Progress

Highlights

• We lowered the percentage of first-year, full-time freshmen with GPAs below 2.0 from 18% in 2024 to 15.7% in 2025. This happened because there were 20% fewer failing grades. As a result, more students are able to keep their financial aid and stay in school.
• We provided more than $370,000 in special grants to 337 students to help them keep going or finish their degrees. 94% of these students successfully stayed enrolled or graduated.
• The average time to finish a degree dropped from 5.2 years in 2015 to 4.6 years in 2024. This saves students both time and money. Also, the average GPA of graduates went up from 2.99 for the 2013 group to 3.31 for the 2020 group.
• For Fall 2025, 99.3% of new first-year students who completed orientation signed up for full-time classes.

Initiatives Associated with Achieving Success

• We reorganized and merged offices to better promote student success, creating new groups like TXST Global and the Division of Student Success.
• We introduced TXST (EAB) Navigate, a new digital platform that helps students with academic advising, maps out degree plans, and uses data to identify and help students who might be at risk.
• We opened the One Stop center, making it easier for students to get help with registration, financial aid, and business services in one place.
• We added over 2,000 new on-campus beds so more first-year students and upperclassmen can live on campus.
• We started an early academic progress program, so students get their grades early in the semester. This helps us spot and support students who may be struggling before it’s too late.
• We launched Bobcats Bounce Back to provide quick support for students near or below a 2.0 GPA. After one-year, academic suspension dropped by 12.7%.
• We improved the New Student Orientation and Welcome Week, with over 80% of first-year students attending Welcome Week events.
• We created Experiential Major Maps for every major, which advising now uses to help students see both academic and outside-the-classroom opportunities. These are given to students at orientation.
• We expanded academic learning support so that now 80% of high-risk courses offer direct tutoring, learning assistance, or supplemental instruction. We also started offering online tutoring, which helped 135 students.

Planned Initiatives

• We’ll continue to improve academic advising and student support as our enrollment grows at all campus locations.
• The ATAIN project will use artificial intelligence to speed up how we evaluate transfer credits.
• We’re building more on-campus housing, including Richard A. Castro Hall, which will open in Fall 2025.
• We’re reviewing university policies and practices to better support students staying in school, including making sure that transfer credits are awarded quickly and fairly.
• We’ll review and try to simplify all degree plans, so it’s easier for students to progress and finish their degrees.
• We’re redesigning the required freshman seminar (US 1100) to help new students adjust to college and support both their academic and personal growth.