TAMIU Annual Report 2019

2019 Annual Report / AWORLDOF DIFFERENCE Message from the President/ DIFFERENCE On August 26, we officially kicked off our 50th Anniversary celebration with the ribbon-cutting for our newest building, the Academic InnovationCenter (AIC). TheAIC is amagnificent building that combines innovative teaching spaces with state of the art laboratories. We will have many more events throughout the next 12 months and I hope that you will join us. The late American author and philosopher Vernon Howard encouraged transformation when he wrote “the great solution to all human problems is individual transformation.” Indeed, as agents of learning, Universities accelerate that change fromone thing to another, and leadmetamorphosis. Since the establishment of the Texas A&I University at Laredo Center in 1970, we have been transforming the lives of the people of this community and region. This rang especially true 25 years agowhen Texas A&MInternational University (TAMIU) opened its doors as a four-year comprehensive University on a 300- acre campus. We nowhave over 29,000 successful alumni scattered all over the world, over 8,400 students, and sawour largest graduating class this past year. We have increased the number of Laredoans who have a Bachelor’s degree or higher by 58% in the past 20 years – higher than any other southTexas community. More impressively, the number of graduates with jobs or attending graduate/professional school one year after graduating outpaces the Texas average by nearly 10 %, putting us in the top 25 %. We continue to garner accolades for the quality of howwe prepare graduates – a transformational experience. For the third year in a row, we were recognized as among the best western regional universities by US News andWorld Report , and ranked among the tops in Texas. In four separate studies over the past three years, we have been ranked in the top 20nationally inupward incomemobility. Ten years after graduation, our graduates havemoved their income level from the bottom 40% to the top 40%, many going from near-poverty to The Power of Transformation