In a bill filed in the Texas senate on Monday, the University of Houston System could receive more than $380 million to fund the construction of several health sciences building.
S.B. No. 150, filed by the chairman of the Texas higher education committee and Amarillo Republican Kel Seliger, allocates $387,120,000 to the UH System for projects on all of its campuses. $90 million of that lump sum would go to UH’s main campus for “construction of a health and biomedical sciences center,” according to the bill’s text. UH-Clear Lake would receive $17,100,000 to build a health sciences and classroom building in Pearland, TX, and an additional $76,050,000 would be designated for a new STEM and classroom building.
$27,405,000 would be allocated for the UH System to construct an unspecified building located in Cinco Ranch.
The nature of the funding is indicative of the shift UH has been making since President and Chancellor Renu Khator’s arrival in 2007. Nearly a billion dollars has been funneled to UH for construction over the past four years, according to the Houston Chronicle; in her latest State of the University Address, Khator mentioned the possibility of a medical school at UH, calling it a “primary care, community-based medical school” that could be operational by 2020.
A total of nearly $3 billion would be given to numerous public universities in Texas, and nearly all of the proposed initiatives are geared towards either improving or adding STEM facilities to the schools.
