NELSON: I KNOW NOTHING, ROOM FOR ONLY 1 PRESIDENT; WHERE ARE WE GOING TO PUT QUEEN JULIET?

(Ed.'s Note: Portions of this interview with UTPA President  Robert Nelsen originally appeared in the Rio Grande Valley Guardian. We print here the sections relating to UT Brownsville.) 

UTPA President Robert Nelsen, UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, UTB President Juliet Garcia, and UT System Chair Gene Powell are pictured at UTPA. (File photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

By RGV Guardian Staff
The project to merge UT-Pan American, the University of Texas at Brownsville, and the Regional Academic Health Center will be overseen by the UT System, if and when required legislation is passed into law.
That legislation is moving smoothly through the legislative process.
In the House, more than 100 representatives have signed on as co-authors of House Bill 1000, authored by state Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville. According to state Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, the number has risen to 132.
“HB 1000 will be an historic, landmark advancement not only in the Valley, but for the entire state,” Canales said.
In the Senate, Senate Bill 24, authored by state Sen. Juan ‘Chuy’ Hinojosa, D-McAllen, will be heard today by the Committee on Higher Education. Hinojosa, working with state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, has been garnering the support necessary to secure passage by two-thirds.
Nelsen conducted his question and answer session in the UTPA Student Union building last Thursday. He confirmed that support for the legislation is growing at the state Capitol.
“We came back from the Capitol yesterday. We have 118 votes in the House, that's signed HB 1000. We needed 100. On the Senate side, we have 19 senators on the bill, and there are six others who will vote for it, which is well over two-thirds there,” Nelsen said.

Do employees have to reapply for their jobs?
No. You keep your job, and you move immediately into the new university. You are not going to lose your jobs in any form or fashion. There are going be some cost savings, but what is happening in Brownsville right now is that, as those employees are being laid off, they don't need janitors because they don't own buildings right now. As they are being laid off, the community college is making them reapply for jobs. They could have just transferred them, but the community decided not to. We will not be doing the same thing here. We are going to need everyone.
Does tenure track transfer?
Yes. You will transfer right in, and have your tenured spot in the new university. There will not be any changes there. If you have a contract, a three-year teaching contract for example, that contract will be valid and will move into the new university. So, faculty and staff don't need to be worried in that way.
Will we be forced to Peoplesoft?
I don't think so. Brownsville was going to put in Peoplesoft. They have not started putting it in at this point. We have spent a lot of money putting in our own electronic upgrades to Oracle. Brownsville is talking about putting their student systems onto our student system...
Will degree programs have the same curriculum?
That's up to the faculty and the programs. You can have different tracks. We already have different tracks in our own areas here at UTPA, entrepreneur track for example. We have all sorts of different tracks. The faculty will decide, and if one group wants to have an emphasis on one area, they can. Some of the core courses will have to be the same because if you have a student decides they want to take a class here or in Brownsville, the basic core requirements will stay the same, but everything after that isn't.
What services will be centralized?
We know that there will be one president. There will be executive vice presidents on campus. We know that the Deans will remain; the department chairs will remain. There will be integrity within the campuses. We can already speculate about which ones. Probably the Vice President for Business Affairs, Finances, Comptroller and Purchasing will all be together. Probably, IT will be centralized and there will be one IT chief. Probably, the research offices will be centralized. Again, notice the word probably. We don't know what we will do...We don't even know where the location of that new centralized office will be at. As the bill came forward, and people were trying to jockey for the location of the medical school and its various parts, the idea of where it was going to be left us with the position where McAllen may end up having part of the medical school there. Those are conversations we won't know probably for another six months. We know that we have to use all of the buildings in Harlingen. They have an administrative building in Harlingen. We don't know if they are going to move there or not, but we will try to see what goes forward... I want to stress that UTPA will keep its integrity. It will be known as "Pan American." That will not go away in any form or fashion, and Brownsville will be known as Brownsville.
In the Bill there is the creation of Blue Ribbon Panel, which is mainly about the medical school, but we will be looking at other aspects as well. It's about where the medical school should be located, and believe me it will not be completely located in Harlingen, or McAllen or Edinburg. It's going to be a distributed model that is spread across the Valley... The panel's recommendation will go to the Board of Regents, and they will make a final determination about the location of the various operations of the medical school. If you think about it for a minute, down in Harlingen you have the VA clinic, so it makes all the sense in the world to do geriatrics and any post-trauma there. There are 780 babies born every month here, it makes sense to have pediatrics here. So, it is going to be a matter of letting them look at everything and talking to everyone to come up with that (decision).
When can we start talking to each other?
I encourage everyone to start talking to people in Brownsville and those at the RAHC. You cannot make any decisions. We do not know if this will happen. We have the two-thirds vote, but I've seen many people back out. We don't have the language about fees or anything. We cannot make the ultimate decisions, but you can certainly start talking to your counterparts because you are going to want to have those conversations.
What is the timeline for the decisions in the merger?
I was surprised when Chairman Rep. Rene Oliveira said that it would take 18 to 24 months. I don’t know where he got the number from. We don’t have a timeline. We know that it will take six months because of SACS, but we can run into all sorts of things with NCAA…we don’t know how long it will actually take us. We will just start working on it as quickly as we can. We want to do it as fast as we can because until the new university is existing we won’t have access to PUF. To wait 18 months, if we can do it earlier than that would be a serious mistake. I have asked the UT System for a timeline on the merger, and we expect one in the next couple of weeks. I think we’ll get it, publicize it and let you see where it is.
How will you handle the duplications of programs, especially Academic programs?
We are not going to eliminate any academic programs. They need English. We need English. They need Spanish. We need Spanish. All of those programs will remain intact. The only programs that are under fire are those that the coordinating board has come out with, those are the programs that are low producing. Those may disappear, but we have an advantage with that. Our Physics Program and their Physics program are both under watch. If we join together, maybe we will have enough with the Coordinating Board so they don’t bug anymore. With academic programs, it is simple.
How are we going to handle fees and tuition?
That part, the process is not in the bill yet. We have to get it into the bill. Our fees and their fees do not necessarily match. Their fees for IT for instance are higher than our fees. Our international fees, we charge $1 they charge $2. We are going to have conversations back and forth and find out what we agree upon is the best fee structure. In those conversations that take place, we need to involve the students because fees are about them. We need to involve everybody so this like a backroom door where we are just about adding fees. It’s not a matter of just jumping to the higher level... Dr. (Juliet) Garcia and I are talking back and forth on these fees, and as soon as we get somewhere we have some middle ground so we can talk, we will then involve everyone in the report. It’s the same thing with tuition. I think their tuition is about $17 more than ours a semester, do we go with the higher one or do we go with some in between. We really haven’t had those conversations.
Now for the big question. Where does this $5 million or $6 million in cost efficiency savings that Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa mentioned come from?
It does not come from across the board. It comes from administrative costs. It will come from, probably centralizing HR, IT. We are going to eliminate one of the president’s jobs, it will come from there. It will come from what we do with police and all sorts of different elements as we begin the centralization. It’s really at the high level. It’s not the day to day people who are working. It will be the high level positions that will be going. It’s not going to impact the jobs there. Right now in administrative costs, UTPA has $19.7 million, Brownsville has $12.5 million, so it ends up being a $32 million cost, and out of that 23.8 percent will be cut. The efficiencies will arise from that. So, don’t worry about your jobs. Go out and tell everybody else not to worry about their jobs. We need to concentrate on retention. We need to concentrate on enrollment. We need to grow. This is a real opportunity for us. It’s an amazing opportunity for us. It’s even more amazing for what it will do for the Valley. Those babies that are being born down there are going to need to come to Pan Am. We are going to need to have those buildings ready for them. We need to grow, and we need to grow at a five percent rate. It’s a big challenge, but we have to get there. Until we get there, we are not going to be able to provide all of the services.
I have been asked, now that we are going to get PUF, are we going to get raises?
No we are not. PUF can only go to capital projects and building new programs. It goes to software, online learning and the hardware for that. It can’t go to salaries. That requires us to retain our students. Retention is the right thing to do. We have over 1,400 students who are put on probation last semester. A lot of those will never come back. We had a kid who couldn’t pay a $10 hold, so the student didn’t enroll. We have got to make sure we grow and we retain people.
(Editor's Note: Reporters Joey Gomez and Raul de la Cruz contributed to this story from Edinburg. Reporter Steve Taylor contributed to this story from Austin.)