Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse gave a 'State of Texas State University” address at the recent State of Workforce & Education Summit 2023, hosted by the San Marcos Area Chamber of Commerce and the Greater San Marcos Partnership.
The speech highlighted some of the university's progress, achievements and future goals including the announcement of new investments in Research and Development as well as an expansion of the university’s doctoral program.
Damphousse began by reflecting on his first 14 months in San Marcos, expressing his affection for the city and its unique appeal to young individuals seeking vibrant communities.
He credited the city's allure in attracting both students and athletes to the university, first using the example of his daughter falling in love with San Marcos before mentioning its impact on recruiting.
“We're right in the middle, in many ways, of south Austin and north San Antonio,” Damphousse said. “[Head Football Coach G.J. Kinne] uses that to recruit student athletes. … He said it was the town that we live in. When we bring student athletes here, it's not just about the football stadium itself and the practice facilities and so on. It's about the city.”
Damphousse focused much of his 20-minute speech on fostering entrepreneurship and business innovation including the announcement of plans to double the size of the university's Star Park facility, a business incubator that supports research and helps nurture nascent businesses and entrepreneurs that spawn from that research.
The expansion aims to accommodate more startups and provide opportunities for students and staff to engage with these emerging enterprises. The ultimate goal is to promote economic growth and retain talents within the local community.
“We actually, probably need three times the space we have,” Damphousse said, adding “Our goal is to at least double it very quickly and then maybe beyond that as well. We want to partner and bring entrepreneurs and new businesses to the city, and we want to work with them when they get here providing opportunities for our faculty, staff and our students to engage with them, to become some of their first employees and to help them blossom and grow their enterprise. And then for their enterprise to eventually graduate from Star Park, and we don't want them living in Star Park forever. We want then to build a building somewhere and do something cool like what's happening with Hill Country Studios. We want to have huge facilities here and huge opportunities for our students who are graduating here to stay here.”
Damphousse discussed the university's efforts to support student teachers with scholarships, which includes paid student teaching positions at area districts like San Marcos CISD.
Damphousse said he and his wife are personally sponsoring one of the scholarships to allow for the in-person training in local school districts and encouraged others to do so as well.
“We're trying to create great opportunities for the teachers that we’re training in our university to stay here and to engage and build a life as a community as well,” Damphousse said.
He also highlighted the potential for partnerships with local businesses and organizations to utilize the new Victory Star program for student athletes to earn compensation for the use of their name, image or likeness.
Damphousse shared detailed statistics about the university's retention rates and graduation rates. He said that Texas State surpassed Texas A&M this year as the university to receive the most applications in the state of Texas.
“Students want to come here,” Damphousse said. “Last year, Texas A&M was number one, we were number two. This year we passed them. 37,000 high school students applied to come here this year, and that's amazing. We winnowed it down, and 8,000 of the best and brightest are coming here.”
He emphasized that despite the national trend of a significant percentage of freshmen dropping out after the first year, Texas State University has achieved 80% retention rate the last two years. That is up from Texas State’s traditional retention rate of around 75%, and well above the national average of around 65%.
One of the key objectives Damphousse shared was Texas State University's aspiration to attain the status of an Research1 institution, denoting top-tier research universities in the country, by 2027.
Texas State is well on the way to many of the metrics necessary to be considered an R1 institution.
He said Texas State expects to have around $140 million in research expenditures this year, but there are some areas that still need improvement including expanding the university’s doctoral programs.
“We don't have enough Ph.D. programs,” Damphousse said. “We only started having a Ph.D. program since 1996, and we only have 14 doctoral programs and only have 12 Ph.D. programs. We don’t have enough students graduate with a Ph.D. compared to other universities that are aspirational for us. Universities that are the same size as us like (University of North Texas), Texas Tech and Houston for example. They they have 39, 45 and 50 Ph.D. programs. So this year we got approval to submit 11 new Ph.D. doctoral programs to double the number of doctoral graduates at this university.”
