2006 Annual Meeting
From the Chancellor
I am particularly looking forward to meeting with you in March in my former stomping grounds. We’ll get to visit the folks at two of my current employers, Baylor College of Dentistry (part of the Texas A&M Health Science Center) and Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Each has a fascinating history and an exciting vision for the future.
Baylor College of Dentistry has been a member of the A&M System for only a decade, but just celebrated its centennial anniversary. The celebration will culminate early this year with the dedication of a Texas Historical Marker on the campus, three miles east of the college’s original site. Enrollment at BCD exceeds 500 and more than 8,000 dentists and dental hygienists call the college their alma mater. In case any of you are longing for the good old days, I’d like to point out that until 1967, dental hygiene students were required to wash and starch their 100 percent cotton uniforms until they could stand up by themselves, a process that took about three hours.
About an hour up the road, A&M-Commerce is doing great things for North Texas. A&M-Commerce is one of the oldest public institutions of higher education in the state and a leader in education, producing more public school principals than any other university in Texas. Did you know that one professor there is an advisor to “Sesame Street?” The university also offered the state’s first bachelor’s degree in computer science and has outstanding programs in business and media/journalism. We’ll visit with President McFarland and students on our campus tour.
We’ll have lots more to do, with dinner at the Frontiers of Flight Museum (where football legend and Regent Gene Stallings is our speaker) and at Eddie Deen’s ranch, where we will dance the Texas Two-Step. We’ll also have a tour of the agricultural research and extension center in Dallas.
Isn’t that an exciting schedule for a three-day visit? I’m looking forward to seeing each of you in Big D.
