AUSTIN, Texas — President Jim Davis delivered a bold and hopeful vision for The University of Texas at Austin to sharpen its commitment to academic balance and renew public trust at a time when higher education leaders face a turbulent national landscape.
Delivering his inaugural State of the University Address after his investiture as the University’s 31st president, Davis declared UT is strong and ready to thrive as never before. Building on a foundation of teaching and research excellence, immense talent and tremendous public and private support, he presented a five-part charge to recommit to the University’s mission, emphasizing trust as the highest priority.
Davis first charged the campus to be a model of public trust. He recalled the words of UT’s 10th president, Harry Benedict, the only other full-time president who earned his bachelor’s degree from UT Austin: “Public confidence is the only real endowment of a state university.” Davis agreed.
“We recommit to our long-held and enduring values that we teach with intellectual honesty,” Davis said. “We honor the traditions of both academic freedom — and academic responsibility. And we will hold ourselves accountable to these standards.”
The second charge, preparing the next generation to thrive in a complex future, reaffirms teaching students to understand wisdom from the liberal arts in an era of technological advances.
“In a world of growing artificial intelligence, there has never been a more important time to develop human intelligence,” Davis said. “Our students are entering a critical and divisive world. We must prepare them to understand truth, beauty and goodness — foundational principles that are the promise of the arts and humanities.”
Davis noted that preparing students properly requires greater balance in the University’s curriculum. To achieve it, he called for a common foundational learning experience in a new core curriculum, to expand narrowly defined degree programs in which students encounter only one perspective, and to add important new areas of learning.
The third charge, investing in research and teaching at the frontiers of science, will combine UT’s global leadership across multiple fields to discover new vistas of knowledge and solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. As an example, Davis cited creation of a new shared focus on materials science to recruit world-class talent and accelerate success.
The fourth charge, building the UT Medical Center and expanding the University’s reach in academic medicine, will herald the hospital of the future. Beyond a place for treatment, Davis calls it “a living laboratory where every patient interaction drives discovery and where every breakthrough transforms medical practice.”
The Medical Center will unite UT’s Dell Medical School and MD Anderson Cancer Center’s world-class care with UT’s top-ranked strengths in engineering, natural sciences, nursing, pharmacy, and social work to produce new breakthroughs. It is scheduled to open in 2030.
Davis’ fifth charge, restoring the UT Tower for the first time since its opening in 1937, is scheduled for completion in 2027.
“The Tower is the great symbol of The University of Texas at Austin,” Davis said. “As much as the Tower has done for Longhorns, it’s our turn to take care of it. Just as we restore public trust, revitalize our academic mission, and reimagine our research and medicine missions, we will do the same for that great symbol of our University. We will restore, revitalize and reimagine the Tower.”
