This academic year is a milestone for the university as
we celebrate the eightieth anniversary of our founding.
Anniversaries provide an excellent opportunity to see where
we have been, where we are, and where we want to go.
The autumn of 1927 saw 260 students enrolled—all from Houston.
This year, our enrollment of more than 34,360 comprises students from
around the world. The students and faculty during the first years of our
existence described UH as a bustling, crowded, and friendly institution
with earnest and ambitious students existing on marginal budgets. As the
saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Over the summer, we moved twenty-six mature oak trees from the
parking lot between the C.T. Bauer College of Business and the UH
Law Center and transplanted them down the middle of Calhoun Road
so that we could begin work on the largest construction project in our
school's history. When completed for the start of the 2009 academic
year, the $100 million Calhoun Lofts will be a mixed-use facility that
will house nearly 1,000 students majoring in professional disciplines.
It also will include classroom space, 10,000 square feet of retail space,
a fitness center, and a rooftop meeting room.
This project is part of our campus Master Plan that will
transform the look of the university over the next two
decades. You can find out more about the Master Plan
and watch some excellent videos, narrated by alumnus
Jim Nantz ('81) of CBS Sports, on our Web site at www.uh.edu/masterplan.
I also hope you will read this issue of The University
of Houston Magazine. Inside, you will learn more
about the people and programs that continue to make
your university Houston's university for the twenty-first
century.
John M. Rudley
Interim UH System Chancellor and Interim UH President
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