A&M-Texarkana Expands to Meet Student and Industry Demands
Published Mar 16, 2009
The Ark-Tex region boasts a top-notch workforce, and one reason why is Texas A&M University-Texarkana, which continues to build programs as well as a new campus.
Founded in 1971 as part of the East Texas State University network, the Texarkana school joined the Texas A&M University System in 1996.
Housed in two buildings on the Texarkana College campus, A&M-Texarkana grew to serve a student population of 1,650 undergraduates and about 575 graduate students and needed larger facilities.
Thus, with a donation of 300 acres from the city of Texarkana, the vision for a new campus was born.
In 2006, Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst visited the acreage “and made it known publicly that it was, in his opinion, the best piece of land to develop a college campus that he had ever seen,” recalls Bob Bruggeman, A&M-Texarkana communications manager.
On the north side of the city at Bringle Lake, the scenic site is near a city park and across from the Texarkana Golf Ranch, an 18-hole championship track developed by renowned swing coach Hank Haney.
The Truman and Anita Arnold Foundation donated an additional 75 acres to A&M-Texarkana, bringing the new campus’ total acreage up to 375.
“This is a 20- to 25-year plan, and we’re building the campus to accommodate up to 10,000 students,” Bruggeman says.
While A&M-Texarkana today is primarily a commuter school drawing students from a 60-mile radius, the new campus eventually will offer dormitory housing. Already open is the campus’ first structure, the $17 million Science and Technology Building, accommodating the electrical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry programs.
In November 2008, ground was broken for the 183,000-square-foot Multipurpose Library Building. When it opens, probably in June 2010, nearly all the operations of the Texarkana College campus will move.
Bruggeman says the new facilities, including a classroom building in the planning stages, will allow for the university’s “downward expansion,” a term coined to describe the eventual addition of freshmen and sophomores. Currently, the university serves only juniors, seniors and graduate students. “We’re building our model to be a comprehensive university in the fall of 2010,” he says.
A&M-Texarkana now offers 20 baccalaureate programs and 15 graduate programs in three colleges: Arts & Sciences and Education, Health and Behavioral Sciences, and Business. The university has begun the process to establish a College of Engineering and add a mechanical engineering degree.
The university’s engineering emphasis is a direct response to community workforce needs. “The word that we got from our local industry was that they needed engineers, so that got us started,” Bruggeman says.
Yet A&M-Texarkana, traditionally at the table to assist economic development initiatives, took industry’s appeal a step further. Not only do its professors teach dual-enrollment engineering classes to high school seniors, but the university was instrumental in curriculum development for the Texarkana Independent School District’s Martha and Josh Morriss Mathematics & Engineering Elementary School, which integrates technical concepts even at the kindergarten level. “It’s been very successful, and it’s very unique,” Bruggeman says.
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