By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz | Friday, April 8, 2011, 02:31 PM
Sixteen current and former leaders of the Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee have urged the University of Texas System Board of Regents to reaffirm its commitment to research and teaching.
The group’s letter to Chairman Gene Powell and other members of the board, dated Wednesday, seems to indicate that a controversy over the direction and mission of the UT System campuses, especially the flagship in Austin, isn’t ending anytime soon.
The executive committee is a group of 310 civic, professional and business leaders whose financial support includes a sizable share of the annual compensation of $750,000 for Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa.
“Chairman Powell and members of the Board, we believe that the confidence of your public has been shaken, and we are deeply concerned,” the letter said.
Anthony de Bruyn, a spokesman for the UT System, declined to comment today.
Powell provoked criticism from the Longhorn faithful when he hired a $200,000-a-year special adviser who has written that much university research lacks value and that schools would be better off with fewer tenured faculty members. The adviser, Rick O’Donnell, was later reassigned to a position that will end by Aug. 31.
Signers of the letter include C. Patrick Oles, a real estate developer and current chairman of the executive council; Mike A. Myers, a donor for whom UT-Austin’s track and field complex is named; and Frank W. Denius, a philanthropist, lawyer and highly decorated World War II veteran.
Patti Kilday Hart posted an earlier blog entry about the letter for the Houston Chronicle.
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