DALLAS The University of Texas System Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously approved $265.5 million of bonds backed by the state’s Permanent University Fund for projects on several campuses including a new branch in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
The as-yet unnamed South Texas university will receive $142 million of PUF bonds, more than half of the total approved. The new branch combines the existing UT campuses in Brownsville and Edinburg.
About $54 million is earmarked for a medical school building on the Edinburg campus.
In Brownsville, $72 million is set aside for capital improvements and to fund costs to the system caused by UT Brownsville’s separation from Texas Southmost College.
“This is a historic day for South Texas,” said Regent Ernest Aliseda of McAllen before seconding the motion to approve the bonds. “Obviously, these are projects that are critical to the new regional medical school and the new university.”
Chairman William Eugene Powell of San Antonio said that the South Texas medical school has been a goal for the underserved region for more than 70 years, and “in less than 13 months we have made it a reality.”
In Dallas, the UT Southwestern Health Sciences Center will receive $50 million for expansion of the medical school campus.
The $50 million in PUF bond financing represents less than 30% of the estimated $187 million total project cost for Phase 1, UT chancellor Francisco Cigarroa told the regents. Remaining funds will come from Revenue Financing System bonds, institutional funds, and philanthropy.
In San Antonio, another $50 million will go toward a medical school building at UT San Antonio, a rapidly developing branch of the system.
“The building will make extensive use of online and distance learning as part of a region-wide Medical School interacting with and complementing facilities at Harlingen and Brownsville as well as supporting continuing professional education in the region,” Cigarroa told the regents. “The plan is designed to complete the building in time to matriculate the first medical school class in the Summer/Fall 2016.”
At the main campus in Austin, $10 million of PUF bonds will be used to design and construct an annex to the current Texas Advanced Computing Center building. The PUF funding will match and be contingent upon a challenge grant of $10 million that has been offered to UT Austin.
TACC supports more than a thousand research projects throughout the UT System, and across the nation, Cigarroa said. It has attracted more than $200 million in federal grants and vendor contributions, and has enabled the faculty and researchers at U. T. Austin and other U. T. System institutions to leverage TACC resources and expertise to execute research projects of even greater total funding.
