The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (Coordinating Board) adopts new §§15.40 - 15.44 related to National Research Universities. Section 15.42 and §15.43 are being adopted with changes to the proposed text as published in the November 19, 2010, issue of the Texas Register (35 TexReg 10126) and §§15.40, 15.41 and 15.44 are being adopted without changes. This subchapter establishes rules for eligible institutions to receive funds under the National Research University Fund, which is established to support emerging research universities to achieve national prominence as major research universities. Authority for these rules is provided by Texas Education Code §§62.145 - 62.146, which directs the Coordinating Board to adopt standards for the purposes of determining an institution's eligibility for funding from the National Research University Fund and authorizes the Board to adopt rules for the standard methods of accounting and standard methods of reporting information for the purpose of determining eligibility of institutions to receive funds under the National Research University Fund (NRUF).

The following comments were received regarding the new sections:

Comment: Texas Tech University (TTU) and University of Houston (UH) recommended that the rules specifically reference the definitions of "restricted funds" and "restricted research expenditures" as defined in Coordinating Board rule §13.122 relating to the Research Development Fund. Both institutions pointed out that the same calculation of restricted research expenditures should be applied to the National Research University Fund criterion.

Response: Staff agree and have clarified language in §15.42(13) and (14) to refer to §13.122 for the definitions of "restricted research" and "restricted research expenditures" and to §§13.123 - 13.127 for further elaboration on what may be included in reporting restricted research expenditures.

Comment: TTU recommended that the American Law Institute be added back to §15.43(b)(3)(E)(ii) relating to faculty awards.

Response: Staff agree and have made the change in §15.43(b)(3)(E)(ii).

Comment: TTU recommended that the Core Fulbright U.S. Scholars Programs be added back to §15.43(b)(3)(E)(ii) relating to faculty awards.

Response: No change is recommended. The foundation of a national research university is the research and creative accomplishments of faculty. The Fulbright program is awarded on the basis of teaching, as well as research and creative accomplishments.

Comment: UH recommended clarification of the definition of "endowment funds" to ensure that total endowment funds, including both true and term and quasi endowment funds as reported to the Coordinating Board, be used for the purposes of NRUF.

Response: Staff agree and have added "total" to the definition of "endowment funds" in §15.42(5).

Comment: UH recommended that the sentence referencing the Federal TRIO programs and the McNair Scholars program in §15.43 be removed. UH noted that these programs are not the only types of activities that can be used to demonstrate commitment to improving the performance of underrepresented students and expressed concern that the programs explicitly cited as examples would be used as benchmarks.

Response: No change is recommended. The programs cited are only examples and other activities with similar goals will be considered.

Comment: The University of Texas System (UT System) recommended that in §15.43(b)(3)(F)(ii)(I) the word "admitted" be changed to "enrolled" in reference to the students whose GRE scores must be above national norms. The UT System indicated that using the scores of enrolled students would represent a stronger indicator of high-quality graduate education than the GRE scores of admitted students only.

Response: Staff agree and have made the change.

The new sections are adopted under Texas Education Code, §§62.145 - 62.146, which give the Coordinating Board the authority to develop and implement the provisions of the National Research University Fund.