaluated by UT in 2023. Planned enrollment for Fall 2024 to return to 2019 baseline.
Successfully launched programs and curriculum to prepare students for careers in business analytics, energy solutions and sales, while continuing our competitive advantages in developing leaders and critical thought within core disciplines.
- Texas Executive Education has launched two new programs in partnership with Emeritus (Senior Executive Programs Online) in Energy and ESG.
- Within the past year, three programs have launched, the Business Analytics major, Analytics and the Business of Sports minor, and Sales minor. Our Sales minor has enrolled 181 undergrads since its inception.
Work Underway
Reinvigorate our process to manage our portfolio of minors, majors, and degree programs that best equip students for the future of work. Develop metrics to retain, discontinue, or launch programs.
- In 2023, our Accounting, IROM, Management, and Marketing department chairs reviewed and refreshed aspects of their curriculum. The Accounting department refreshed their curriculum to broaden the appeal beyond the traditional accounting roles of audit and taxation. The IROM department quadrupled enrollment in their new undergraduate Business Analytics major. The Management department prioritized the concentrations in consulting and entrepreneurship and their minor in entrepreneurship for refreshes.
- We initiated the Academic Portfolio review process for centers and programs, including the development of metrics to assess center and program health. Analysis of the process to launch or discontinue programs is ongoing.
Develop refined measures of assessment, rigor, and content excellence in the classroom to inform peer reviews and supplement course instructor surveys.
- McCombs’ Office of Instructional Innovation formed a rigor committee, with representation from all McCombs academic departments and three sub-committees focused on culture, faculty, and impact measures. The culture sub-committee is piloting a program designed to help new McCombs acculturate to what it means to teach at McCombs. One of the goals is to have new faculty help students understand the distinction of desirable difficulty versus distress as they are asked to take on challenging learning tasks. The faculty sub-committee has identified four pillars on which to base their work. These are challenging work, mastering complex material, produce credible work, and critical thinking.
We aim to foster excellence in instruction and to meet the growing demand for high-quality degrees and lifelong learning opportunities. We’ll do this with initiatives that:
4.2 Optimize instructional modalities and technology for future-focused learning
Completed Initiatives
Designed the curricula and implemented the marketing plan to launch the MSBA working professionals’ program.
- The Master’s in Business Analytics for Working Professionals program launched with an inaugural class of 20 this year. We are currently accepting applications for our next cohort. Applications in all MS programs are up year over year in Fall 2023. Read more about the innovative MSBA-WP program.
Work Underway
Expand online Program Management programs for high-volume certificates and short courses through Texas Executive Education (TEE) where market conditions predict significant margins for McCombs.
- TEE expanded bootcamps with Great Learning for a “Cloud Computing” camp last year. Bootcamps also incorporated a face-to-face opportunity extending across all 6 Great Learning titles.
- We are currently evaluating additional new courses, with new courses in energy and environment, society, and government (ESG) launched in Fall 2023.
- Our Health Informatics & Health IT (HIHIT) program is evaluating asynchronous content delivery to enhance flexibility within the program. The learning content is being separated into 4 titles for launch in Summer and Fall 2024.
Assess Texas Executive Education open enrollment portfolio relative to peer and aspirant schools, developing a strategy for fresh, cutting edge enrollment offerings. Extend Texas Executive Education teaching opportunities to more of our distinguished faculty and provide pathways for TEE portfolio enhancement.
- First pass of the portfolio review was completed in Fall 2023, reducing the portfolio from 24 to 14 offerings, with a second pass and expansion planned for this coming year. Notable new titles include “Winning!” in collaboration with the Circuit of the Americas track.
Plan and implement a strategy for optimal mix of online and in-person classes, enhancing digital content for the student of the future.
- We developed an initial portfolio innovation strategy and are socializing it with key stakeholders.
- In 2024, we will evaluate market conditions for an online MBA.
5. Research for world-changing thought leadership
We aspire to discover the future of business through ambitious leadership.
Our research should upend the status quo of business practice and education. We’ll explore novel theories, methods, and analyses through initiatives that:
5.1 Support top-tier, high impact research
Completed Initiatives
Received commitment of $25M to name the Department of Management from Billy and Rozanne Rosenthal, to support research, teaching, and faculty initiatives and to support our ability to recruit and retain talented faculty.
Achieved a near-term increase in Annual Discretionary Fund research resources for faculty on merit list, and prioritized resource deployment from revenue programs for best-in-public school-class research.
- Deployed $250k per year (for the next five years) from Neal Aronson’s discretionary gift to enable high-potential research grants and research in sports analytics and management.
Work Underway
- Hire a Distinguished University Faculty Chair in Finance and champion fundraising for additional Distinguished University Chairs and ambition for hiring prominent thought leaders in other departments.
- Seek material funding increases and stability for research funding through pursuit of additional department naming gifts ($25M plus) and other discretionary research funding donations, and planned allocation of strategic growth in executive education profits.
We aim to have organizations and scholars around the world seek us out for our expertise and experience. We’ll garner that prestige through initiatives that:
5.2 Elevate our thought leadership and impact
Completed Initiatives
Launched brand and promoted McCombs cutting-edge research through media channels.
Work Underway
Measure and highlight scholarship viewed as high-impact in the academy.
- For Fall 2023, we are focusing on capturing and highlighting citations and published academic articles.
- In Fall 2023 we achieved nearly 90% participation in submitting notifications of accepted publications via our “Research Resources” page, which serves as the basis for new research to amplify with our alumni, corporate partners, and peer and aspirant schools.
- Efforts are also underway to create a system of faculty citations via Google Scholar (GS), with over 90% of faculty represented with GS page. Integration between this system and our faculty tenure software are under evaluation.
- Our Research Newsletter has been refreshed to attract new and more broadly distributed readers. New columns include “What’s the Big Idea,” which highlights recent pieces of faculty research. New voices are also being featured in the internal newsletter, spread across all departments and faculty ranks.
Develop automated mechanisms to share McCombs research among professional track faculty, students, and staff with the long-term goal of making this research a point of pride throughout our organization.
- We have a team of undergrad research assistants working to get off-the-shelf AIs to: (a) summarize each faculty publication via digesting each paper’s Abstract and Discussion, (b) make 1-2 overview slides for each publication, and (c) form a searchable database for instructors and those who want to leverage our current expertise. An in-between step will be to have faculty members approve of the summaries and slides. Separate “tracks” of research summarized by an AI unique to the track are being evaluated for accuracy and sustainability.
Optimize cooperation between and among McCombs Centers and UT Institutions to elevate research, evidence-based business discussions, inviting academics published in the top journals, foster research opportunities, and attract top faculty.