The past year has been full of changes to university policy, both in response to internal administrative action and new legislation passed by Texas. Since May this year, UTD has made six major policy updates, created five new policies and entirely retracted one policy covering everything from the university’s endowment, university governance, public art and excused absences.
Major new policies
The elimination of the Academic Senate effective Sep. 1, UTD’s transition into NCAA Division II and the completion of UTD’s $158 million art museum have all sparked new questions that university policy is now attempting to address.
UTDPP1127 is a policy that establishes a new committee in the Academic Senate tasked with making recommendations to UTD about how to improve promotion paths, contract lengths, workload, development opportunities and participation in shared governance for non-tenure track faculty. However, the policy is set to expire Sep. 1 because the Academic Senate will not continue existing past that date, unless approved by the UT System Board of Regents in compliance with SB 37. As of publication, the board has not approved any faculty senates within UT System schools.
Faculty senates are administrative bodies composed of university faculty that help create, review and revise policy while serving on various university-wide committees. As of publication, UTD has not announced a plan for dealing with the end of the Academic Senate or how its duties will be redistributed.
UTDPP1126 establishes a university-wide Public Art Collection Committee entirely independent of the Academic Senate. Its membership is appointed by the president and must include a practicing visual artist from the Bass school in addition to faculty, staff and students. The committee will develop and publish guidelines for acquiring and maintaining public art for UTD and deciding which campus areas count as public spaces for art. As of publication, no timeline has been given as to when new public art guidelines will go into effect.
Two policies have been developed to support UTD’s growing collegiate sports department. UTDPP1125 creates another university-wide standing committee independent of the Academic Senate that focuses on approving sports schedules, retaining student athletes long-term, communicating between UTD Athletics and academic departments, ensuring compliance with NCAA regulations and helping with the athletics department’s operations and finances. The seventeen-member committee will include four students, including one male and one female student athlete. UTDSP5018 creates a framework for official excused absences for university-sanctioned events. While primarily focused on student athletes missing class to compete, the new policy allows for excused absences for all university-sanctioned activities. The Vice Provost for Academic Success and Innovation, which as of June 2025 is a vacant position, will oversee the sanctioned absences.
Major policy updates
Many policy updates were about removing diversity-focused language in compliance with SB 17. For example, in UTDPP1096, which outlines university goals and the roles of the highest administrators, any mention of the former UT system policy UTS187 has been removed, specifically in reference to no longer requiring diverse presidential searches.
One of the most impactful updates is UTDPP1062, which gives the Honors College oversight over the hiring and evaluation of non-tenure faculty — a role previously only held by the deans of each respective school. In other words, instead of having to go through the NSM dean to hire a new non-tenure honors professor, the Honors College will now be able to handle the entire process.
UTDPP1122 now allows the public to see the evaluation questions used by UTD to evaluate non-academic administrators.
This is part of a series on major policy changes at UTD. The Retrograde will provide further updates as new information becomes available.