People Who Care About Education

We’re Texas Campaign Eclipses Expectations

Thousands of alumni and friends of the UT College of Education took the opportunity of the We’re Texas Campaign to invest in the future of education.  The Campaign, which began in 1997 and concluded this past August, generated $26,600,666 for the research, instruction and service activities of the College.  This was a remarkable 190% of the College’s original Campaign goal of $14 million.  Donors supported The University as a whole to the tune of over $1.6 billion, the most ever raised in a campaign by a public university without a medical school component.

All of us at the College of Education are extremely grateful for the outpouring of support for our students, faculty and programs through the We’re Texas Campaign.  The generosity of so many has allowed the College to solidify its position among the premier institutions of education in the nation, and has set the stage for great strides ahead.

Endowed Excellence Funds

Several of the College of Education’s friends have recently found a way to address the shortage of vital discretionary funds by establishing named “Endowed Excellence Funds”.  Their Excellence Funds will serve as a continual resource to address the annual priorities that the College will set for generations to come.

Endowed Excellence Funds are endowments established with the purpose of providing unrestricted annual support to The University, a particular college, a department, or even a specific program.  An Endowed Excellence Fund can be established with as little as $25,000, the current minimum required, and can generate annual income in perpetuity. 

For example, if a caring individual wanted to provide general funding to target the most pressing priorities faced by the College’s teacher preparation program, he or she might create a named Endowed Excellence Fund in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.  The individual could identify the Chair of the Department as the administrator of the endowed Fund.

In this way, Endowed Excellence Funds will give UT presidents, deans, chairs and program directors the relatively flexible funding required to cope with the changes in circumstances they will face in the future.

Gone To Texas Academic Talent Recruiting Program

To aid in recruiting only the most outstanding new faculty and graduate students, we now have some wonderful business partners who care about education and are helping us to bring these candidates to Austin. Austin restaurants and hotels have provided us free meal certificates and room nights to use in showing our recruits the successes of our College, and the wonders of UT and Austin.

Gone To Texas partners in Austin include: the Marriott Hotel Downtown, the Hilton downtown, the Four Seasons, the Hyatt, the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Holiday Inn Town Lake, DoubleTree Guest Suites, Embassy Suites Downtown, Chuy’s Restaurants, Shady Grove Restaurant, Hula Hut Restaurant, Green Pastures Restaurant, Pappasito’s Restaurant, Pappadeux’s Restaurant, Curra’s Grills, and Joe’s Crab Shack.

The first immigrants to our state scratched "GTT" ("Gone To Texas") on their cabin doors to let their neighbors know where they had gone. We hope that our own GTT program might help just a bit to set off another wave of emigration to Texas among the best and brightest graduate students and faculty in the nation!

Recent Donors to the College of Education

Sue and Buz White
President’s Associates endowment providing unrestricted support to the deans of the College of Education and the School of Law

Janice and Ed Barger
President’s Associates endowment providing unrestricted support to the deans of the College of Education and the College of Engineering

Jan and Terry Todd
Donation of the David P. Willoughby Collection of sports materials and memorabilia to the Todd-McLean Physical Culture Collection in the Department of Kinesiology & Health Education

Lumina Foundation
$130,000 as the first installment on its $1.8 million Community College Leadership Program grant project, “Achieving the Dream”