Committee makes progress toward integration of UTSA and UT Health San Antonio

OCTOBER 11, 2024 — Editor’s note: The following message was sent via email from UTSA President Taylor Eighmy and UT Health San Antonio Acting President Robert Hromas to all faculty, staff and students.

In our last email, we outlined recent progress made by our Integrated Steering Committee, including updates on our new joint mission statement and the launch of four task forces. Today we’re writing to share the latest developments.

Our launched task forces and their working groups are progressing steadily toward their respective charges.

• Communications Task Force – Members are selecting a pre-qualified national branding agency partner to assist us with our world-class narrative, the development of a scope of work and research of best practices for integrated brands at peer institutions.  

• Brand & Marketing Task Force – Members are selecting a pre-qualified national branding agency partner to assist us with our world-class narrative, developing a scope of work and timelines and researching integrated brand best practices at peer institutions. 

• SACSCOC Accreditation Task Force – Members are presenting our new, combined mission statement through each institution's shared governance process and continually developing the prospectus for approval by the UT System Board of Regents and SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees.

• Health Education Accreditation Task Force – Members are reviewing and beginning to coordinate UT Health San Antonio’s multiple program-level accreditation requirements to ensure compliance through the merger.

We’ve identified aspirant peer institutions and are planning site visits and virtual interviews to assess their integration strategies and best practices.

Upon integration, our new set of aspirant peers will include institutions such as the University of California San Diego (UCSD), the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Washington, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC), the University of Michigan and Rutgers University. To help guide our integration strategies, members of the Integration Steering Committee will meet in-person and virtually with these institutions to better understand how they scaled for growth to learn best in class examples that will help guide our own path ahead.  

Based on feedback from the integration website, we’ve answered several new FAQs.
The following FAQs are now live on the website.

• What does SACSCOC accreditation mean?
• ​​​​​What’s included in Phase 1 of the integration timeline?
• Which institution’s name will appear on my diploma?

We need you to continue your great work to advance our positive momentum. As we’ve mentioned before, it is important for each of you to keep doing what you’re doing so that our individual successes can collectively carry us toward the future. Please continue with your current plans, goals, and strategies.

Thank you for your enthusiasm and engagement with the process so far. We look forward to your ongoing collaboration and support.