Giant banners displaying a reimagined University of Texas at San Antonio seal in its emblematic blue, orange and white are ushering new and returning students to the inaugural year as a merged institution with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
The combined university will maintain the title of the University of Texas at San Antonio, but is now looking to be known as UT San Antonio.
This week the public research institution welcomes an estimated 40,000 students and more than 17,000 faculty and staff to its six campuses making it the third-largest research university in the state and the second-largest in the UT System, right behind UT Austin.
And it now boasts a $2.4 billion operating budget that includes $486 million dollars in research spending and a $1.3 billion endowment.
Academic leaders say that with that scale comes potential — more students, more top-notch faculty, and more funding to support all of it, at a time when many universities are tightening their belts.
“This merger is coming together for the right reasons and at the right time,” said Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, now senior executive VP for health affairs and health system at UT San Antonio, speaking before the UT Board of Regents. “The students and the faculty and the staff are embracing it; when you get that sense, you know you are doing the right thing.”
UTSA graduate Kathleen Becker, 25, sees the merger as an opportunity to join together two prestigious institutions.
She moved to San Antonio from Houston as a student athlete in 2018. And despite having to quit the soccer team early on due to health complications, she found the support she needed to complete her bachelors degree in medical humanities.
After graduation she found an easy transition to UT Health San Antonio’s School of Dentistry, where she continued her studies and expects to graduate with a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in May.
“I just think in general, they’re both powerhouse schools that have gained national recognition over the years,” Becker said. “(The merger) gives students a wider range of academic programs and then professional pathways in health care and science,” she said.
On Aug. 22, 2024, the UT Board of Regents approved the proposed merger, which gave the green light for the two institutions to begin the lengthy process.
That same day, Taylor Eighmy, who has led UTSA as president since 2017, was put in charge of overseeing the first steps of this process along with then-acting president of UT Health San Antonio Dr. Rob Hromas.
Hromas had taken the reigns of the health school just before the passing of longtime UT Health San Antonio president Dr. William L. Henrich in March 2024. Henrich had led the institution since 2009, with one of his final projects being the establishment of the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital, which opened its doors to patients in the South Texas Medical Center late last year.
By early 2025, Eighmy was named acting president of UT Health San Antonio, with the promise to eventually be named president of the now-merged institution.
In the span of one year, university leaders worked to combine faculty and staff, formed working groups, and built out a new presidential cabinet. All with the intention to form a stronger, more competitive institution of the two together or to become, as Eighmy put it, more than one.
“This isn’t a consolidation merger where one plus one is less than two. It’s not additive where one plus one is two,” Eighmy said. “It is this concept where we’re coming together to grow and we’re really running around saying it’s one plus one equals 10.”
A decades-old idea
UT San Antonio is really an idea that has percolated in and around the UT System for over 20 years.
Merger proposals date as far back as 1999, Eighmy said, and again in 2000 when former Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte brought forward legislation to merge the two institutions. An even closer look was taken about 15 years ago, when the board reconsidered the idea, bringing in a panel of experts to weigh in.
“The notion of bringing them together made sense. The question was when to do it?” Eighmy said. “The panel said, ‘Great idea. The timing isn’t right. The two institutions aren’t ready.’”
The two institutions were independently successful, giving no immediate reason to merge or change what was not broken, he explained. But that shifted as they continued to grow and rise in prestige.
UT Health San Antonio became the largest academic health research institution in South Texas and became one of the top recipients of federal research funds from the National Institutes of Health. UTSA grew its enrollment to more than 35,000 students across seven colleges, and also became a nationally recognized research institution.
The two institutions also reached coveted “R1” status from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. That’s a designation given to institutions that spend at least $50 million on research and award at least 70 research doctorates annually.
The classification is highly desired among universities and is viewed as key to recruiting top-notch faculty, obtaining more research grants and improving their reputation.
And, during this time, San Antonio was growing, too. Its population surpassed 1.5 million in 2024, landing it among the top 10 most populous cities in the country, according to U.S. Census data.
“This Board of Regents has been committed to leveraging the size and scale of the UT System for maximum impact for the people of Texas,” said the then-UT System Chancellor James Milliken as he proposed the merger to the board last year.
“We have that opportunity today in Texas with two of our universities just miles apart from each other whose unique and highly complimentary programs and trajectories have made this a perfect time to integrate as one premier institution creating a powerhouse greater than the sum of the parts,” he continued.
As the board considered this change, Texas top leaders were also making significant investments in research. In 2023, the Texas University Fund was created with a $3.9 billion endowment to support public universities outside of the UT and Texas A&M systems — which have exclusive access to the Permanent University Fund.
It was a good time to make these internal investments to support existing institutions. But a few months after the approval, the Trump administration began to cut funds and access to grants resulting in funding cuts to most public universities.
“The reductions that we’re seeing, the grants that were terminated and awards that have slowed down because the processes in D.C. have been slowed down… all of these things are really significant headwinds for everybody, including us,” Eighmy said. “In Texas, we are a little bit better off because we have a really high degree of state support for public higher education.”
The merger also creates a stronger and more nimble institution, able to better utilize its funding and resources to respond in a more proactive manner to changes at the federal level, he said.
In January, Eighmy appointed Cigarroa to the new role of senior executive vice president to continue overseeing the UT Health San Antonio campus, which he had led and been a part of since 1995.
Cigarroa, a practicing physician, was not available for an interview before this story was published. But he appeared before the UT System Board of Regents earlier this month — the same day Eighmy was officially named president of the new UT San Antonio.
“It’s unimaginable that just one year ago the Board of Regents passed a historic (motion), to merge two Research 1 universities in San Antonio,” Cigarroa said before the UT board. “This is really one of the most important votes in the past 100 years … It is absolutely an inflection point, an inflection point for the state of Texas.”
News of the merger spread fast after the UT System Board of Regents vote last fall. University officials quickly launched a website meant to update those interested on every public step of the integration process.
“It’s going to take us a few years to fully integrate,” Cigarroa told the board on Aug. 20. “We’re really taking two legacy institutions and the very best of what each does, pulling them together, creating a new university.”
Much of the work happened behind the scenes this year, as students and faculty went on with their spring semesters as planned. It’s unclear how many employees were laid off over the past year, but Eighmy says they were unrelated to the merger.
“Any kind of modest reductions in workforces on both campuses is because of the federal headwinds we’re facing,” he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with merger and integration.”
One of the first celebrations came by mid June, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, better known as SACSCOC, approved the merger plans.
Visits by SACSCOC officials are slated for this fall. This is needed for UT San Antonio’s accreditation to be fully confirmed.
That approval meant that Sept. 1, was the official first day as an integrated institution.
This day is slated to be named in all recounts of the university’s history, Eighmy and his team are well aware that this is one more step toward a more grandiose goal.
Today, the merged institution offers 320 undergraduate and graduate programs and certificates in more than a dozen fields including science, engineering, medicine and public health.
The objective is for San Antonians and South Texas residents to rely on UT San Antonio for access to a good education, and a competitive degree that leads them to good paying jobs, Eighmy said. But also for groundbreaking, community-impactful research.
The more evident signs of change for students, faculty and staff now and in the months to come will range from efforts to connect the two institutions bringing students from one campus to the other, to new academic programs intended to be accessible to all students.
Eighmy said work is already underway to integrate other areas, including bringing scientists and engineers onto one campus to increase collaboration and exposure for students.
Already in the works is preparations to launch a 10-year strategic plan as early as the spring to draft a roadmap that prioritizes maintaining the top-research designation, while keeping access and opportunity at the forefront of any effort.
“We’re going to be excellent about how we provide health care. We’re going to be excellent about how we educate. We’re going to be excellent about how we innovate… and very positively disrupt society,” Eighmy said. “But we’d also rather be known by who we admit than who we exclude.”
Danya Pérez will continue to cover UT-San Antonio. If you have questions about the merger or ideas, email her at danya@sareport.org.
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
