In the Know: Campus News

New Leadership Four the Future

They’ve been appointed and sworn in as new members of the University of Houston System Board of Regents.

“The governor has selected four outstanding Houstonians who are “real movers and shakers” for these important posts,” says Board of Regents Chair Welcome Wilson Sr. (’49) “They are respected statewide and have the intellect and enthusiasm that the UH System needs and deserves. I’m delighted to welcome them to the board.”

Nelda Blair (J.D. ’82), Jacob Monty (J.D. ’93), Mica Mosbacher, and Carroll Robertson Ray (J.D. ’02) have joined the ten-member governing body of the UH System, which includes UH, UH-Clear Lake, UH-Downtown, and UH-Victoria; two-institution teaching centers: UH System at Sugar Land and UH System at Cinco Ranch; and KUHT public television and KUHF public radio station.

“These new regents add to the engaged and energetic leadership we have on our board,” says Renu Khator, UH System chancellor and UH president. “I’m confident they have the vision to take the UH System to the next level of excellence. We are well-positioned to take bold new steps, largely due to the exceptional leadership and contributions of our retiring board members: Leroy Hermes (’66), Michael Cemo (’68), Raul Gonzalez (J.D. ’66), and Morgan Dunn O’Connor. I’d like to express my personal thanks and gratitude to each of them for their exceptional service.”

For more information about the UH System Board of Regents, visit www.houston.edu/regents.

A Family Gift

“The college changed my life,” says Nick Massad, a 1973 graduate who first learned of the Hilton College while working as a bellman at a Howard Johnson hotel in Arlington, Texas. “When I graduated, I always said that one day, I would give something back.”

And he kept his word.

The Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management received its largest gift ever from a source other than the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The Massad Family—Nick (’73), Vicki (Honorary ’03) , Nick II (’02), Margo (’03), and Taylor (’03)—presented the college with a $1.5 million gift that will significantly enhance its Library and Hospitality Industry Archives. Ironically, it was a $1.5 million donation from Conrad N. Hilton, which started the college in 1969. Additionally, the Massad Family also established a Massad Family Endowed Scholarship. Today, Nick Massad is president of American Liberty Hospitality, which develops, owns, and operates an extensive portfolio of hotels throughout the southwest United States. Vicki Massad serves as the company’s senior vice president.

Upon completion in August 2008, the 4,000-square-foot facility will be named the Massad Family Library and Hospitality Archives at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston.

The renovated facility will offer a venue for students to study, conduct research, and network as well as house personal and corporate archives from some of the hotel and restaurant industry’s most influential names.

An Entrepreneurial Spirit

It’s the largest and most rapidly growing program of its kind in the United States. And Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff (’53) believe in the program so much that they are committing their support and lending their name—The Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship.

“Cyvia and Melvyn believe in our vision of teaching our students to build businesses that suit their own interests, talents, and goals,” says Bauer College Dean Arthur V. Warga. “They’re committed to ensuring our entrepreneurship program’s growth and success.”

Melvyn Wolff ’s involvement with the Bauer College is longstanding. He’s president and chair of the College of Business Foundation and a member of the college’s Dean’s Executive Board.

In a recent Houston Chronicle interview, Melvyn Wolff explained his support of C.T. Bauer College of Business’ entrepreneurship program. “I thought it was underappreciated. I could see it growing within the university, but it didn’t have the image it deserved in the greater community. It really has the best chance of influencing the lives of its students.”

Decades of Honors

He built The Honors College from a small program in 1977 into an interdisciplinary college of 1,100 students. After more than thirty years, Ted Estess is stepping down from what he calls, “the best job on campus”—dean of The Honors College.

“I’ve been doing it so long, some of my colleagues are calling this an abdication,” Estess says, jokingly. “I’m not doing this because I’m disappointed or discouraged or even tired. I just have a strong sense that it’s time for a change.”

Provost Don Foss applauded Estess’ development of the university’s “outstanding honors community” into “one of the premier such organizations in the country.” Although Estess says he’s “still trying to get it right” after three decades, that’s not false modesty so much as an acknowledgment of the changing and challenging nature of building and maintaining such an ambitious operation.

As he prepares to leave the dean’s position, Estess looks forward to “more time for reading and writing and teaching,” but nevertheless is committed to continuing his relationship with The Honors College and supporting his successor. Estess, the Jane Morin Cizik Chair in Humanities, will remain on the Honors faculty as a professor of English.

“Our Honors College is the lever we have for academic excellence at the University of Houston,” he says, “and it’s my hope that the university will continue to use it that way.”

A search advisory committee will be named and a national search for Estess’ successor is planned for this spring.

News Bits...

• Barry Adams, a leader in the alumni relations field, has been chosen as Houston Alumni Organization’s president and CEO. Adams begins his new post April 1. For more HAO news, visit www.mycougarconnection.com.
  
  
• UH received a grant of up to $2.4 million from the National Math and Science Initiative to improve teacher education through its teachHouston program.
  
  
• Houston’s most famous homegrown retail name, Foley’s, has a new home at UH. Macy’s recently donated the store’s historical records to the Houston History Archives of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ Center for Public History and the Special Collections Department at the M.D. Anderson Library.