Dive Brief:
- Jay Hartzell, president of the University of Texas at Austin, plans to depart the selective public institution to lead Southern Methodist University.
- Hartzell will become Southern Methodist’s next president on June 1, the Texas private nonprofit said in a news release. Hartzell has led UT Austin since September 2020 and has been a faculty member there since 2001.
- Hartzell oversaw enrollment increases and increased philanthropic support at the state flagship, but his tenure was also marked by campus unrest and polarization.
Dive Insight:
When Hartzell joins Southern Methodist, he’ll be taking over a considerably smaller institution. The private university had 11,842 students in fall 2023, just over one-fifth of UT Austin’s 53,082 student headcount. Both have grown their enrollment modestly over the past five years, in contrast to many public and private universities around the U.S.
UT Austin is also part of a large and complex state higher education system that boasts the second-largest college endowment in the country — valued at $45 billion and second only to Harvard University in the latest data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund.
By contrast, Southern Methodist’s endowment stood at $2.1 billion in 2024 — by no means small, but dwarfed by the Texas system. The private university has a goal to raise $1.5 billion by 2028, and is currently 93% of the way.
In a message to the UT Austin campus, Hartzell rattled off a list of accomplishments during his time as president. Among them were “all-time highs in applications, enrollment, graduation rates, research expenditures, and philanthropic support.”
He also touted two new buildings, the renovation of “our most iconic building” (the tower at the center of campus) and investments in affordable housing for students, among other efforts.
Hartzell’s tenure was also marked by social turbulence at the Texas university. It faced a civil rights complaint filed in 2021 from a group of students over its anthem, “The Eyes of Texas,” which originated as a minstrel show song and which plaintiffs said created a hostile environment for Black students.
The song stayed in place under Hartzell, who made the decision as interim president in 2020 to keep it amid competing calls to remove and maintain the song. A committee tasked by Hartzell to study the song and its origins determined that the initial intent behind the song was not “overtly racist” but the cultural context surrounding it was.
Last year, UT Austin called in police to break up pro-Palestinian protests on its campus, a move that resulted in dozens of arrests and prompted hundreds of faculty to sign a letter of no confidence in Hartzell.
The UT system issued a relatively short statement about Hartzell’s departure thanking him “for his many contributions to UT over the past 24 years” and saying officials would work closely with him to “ensure a smooth transition.”
The system did not release details on plans to search for a new leader for UT Austin.
In a Southern Methodist release Tuesday, Hartzell praised his future employer’s “stellar — and rising — national reputation, decades of extraordinary internal and external leadership, strong board of trustees, accomplished alumni, and impressively strong and diverse students and faculty.”
