Author: Olivia Breedlove

TCU’S IDEAFACTORY: BRINGING DESIGN THINKING TO HIGHER EDUCATION

“There’s an old story of a university architect who waited until the students had worn paths in the grass before adding sidewalks to the campus, quite literally following their footsteps. That’s human-centered design: understanding how people behave and think, then create something with their choices in mind, not your own,” says Corey Landers, graduate of the Texas Christian University (TCU) Neeley School of Business and product designer at Argo Digital in New York City. “TCU has always been a campus focused on the student experience, and now it has the TCU IdeaFactory to empower students to utilize human-centered design in all disciplines.”

The TCU IdeaFactory — a unit of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies — supports the innovative ideas and creative spirits of TCU students and the entire TCU community by providing an environment, frameworks and resources to advance new ideas and drive creative solutions. The program supports ideas from initial concept to prototype or beyond, by offering mentorships, resources and building teams of university faculty and community members.

Students in TCU’s IdeaFactory are encouraged to solve problems by following the five stages of design thinking (empathizing, defining, ideation, prototyping and testing). In that method, faculty and coaches walk students through the entire process of creating and launching a new product. From conducting market research to prototyping and testing to finally preparing for a venture capital pitch competition, the TCU IdeaFactory team is focused on encouraging innovation
and entrepreneurship.

“Higher education is not checking off a series of boxes to get a degree, but it’s actually lining up or stacking a set of boxes to reach new heights or new places,” founding IdeaFactory director Eric Simanek says in a TCU 360 article.

Borrowing Simanek’s analogy, the IdeaFactory is open to students from across the TCU campus, encouraging them to use their powers of critical thinking so they can stack their sets of boxes to be more prepared for constantly evolving careers.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

FILLING THE TALENT VOID WITH EDUCATION AND EXCELLENCE

A heatmap — built by Cyberseek to illustrate the need for cybersecurity talent — shows Texas ablaze with nearly 25,000 cybersecurity openings, among more than 300,000 open jobs nationwide.

“This chart doesn’t [even] reflect the fact that many security programs are underfunded,” writes Wayne Reynolds, advisory chief information security officer at Kudelski Security Inc., an international cybersecurity firm that has substantial operations in Dallas. “Sadly … organizations wait for a breach, then when that ‘large emotional event’ happens, they knee-jerk and overspend on security.”

Universities in DFW are working to fill that talent void.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS: Cyber Security Research and Education Institute

UTD’s Computer Science Department serves as the base for the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute, which comprises one of the nation’s largest research groups dedicated to cyber-protection. The institute has garnered nearly $50 million in extramural funding for research and education in the last 14 years. The institute team serves as a national resource by conducting advanced research in cybersecurity threats and solutions, offering an education in all aspects of cybersecurity, and training students with the capability to carry out cyber operations.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON: Flagging Cyber-Security

If triathalons measure athletic fitness, Capture the Flag competitions — where online security savants attempt to outwit and outhack each other — represent a team’s fitness in the cyber arena. UTA hosts and competes in hackathons across the state and DFW Region — and has done extremely well. A team with UTA students Aaditya Purani and Jonathon Kirkpatrick finished sixth in the world at the Cyber Security Awareness Weekend cyber-security Capture the Flag finals in November 2019.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS: Recognized Cyber Defense Excellence

Much of UNT’s cybersecurity work is carried out on campus by the affiliates of the Center for Information and Cybersecurity. The center brings together individuals and organizations with an interest in information security, computer security, information assurance and cybercrime.

UNT’s cybersecurity research and education is recognized as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research, as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research by the National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY-COMMERCE: Rising Stars in CyberSecurity

TAMU – Commerce has assembled a team of the rising stars in cybersecurity teaching and research. TAMU – Commerce’s faculty has industry and teaching experience that gives it the background to tackle the gnarliest problems, particularly in the areas of resilience, cyber-physical security and risk awareness.

SMU: Educating Cyber Defenders

As a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense SMU is committed to helping close the 21st century cyber security skills gap. Cybersecurity research and education have long been a focus of SMU’s Computer Science Department, bolstered by the launch of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in 2014. The institute researches new ways to secure information technology, even as the nature of this technology continues
to evolve.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

STUDENTS EXAMINE THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY

The role of technology in culture, work and regional economies has become more important and complex in the last two decades. Leaders at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) saw the need for greater research, workforce training and programming to ensure the DFW Region is leading the way in future work.

In 2015, UTD created the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication (ATEC) to engage artists, designers, scientists, researchers and reflective practitioners across multiple disciplines in collaborative activities to create new knowledge, explore the expressive possibilities and assess the cultural impact of emerging technologies.

“Our goal in ATEC is to encourage students to think complexly about technology, about culture and about the many ways in which the two are inextricably entangled,” says Dr. Anne Balsamo, dean of the school, Arts and Technology Distinguished University Chair, and Arts and Humanities Distinguished Chair, on the program website.

Students, faculty and researchers collaborate on Intentional Future-Making through the creation of new cultural forms, the design of new technological experiences and the transformation of the culture industries. The cross-discipline work at ATEC has already created recognized technological advances.

The Center for Modeling and Simulation and the Virtual Humans and Synthetic Societies Lab, both led by ATEC professor Dr. Marjorie Zielke, have developed an emotive “Virtual Reality Patient,” in conjunction with Southwestern Medical Foundation, that medical students are able to use to improve patient communication skills. The center also has received a clinical trial planning grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore virtual reality graded exposure therapy for those with chronic back pain.

ATEC’s success with 3D VR gained notoriety and created opportunities for partnerships and grants from top national intelligence organizations. The First Person Cultural Trainer project teaches soldiers the values and norms of Iraqi and Afghan cultures, develops the Army’s soldier and civilian leaders, and is supported and sponsored by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command G-2 Intelligence Support Activity.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

SMU’S BUDD CENTER AND FIDELITY INVESTMENTS TEAM UP TO DECIPHER DATA

Identifying a dip in grades before it’s too late can make a difference in a student’s future.

A collaboration between the Budd Center at SMU Simmons School of Education and Human Development and more than 10 Fidelity Investments data analysts brought education and data experts together to crunch numbers and better inform educators of academic performance.

Regina Nippert, executive director of the Budd Center, has worked with over 30 nonprofits and 13 schools in West Dallas, a transitional, industrial area west of downtown Dallas, since 2007. The Budd Center is charged with bringing West Dallas schools and nonprofits to one table, where they share information and collaborate to improve educational outcomes for West Dallas students. Part of what they do is analyze data, identify students who are at risk and implement effective strategies to meet the students’ needs.

“We get the data from Dallas ISD,” Nippert said in a recent interview. “But it takes 50 hours every six weeks to take this data and crunch it back down into meaningful information.”
One of the Budd Center partners, Readers 2 Leaders, helps Dallas ISD students ages 3 to 12 who are not reading at grade level. The nonprofit offers in-school tutoring, an after-school program, summer camps and parent education programs.

“We have the student data that comes in a spreadsheet with hundreds of columns and rows,” says Lisa Dickerson, Readers 2 Leaders vice president of programs. “It is very hard to read and understand. Without the data, however, we do not know if our work is truly making a difference to that child.”

In 2018, the Budd Center was accepted as one of the organizations Fidelity Investments helps in its annual one-day Technology Impact Day. Fidelity analysts teamed up with the Budd Center and its nonprofit partners to devise user-friendly ways to interpret student data, such as grades, attendance, behavior, reading progress and test scores.

After Technology Impact Day, both the Budd Center and Fidelity agreed more collaboration was needed to develop a user-friendly dashboard of student data. With the help of SMU’s Office of Information Technology, Fidelity and the Budd Center undertook a four-month project to streamline the way student data was transmitted and presented to its nonprofit partners.

The project created and launched a user-friendly student data dashboard for the Budd Center’s nonprofit partners. The dashboard enables the nonprofit partners to track students’ progress and quickly respond to reading challenges, slipping grades or absenteeism with research-based interventions. The ease of using a dashboard enables nonprofit professionals and educators to spend more time working with the students and less time trying to translate complex documents.

Now the Budd Center is developing training modules and materials to share how to make student data more user-friendly with other communities and nonprofit organizations.

“We are finding that better use of the student information database is really shifting the dial of our collaboration with our nonprofit partners,” says Dana Stoltz Gray, the Budd Center’s director of community collaboration and evaluation. “They are very intentional about engaging in successful, evidence-based programs.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

These DFW schools are changing our perception of liberal arts institutions

AUSTIN COLLEGE

“Austin College is a small liberal arts college where big things happen,” writes Austin College President Steven O’Day in a letter from the president’s office. “Since 1849, Austin College has maintained an unwavering commitment to the transformative power of education, not only for the individual but for our communities and our world. We are committed to the breadth of a liberal arts education and equipping students with the ability to think critically and [problem-solve] and communicate effectively so that they can succeed today and in the rapidly changing world of the future.”

Located about an hour north of downtown Dallas, Sherman, Texas, is home to one of the premier liberal arts colleges in the Lone Star State. Liberal arts colleges differ from the traditional two- or four-year higher education institutions by being smaller in size and focusing on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. The liberal arts college model believes that while graduates have different majors of study, developing intellectual and leadership capacities with broad general knowledge creates well-rounded students ready to take on leadership roles in any discipline.

But don’t let the word ‘arts’ in Austin College’s description fool you — Austin College is home to excellent STEM programs and touts a 90% acceptance rate for students applying to health science professional schools. The difference at Austin College is the approach to rigorous academics supported by individual attention, one-to-one faculty mentoring, and access to academic resources, as well as internships and the opportunity for undergraduates to conduct research alongside faculty. National recognition by the awarding of prestigious grants includes the $1.2 million Noyce grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for STEM education and an additional $650,000 granted from the NSF for the “ACCESS” (Austin College’s Career-Empowering STEM Scholars) program for academically talented and financially needy students majoring in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics in preparation for STEM careers.

Austin College is a historical liberal arts college that has built on already innovative students, faculty and staff to blend an old model with the new demands of technology and industry — educating lifelong learners who are ready to take on the challenges of the growing DFW Region.

UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS

With a liberal arts core curriculum that builds on real-world business- savvy courses, the University of Dallas (UD) has created a “secret sauce” in cultivating the next brilliant minds in business and the liberal arts.

First founded as a small Catholic university in 1910, UD has grown with the DFW Region. As more Fortune 500 companies relocated their headquarters to DFW, UD met the call and created a stand-alone business school — outside of the traditional undergraduate liberal arts programs — to meet the needs of the top-tier businesses relocating to the Irving-Las Colinas and Dallas areas. The Satish & Yasmin Gupta College of Business, officially named in 2013 with a $12 million donation from the Guptas (UD Graduate School of Management alumni), offers numerous business degree programs for undergraduate and graduate students. The college is also designated a Center of Academic Excellence by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security for Cybersecurity. Program offerings include Doctor of Business Administration (the only one in Texas), Master of Business Administration and Master of Science degrees in accounting, business analytics, cybersecurity, finance, and information and technology management, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in business.

While the business school has garnered national recognition, the academic rigor and mission-driven core curriculum are what make the institution stand out in the DFW Region. UD holds one of the nation’s highest percentages of National Merit Scholars enrolled, as compared to other Catholic colleges and universities. All undergraduates participate in the nationally recognized Core Curriculum, a two-year, 60-credit sequence of classes focused on the Great Books of Western literature and culture. The intentionally designed student-faculty ratio of 10:1 means that Core classes are kept small, allowing students to participate in thoughtful, meaningful dialogue with their peers and their professors, both in and out of the classroom.

UD is modeling how a historic liberals arts college can build on core values to create market-driven courses in business, cybersecurity and IT that ensure its students are filling the needs of regional employers and earning a high postgraduate wage.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

UNT Dallas, Texas A&M University Challenge Law School Status Quo

Part of higher education’s purpose is to meet the needs of the surrounding community, whether that be businesses, students, parents or the public at large. In DFW, two universities listened to their communities to create law schools with innovative programs that reflect the communities they serve. The University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law (UNT Dallas) is recognized as the third-most diverse law school in America, with a strong emphasis on client advocacy and legal public service to the surrounding community. Texas A&M University, meanwhile, has grown a school of law providing diverse learning opportunities through cutting-edge clinics and training in intellectual property, energy, health care, and other key areas of study, all while going from unranked, to a top-60 law school in six years.

Why do we need another law school?

In a region that is home to top-tier public institutions and the highly ranked, private Dedman School of Law at SMU, many were skeptical when state Sen. Royce West, former state Rep. Dan Branch, and then UNT System Chancellor Lee Jackson announced the drive to create the UNT Dallas College of Law. The number of law school applications had been declining since 2011 nationally, according to the Law School Admission Council. The number of first-year law students had dropped dramatically, due to rising tuition costs and a perceived lack of legal jobs. Even still, the founders of the UNT Dallas College of Law argued that it was the perfect time to open a new school — one that didn’t replicate what was already being done. The UNT Dallas College of Law trains attorneys who will go back to their communities to provide legal services that many people can’t afford. The cost of law school has contributed to what Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht warns is a dangerous, widening justice gap. “See, we’re at a strange place,” Hecht says in a D Magazine article. “We have lots of lawyers looking for jobs, and we have lots of people
who need lawyers. But they can’t get together because of the cost.”

UNT Dallas College of Law believes that it can churn out a new crop of attorneys, less driven by debt, more driven by purpose.

Since its founding in 2014, UNT Dallas College of Law has designed every element of the school — admissions, coursework, experiential learning opportunities and the student population — around its mission to promote justice and to advance human potential through the enterprise of legal education. From the community-centric clinics for students housed in the south and southern Dallas area to meeting future clients in their homes to utilizing virtual reality in order to create crime scenes to learn how to interpret evidence, UNT Dallas College of Law is fulfilling its mission to be a different kind of law school. Named among the 20 Most Innovative Law Schools by PreLaw, a National Jurist publication, UNT Dallas College of Law is living up to the recognition.

New, Ambitious and Entrepreneurial

From the outside, the Texas A&M School of Law looks the same as it did six years ago, when it was Texas Wesleyan Law School: a two-story block of faded brown concrete in downtown Fort Worth. But inside, the school has gone from unranked to one of the top 60 in the country, hiring top new professors, improving job placement numbers and putting itself on par with longstanding law schools in the state.

“Texas A&M is an incredibly ambitious university,” former Interim Dean Thomas Mitchell told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “So when they acquired a law school that was unranked, that was not the end goal — just to have a law school. It was to have an outstanding law school.”

Leaders at the Texas A&M School of Law — which was acquired from Texas Wesleyan University in 2013 — aren’t preoccupied with rankings. Instead, they have focused on recruiting a strong and diverse student body and providing their students with the skills necessary to navigate new and established areas of legal practice. From the Entrepreneurship Clinic and the Medical/Legal Partnership with Cook Children’s Hospital, to the Patent Clinic and the Trademark & Copyright Clinic, students serve and engage the community, even as they develop their capacity to succeed as lawyers and leaders. Students can even experience global lawyering, through field study courses in Cambodia, Ghana, Mexico, Scotland and other countries.

In accepting the job of dean of the Texas A&M School of Law, Robert B. Ahdieh said, “I believe no law school in the country has traveled further, in so short a time. Nor does any have more upside potential, going forward.”

Top priorities for the Texas A&M School of Law in the coming years include continuing to build a world-class faculty; ensuring that faculty have the resources necessary to produce research of consequence and significance; extending the audience for a Texas A&M legal education beyond students seeking a three-year Juris Doctor, including through fast-growing non-lawyer programs; and enhancing the scope of the law school’s external engagement through outreach to the community, graduates and colleagues in legal academia.

Combined, the UNT Dallas College of Law and the Texas A&M School of Law are changing the landscape of legal education — not just in the region but at the national level.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

Two-day competition that’s launched 160+ companies

Each year, students from across the globe travel to Texas Christian University’s (TCU) Richards Barrentine Values and Ventures^© Competition to pitch ideas for conscious capitalism ventures that turn a profit while solving a problem.

It’s like Shark Tank but with a heart.

The two-day competition, annually presented by the TCU Neeley Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, produces nine winners, three special-place awards and six awards for the Elevator Pitch, with prizes ranging from $500 to the grand prize of $100,000 to launch companies. Since its inception in 2010, more than $1.2 million in sponsorships and in-kind support and $600,000 in cash prizes have been awarded to more than 138 competing universities. From the competition, 160-plus companies have been launched; 66 are fully operational.

Winning companies include innovative practices such as Spring Back Recycling, which employs disenfranchised and homeless people to deconstruct and recycle mattresses to reduce waste, W.E. Do Good, which provides a low-cost, human-powered machine to improve agronomic practices and reduce poverty in Ethopia and other countries, and the most recent winner, Celise, which produces biodegradable alternatives to plasticware and straws made with cornstarch and almost identical in feel and performance as plastic.

“A lot of people think business ideas are just about making money, but there are a lot of us out there that want to do a lot more than that. We want to make more than money; we want to make a difference … With the Values and Ventures Competition at TCU, you do well by doing good,” says a TCU student in a video describing the competition.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

Connecting Research & Innovation in Dallas-Fort Worth

Founded in 2014 by four Chambers in the DFW Region, the Texas Research Alliance (TRA) is a not-for-profit that builds industry, government and university research and innovation partnerships. There is no cost for TRA’s assistance to find the key regional partners to help meet your research and innovation challenges.

TRA projects have included recruiting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Federal Statistical Research Data Center to the DFW Region; partnering on the City of Dallas’ smart-city initiative; connecting companies with key researchers at area universities; and developing a long-term strategy to build DFW resources in defense, health care, education and information technology.

Industry Outreach

Objective: Meet industry research and innovation needs through partnerships with small to midsized businesses and universities.
Process: Work with each company, fully understand its research and innovation needs and convey them, in nonproprietary formats, to qualified growth/startup companies and university faculty.

Note: This can be done under nondisclosure agreements (NDA) with TRA or through TRA-facilitated interaction between the company and qualified small TRA companies and university faculty.

Project Development

Objective: Identify, qualify and engage regional resources that meet industry research and innovation needs.

Process: Identify and engage members of the growth/startup communities and universities with the staff/faculty, facilities and desire to meet the need of the regional industry partners. Bring the research and innovation providers together with the industry champions for assessment and engagement.

Consider a Capstone Partnership

The Region has a highly successful national model of best practices at UTD and UNT. This low-cost, defined company-university introduction provides IP protection, interdisciplinary student teams and high success rates. Contact the Texas Research Alliance for more information.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

How the DRC partners with higher education leaders.

It’s 7:30 a.m. on a cold fall morning. The university presidents and chancellors of the largest regional colleges and universities in Dallas-Fort Worth sit in a meeting room at the Dallas Regional Chamber (DRC). It’s one of the quarterly meetings of the University CEO Council, a council facilitated by the DRC that brings together regional higher education leaders to discuss pressing higher education issues in the region and ways to collaborate.

It’s no surprise that when the outgoing chairwoman, Dr. Carine Feyten, chancellor of Texas Woman’s University, arrives, she is greeted with handshakes, smiles and a familiar feeling. DFW higher education leaders not only work together, but they share a strong mutual interest in student success that bonds them beyond their institutions. It’s an energy that is clear in every Council meeting. While during today’s meeting the Council is discussing how to create a regional approach to ease students’ transfer of college credit between institutions, the Council is no stranger to taking on bigger projects. Each year, in partnership with the DRC, the Council collectively weighs in on state legislative issues, participates in a State of Higher Education event with more than 300 business leaders, and finds innovative ways the higher education community and industry can better work together. The inaugural DRC Higher Education Review was the brainchild of the University CEO (UCEO) Council, after DRC members noticed that the full story of higher education in the DFW Region wasn’t being told. “This is higher education in 2020. Working together with current and potential new partners, we are creating the workforce of tomorrow today. The future is now for DFW,” says incoming UCEO Council chair Lesa Roe, chancellor of the University of North Texas System.

The UCEO Council just scratches the surface of collaboration between institutions in DFW. Combined efforts by the region’s institutions of higher education is proof of the priority of partnership.

A Louder Voice at the CAPITOL

As each legislative session begins, the flurry of visitors flooding the capitol advocating for change, opportunity and new policies is unmistakable. DFW higher education institutions are no stranger to this biannual tradition, employing institutional government relations staff and advisors to work with state legislators on higher education funding, research and policy improvements. It became clear, through the UCEO Council, that while each institution’s voice was valued in the capitol, the voice of higher education in DFW would be stronger combined. Initially, the work began as simply drafting a list of priorities that regional higher education and business leaders agreed upon for each session and has grown into a working coalition advocating in Austin under one unified voice. This strategy has paid off for DFW. Their influence in Austin has grown. They have seen improved transfer and articulation policies, increased funding for research and funding for capital building projects on campuses.

Let’s Build This for Everyone

Students, parents and educators have always known the difficulties of students transferring between community colleges and four-year universities. “Trying to navigate what credits transfer, what applies to a degree program and who offers the best scholarships for transfer students is confusing and exhausting,” says DRC senior vice president, education & workforce, Drexell Owusu. “When education leaders can come together to make systems easier for students, businesses also win by getting their talent quicker and with less student debt.” The issue of transfer and articulation has taken on the best of collaboration in the region, including a formal consortia, legislative advocacy and advances in technology.

Created more than a decade ago, the North Texas Community College Consortium’s mission is to provide high-quality, low-cost, close-to-home professional development opportunities for its community college members. What started as a regional networking organization has grown into the creation of the North Texas Regional Transfer Collaborative. The collaborative brings together community colleges and public and private universities across the region to create common templates and guided pathways for students to use in the college advising process. The consortium was the first in the region with diverse institutions coming together and agreeing on pathways for students, making it easier for students to complete college and enter the workforce.

Best Practices, Best Outcomes

“Having time carved out of my month to hear from experts in my field and guest speakers who bring light to the realities of the labor market all while networking with my peers is truly invaluable to my work,” says Keri Burns, director of the University of Texas at Dallas University Career Center. “We understand that we are better together, and applying best practices from other institutions helps all students get a good job after graduation.” Burns is talking about her time with the Metroplex Area Consortium of Career Centers (MAC3), a group of 12 DFW Region community colleges and universities joining forces to enhance career services and job opportunities for students. Since its founding in 1994, MAC3 has held joint job fairs, hosted national conferences, connected with employers for site visits and analyzed labor-market information to better translate the talent connections between students and employers.

The Future of Together

The strength of the DFW Region lies in its diversity — economically, demographically and in higher education offerings. Over the past 10 years, leaders in the region have witnessed the fruits of their labor through collaboration and partnership. Now is the time to look to the future and build on best practices that create optimal outcomes for students, institutions and the workforce. Future projects include a downtown Dallas hub that will physically co-locate K-12, community colleges, four-year universities and businesses to build an innovation center focused on aligning workforce needs and student outcomes; a new blockchain technology that enables student credentials to be sent with a touch of a button; and creating lasting private-public partnerships (3Ps) with multiple institutional partners.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

DFW higher education reflects the region’s economic growth and diversity

When roughly 380,000 postsecondary students return to school every fall in DFW, it’s no front-page news, as it might be in Austin or Columbus, Ohio. Make no mistake — Dallas-Fort Worth is no typical college town; yet, aspiring engineers, doctors, architects and scientists are flocking here because of our diverse higher education institutions and the job opportunities that follow.

Nearly 70+ institutions are spread across more than 200 cities that comprise the DFW Region.

“DFW has among the most diverse, growing economies in the United States,” says Dale Petroskey, president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber, citing the most recent Moody’s Diversity Index. “The region’s higher education scene reflects that.”

That diversity fuels opportunities that might not happen in other metros across the United States.

The typical higher education path of a DFW Region student doesn’t travel from the classroom to a standing desk or to a product team. Long before many graduate, students in DFW are engaging in design thinking, pitching their ideas for new startups and collaborating with major companies on real-world problems.

Where else would students collaborate with the Dallas Cowboys while earning sports-management MBAs? Enroll in a law school geared toward helping secure legal services for all socioeconomic statuses? Receive an anthropology degree and move on to help give Amazon’s Alexa her personality?

Those experiences lead to jobs. Nearly three-fourths of these students will stay and start careers here, providing the talent that propels Amazon, State Farm, courtrooms, health care facilities and other institutions that require the skills of advanced degree holders.

Growing Population, Growing Enrollments

More than 7.5 million people live in the DFW Region, which is increasing at a rate of about 361 people per day.

That population increase partially explains the growth in higher education: Over the past 10 years, enrollment increased, on average, more than 3% annually, according to the most recent data from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. That’s quadruple the national 0.8% annual growth rate.

Likely fueling the growth are both the quality of educational institutions and corporate relocations/expansions to the DFW Region, says a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“The area still attracts business and financial services companies, which have reached a critical mass and can draw on a network of necessary support services,” writes the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its study, At the Heart of Texas. “Overall growth is buoyed by a well-educated population, a competitive cost structure and the U.S. economy’s strength.”

Collision-Driven Education System

Because universities, colleges and schools are located in population centers across DFW, collisions with hungry and innovative organizations in their orbits are almost inevitable.

It explains how economist and SMU data analyst Tom Fomby can bump into a UT Southwestern faculty member at a university mixer and then collaborate to develop a way to predict and prevent West Nile Virus outbreaks. It explains how a couple of NASA representatives might land at Texas Woman’s University (TWU) one day and suggest that they consider competing in the Texas Space Grant Consortium (six TWU students did and walked away with first prize, on their first try). It explains how, 50 years ago, Texas Instruments could launch the precursor to the University of Texas at Dallas to ensure a steady flow of educated, creative professionals.

These collisions — intended or unintended — are what helped make DFW what it is today.

Working for the Workforce

Just as the visionaries of yesterday, who pushed to create what are now the region’s three Carnegie-classified tier 1 research institutions, today’s leaders are looking toward the future, looking at how they can meet the needs of future students and employers.

A new collaborative hub is being created, further uniting universities with employers to give prospective workers the skills they need.

In spring 2019, Dallas County voters approved the sale of a $1.1 billion bond, about half of which will build Dallas College’s state-of-the-art education and innovation hub in downtown Dallas.

This follows the 2017 launch of the Dallas County Promise, which guarantees a postsecondary degree at no cost to high school students across 11 public school districts in the county.

Collin College, meanwhile, is slated to open its $179 million, 340,000-square-foot Collin College Technical Campus in fall 2020. That facility will serve more than 4,000 students and will offer degrees and certificates ranging from architecture and construction to engineering technology and manufacturing.

West of Dallas, Tarrant County voters passed an $825 million bond proposal to improve, renovate and enhance workforce technology across the six Tarrant County College campuses.

The planned enhancements align with education and training that match local jobs, career opportunities and interests of the regional economy.

Creating Something Bigger, Together

“The theoretical nature of higher education often creates natural partnerships with cutting-edge industries,” says Dr. Victor Fishman, executive director of the Texas Research Alliance. “The inverse is true as well.”

Adds Fishman: “The translation into curriculum of research at the frontiers of science, technology, engineering, math and management makes higher education institutions ideal partners for problem-solving across all industries.”

Because the DFW Region is no typical college town or company town — where no single institution dominates the economy —entrepreneurs, business leaders and academics have connected organically to create something bigger.

In the pages that follow, we highlight how the region’s individual institutions of higher education combine to attract the highest-quality students and companies, allowing the region to compete at a global level.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

IT’S ONE OF THE MOST ADVANCED, IMMERSIVE FORMS OF INSTRUCTION AVAILABLE IN MODERN MEDICINE

More than 2.5 million lives have been saved since the first CPR training manikin — known as Rescue Annie — came into use in 1960.

Fast-forward to 2020, where the UT Southwestern Simulation Center is using cutting-edge technology and advanced teaching methods to train thousands in a host of life-saving skills and medical procedures.

Since its opening at the end of 2018, the 49,000-square-foot center has provided more than 16,000 interactive training sessions, in a variety of health care environments, such as in-patient visits, operating rooms, clinics, trauma centers and intensive care units.

The facility — one of the largest medical simulation centers in the United States — has become a regional hub for training health care professionals and students. Among them are roughly 1,400 residents and fellows, 1,000 medical students and about 150 students from the UT Southwestern School of Health Professions.

The center offers one of the most advanced, immersive forms of instruction available in modern medicine: high-fidelity patient simulation (HFS). HFS incorporates human behavior and anatomical functions into manikins, such as crying and secretions from the eyes, ears and mouth, and can even respond to medical care, such as chest compressions and defibrillation. HFS spaces at the center include an emergency room, an intensive care room, and a labor and delivery room. Other simulation areas include two large operating room suites, three robotic-surgery-training spaces, a laparoscopic training and suturing lab, and 20 patient exam rooms.

“There was a vision by UT Southwestern Medical Center to create a state-of-the-art center, which would be a resource for all learners, trainees and employees, promote best-practice education, inter-professional activities and focus [on] better patient care,” says Dr. Daniel Scott, Director of the UT Southwestern SIM Center, describing what spurred the center’s creation.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

The DFW Region is consistently first in the country in job growth and holds the greatest share of Texas students enrolled in higher education in Texas. Spending in higher education isn’t just about investing in students, families, and workforce — it’s about strengthening the region’s economy by investing in DFW’s intellectual capital. Legislative support and investment in higher education have a ripple effect on economic growth in construction, research and additional business activity in DFW.

That ripple effect is growing. The Texas Legislature has stepped up to the challenge by investing over $2 billion in North Texas higher education, a 6% increase from the last session. This investment doesn’t include the additional $35 million for the Texas Research Incentive Program that uses state dollars to match private donations to a select number of research institutions, of which DFW has the greatest share of eligible institutions. As the next legislative session gears up, DFW legislators are passionate about improving the funding and student experience in higher education.

DFW students don’t just study in the region; they stay and work here. Roughly 72% of DFW students stay and work in the region after graduation, the sixth highest rate in the country. With bright students staying to work for leading companies, the growth of business in the region is undeniable.

The region is booming, both economically and in higher education enrollment growth (more than four times the national average). Additional resources are needed to sustain this growth. Looking ahead, business and higher education leaders are committed to working together as advocates for this economic growth. Increased funding, policy improvements and additional resources are needed to preserve DFW’s place as the intellectual capital of Texas.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

A broad look at the 70+ institutions that cover the region

More than 70 accredited universities and colleges cover the DFW landscape. Students, faculty and other academics are engaged in a wide range of work, from tackling core curricula to developing nanotechnology. The University of North Texas at Denton, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington are among Texas’ eight “emerging research” universities, expanding program capabilities and funding in pursuit of remaining at the top end of research institutions as defined by the Carnegie Classification methodology. UT Southwestern Medical Center, meanwhile, is among the nation’s best in biology and biochemistry research, boasting countless clinical breakthroughs and innovations, as well as six Nobel Laureates.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.