All campuses currently being invited to serve as a TUEE Collaboratory lead university are major, large universities that currently do not have the capacity to do so. However, by completing a basic regime of the start-up phase prior to Mid-August 2024, The University should achieve more than ample human capacity with financial contributions exceeding $800K from SCPs and their alums by the end of October 2024. In order to go forward with the full two-year project, it is essential for each lead University to successfully complete the basic regimen and establish at least four Strategic Partners by mid-August 2024.
There isn’t much time to get the program implemented to be ready for the 2024-2025 academic year. The TUEE leadership team will work with The University leadership team to develop an implementation plan that includes specific timelines for elements of implementation, identifying and recruiting Strategic Corporate Partners, and establishing action councils.
It is anticipated that Texas State University (San Marcos, TX) will be the lead University to implement the TUEE Collaboratory model and to be a lead for the Gulf Southwest regional Collaboratory. It is also anticipated that they will complete the basic regimen and establish the four action councils while establishing at least two founding Strategic Corporate Partners prior to June 17, 2024.
It is suggested that at the beginning of the Start-Up Phase, each lead university candidate would establish at least one founding Strategic Corporate Partner (SCP) by mid-June. Four SCPs should be established by mid-August then scaled to 8-10 by mid-October. The founding SCPs would be major companies with headquarters or large local operations that employ several hundred The University practicing professional alums and recent retirees (These data may be sourced from alumni registered with LinkedIn.) By the inaugural Day on Campus with Strategic Corporate Partners event in November 2024.
This large alumni pool represents an immediately identifiable source of significant potential financial resources (including corporate matching) to The University for sustainable early-stage funding of this initiative (see the Strategic Corporate Partner Investment Guidelines). However, most importantly, such a huge human resource pool would support and complement campus administrators, faculty, and staff. This available cohort of practicing professionals would engage with students as coaches and mentors in a wide variety of projects and professional development activities throughout the undergraduate experience. As the number of SCPs is scaled after June 2026, it would increase to many companies/organizations of various types and sizes over the years, until it comes to represent the entire ecosystem of the university. This newly added process becomes an increasingly important source of additional financial and human resources for improving and scaling existing programs and the development of new sustainable programs into the future. The goal of such growth is that each student would be fully prepared with all required skill sets to enter their chosen career fields and excel in initial professional workplaces as practicing engineers and computer scientists.