Gretchen Bataille

The Legislature made important investments in higher education this session that will allow the University of North Texas to gain ground and get ahead.

These include more equitable funding, approval of the student fee that will help fund our new stadium and a shot at becoming a top-tier university. But some goals — like a new home for our College of Visual Arts and Design — have been put on hold for now.

Perhaps most important, UNT, along with the state’s other public universities, will be able to: fund more scholarships; award more dollars for need-based and merit-based student aid; and support more research and creative endeavors that will help advance our communities and state.

The Legislature was committed to helping college students and their families this session, increasing financial aid funding for the Texas Grant program by more than 40 percent statewide. UNT already meets three-fourths of our student need, and this added funding will allow us to maintain this level of support as our enrollment continues to grow.

Legislators, with strong support from our North Texas delegation, also took an important step this session in creating a program to help Texas’ emerging research universities become national research universities.

Giving Texas universities the tools to transform themselves into top-tier institutions will reap many rewards. The bigger the state’s pool of national research universities, the more competitive Texas universities will be in attracting highly qualified students, top faculty and high-dollar research funding — and the stronger the state will be.

I worked with my colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington to champion this cause because our region can no longer do without a national research university. Now, North Texas could be home to not just one but three top-tier universities.

At UNT, we have been aggressively building our research profile, and this new program would allow us to tap into much-needed resources. The program calls for matching the money we secure in private gifts to support research, and we hope it will prove to be a powerful incentive for people to continue investing in UNT.

Changes in store

Overall, UNT expects to receive a $3.16 million increase in state funding for each of the next two years, as well as one-time incentive funds that will sustain our momentum in research, scholarship and creativity.

UNT already is making important progress in closing achievement gaps as one of the state’s largest and most diverse universities. We offer about 250 programs in a broad array of disciplines and graduate more than 7,000 students a year, 200 of whom earn doctorates. But our funding has lagged in comparison with other emerging research universities.

Rep. Myra Crownover and Sen. Craig Estes deserve credit for keeping UNT a priority this session and helping us earn more equitable funding.

They also were important advocates for our new stadium. The Legislature authorized our student-approved athletics fee, which will help fund the stadium, and Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law.

Clearing this important hurdle will keep us on track to open in time for the 2011 season.

We have launched our public fundraising campaign and will continue to seek support from our fans and partners.

Housed at the gateway location on Interstate 35, the stadium complex, which will include a convention center and hotel, will serve as a destination venue and an economic driver for the area.

The city of Denton is negotiating with developer John Q. Hammons to establish the center through a public-private partnership, while the developer would build and finance the hotel.

Crownover and Estes lauded our success in other ways. They publicly recognized Wen Chyan, a student in our Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, who won the coveted national Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology and was named a Goldwater Scholar.

The legislators also publicly honored our alumnus, sculptor Jesús Moroles, for earning the National Medal of Arts last fall.

And Crownover joined Sen. Jane Nelson, Rep. Burt Solomons and Rep. Tan Parker in securing $150,000 for the Texas State Historical Association, which relocated to UNT last fall.

Our colleagues in the UNT System also saw positive outcomes in the legislative session.

The UNT Dallas campus garnered transitional funds to help it become an independent campus in fall 2010, while the system received approval to create the UNT at Dallas College of Law and funds to get started.

And UNT, in conjunction with the Dallas campus, was given the green light to study the creation of a pharmacy program.

All told, this session yielded many positive outcomes for Texas universities and college students that will keep us on the path to prominence.

GRETCHEN M. BATAILLE is the president of the University of North Texas, the state’s fourth largest university.