Texas faces a challenging and perhaps difficult future, education is a key to helping the state in the years to come and The Texas A&M University System can play a big part in that role, a top university official said recently at the Hispanic Network Summit.
Billy Hamilton, executive vice chancellor and chief financial officer of The Texas A&M University System, noted that Texas A&M is taking active steps to help educate more Hispanics in Texas and helping them earn a degree from Texas A&M through its new McAllen campus.
“We are building something special in South Texas and it will make education available to students who wish to get a degree from Texas A&M,” Hamilton told listeners at the annual summit meeting on campus.
“Engineering, nursing and public health will be key areas of study and we want to encourage and help students in South Texas to enroll and one day get a degree from Texas A&M. We are making a difference in the Rio Grande Valley, and the world is taking notice of us.”
Texas A&M recently completed a $40 million higher education center in McAllen “and it is a magnificent complex and designed to give bright students every opportunity to be successful. It has classrooms, great laboratories and an excellent student services program.
“We want to meet the educational needs of the Rio Grande Valley and know that students will value their degree from Texas A&M, which is the largest research university in the Southwest. We want to emphasize that the Texas A&M System is dedicated to the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas and we look forward to continuing to grow in the region.”
Hamilton added the new RELLIS campus is being created as a new type of an educational experience and once completed, will be a unique facility unlike any other in the state.
“We are offering an affordable 4-year degree at the RELLIS campus and just now have broken ground on a $42 million Academic Complex that will be capable of accommodating 2,500 students,” Hamilton said of the new facility set for a June 2019 completion.
“Our partnership with Blinn College will be a new venture in higher education.”
He noted the RELLIS campus will eventually offer degrees in business administration, criminal justice, public administration, health sciences, nursing and numerous others in affiliation with other universities in The Texas A&M System. In addition to the new Texas A&M System complex, an 83,000-square foot Blinn educational center is scheduled to open in August on the RELLIS campus, located at Texas Highway 21 and Texas Highway 47.
For more about the complex, go to https://rellis.tamus.edu/
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Media contact: Keith Randall, (979) 845-4644 or keith-randall@tamu.edu
