Dear Colleagues,

As the end of summer approaches, the return of our full student body to the Forty Acres is clearly in sight. One of our priorities continues to be helping students make the most of their experiences at our residential, world-class research University. You’ve seen a variety of efforts in support of this goal – including more live music, celebrating the eclipse, the West Campus Ambassadors program, and our move back to an in-person work environment.

Today, I want to highlight three initiatives that are important tools to provide a vibrant, inspirational campus experience by increasing access and affordability.

First, I am happy to report that we are expanding our commuter subsidy program for our staff. During this second year of the program, we are investing additional resources to both increase the amount of the subsidy and to provide this support to approximately 8,000 of our staff members. Our People & Talent unit will follow up with details, but I want to let everybody know of this effort to defray commuting costs for many of our valued colleagues who make the median income or less than the median income of our staff population.

Second, this is also year two of our program that subsidizes the cost of UT housing for our undergraduates with the greatest financial need. This year, we expect to provide housing scholarships to more than 3,300 students, with awards of up to $2,300 for the year.

Finally, we recently opened our new graduate student housing project on the east side of Interstate 35. This is the first new graduate housing project at UT in about 40 years, and it will provide more affordable housing close to campus – and a real sense of community – for more than 700 graduate students.

Taken together, these three initiatives will help our students live closer to campus and our staff be better able to support them as they thrive and succeed.

Thank you to so many of you who envisioned, structured and implemented these programs. On behalf of our students in particular, I am especially grateful.

Hook em!
Jay