UTEP hits major milestone with top-tier research funding status

The University of Texas at El Paso is now among prestigious campuses across the country with top-tier research institution status, completing a long-held goal of President Diana Natalicio.

The R1 status is conferred by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to only 130 universities in the United States — a list that now includes UTEP.

UTEP's newest designation means the campus is a top-tier doctoral university with very high research activity. Carnegie measures this based on an institution's research expenditures, undergrad and graduate programs, and enrollment. 

Officials said UTEP grew its annual research expenditures from $6 million to $95 million over 30 years. UTEP also increased the number of doctoral degree offerings from one to 22. 

Natalicio, who announced her retirement from UTEP in May, has long been a proponent in getting UTEP to the highest tier of research institutions. 

"We've become a model for many other universities who are looking at us and asking, 'What's the secret sauce at UTEP that they're able to do this?' It's having confidence in the talent of people who have been written off as not college material for far too long," Natalicio said. 

More:UTEP President Diana Natalicio announces retirement from university she's led for 30 years

Natalicio said she repeatedly had been told that UTEP couldn't be both a top-tier research university and a Hispanic-serving institution. She said the R1 designation shows that UTEP never had to choose.

"Many universities have achieved this goal by being very guarded or competitive in terms of enrolling students at the front end," Natalicio said. "We believed, when we began this quest, that there were far more talented young people in this community than were getting credit for having the qualifications to study here."

There are several prestigious institutions with R1 status, including schools like Stanford, Yale, Harvard and MIT. 

UTEP is the only R1-status university along the Texas-Mexico border and is the ninth R1 institution in Texas. The others are Rice University, Texas A&M-College Station, Texas Tech University, UT Austin, UT Arlington, UT Dallas, the University of Houston and the University of North Texas.

There's no universal definition for what makes a university "Tier One," a designation often used to reference top-tier research institutions. There are several avenues a university can take to reach top-tier research status, one being the R1 designation by Carnegie. 

In 2009, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 51, which set up the National Research University Fund for the state's "emerging research universities," including UTEP, in a push to establish more top-tier research institutions in the state.

The fund distributes incentives to the universities each year based on benchmarks they hit in getting closer to reaching the top tier:

• Freshman class with high academic achievement
• Recognition of research capabilities
• High-quality faculty
• Commitment to high-quality graduate education

UTEP has not yet received funding from the fund, according to data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. In comparison, UT Arlington received $7.5 million from the fund in fiscal year 2018.

Former state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, who was on the Texas Legislature when H.B. 51 was approved, said UTEP needs to aim for capturing that state funding distributed through the National Research University Fund.

"That statute is laden with riches," Shapleigh said. "UTEP needs to qualify for that funding in order to pay for better researchers, more money, to receive higher grants."

Natalicio said this distinction will give UTEP a competitive edge when writing grant and funding proposals. She added that the R1 designation will appreciate the value of UTEP degrees and could help drive economic development in El Paso.

"We have to figure out how to make this achievement real for more people in the community," Natalicio said. "The way we do that is to cooperate in economic development and identify those ways in which we can partner to create jobs so that we don't export most of the people who get these degrees." 

Sara Sanchez can be reached at 546-6147; ssanchez@elpasotimes.com; @siempresarita on Twitter.