That same year, University of Texas at Dallas President Richard Benson oversaw the school’s acquisition of the Crow Museum of Asian Art, expanding the Richardson campus’ access to valuable exhibits.
Shortly after, Southern Methodist University's then-president Gerald Turner announced a partnership with Toyota to bring a new STEM-focused school to Dallas ISD.
As three longtime North Texas university leaders step down this summer, they don’t just leave behind dramatically different campuses. They also shaped Dallas and Fort Worth, bolstering the region’s workforce development, economy and cultural capital, community members say.
In Fort Worth, more than 400 students have enrolled in Texas Christian University’s Burnett School of Medicine since it opened in 2019. The Near Southside campus, which was built in 2022, is poised to be an economic driver and a boost for healthcare access in the city, medical and community partners say.
“That’s probably the biggest impact we’ll have on Texas,” said Boschini, who led the private university for over two decades until he left the role in June.
Meanwhile, Benson, who will step down in August, believes his “greatest legacy” will be his infusion of arts and culture in the University of Texas at Dallas. During his nine-year tenure, Benson turned the STEM powerhouse into a North Texas attraction for internationally recognized performers, critics and artists.
Turner, who led Southern Methodist University for 30 years, has long said he wants SMU to be the “university for Dallas.” He is credited with securing talent pipelines for local companies and responding to the community’s workforce development needs.
“He was part of the DNA of the city,” said Michael Hinojosa, former Dallas ISD superintendent.
This fall, the schools’ next leaders will be entrusted with keeping the momentum going at a challenging time for higher education. North Texas leaders say they hope the next presidents will keep prioritizing the region’s growth, a goal that could be hampered by federal decisions on research funding and international students.
“We can only be as good as our universities if they continue to thrive,” said Kelvin Walker, CEO of the Dallas Citizens Council, a nonprofit of top CEOs and business leaders in North Texas. “If we don’t have thriving universities, we cannot prosper.”
ECONOMIC DRIVERS AND COMMUNITY NEEDS
Universities have long been key drivers of social and economic growth, said Michael Harris, an SMU professor who studies higher education policy and leadership.
They employ thousands of people, bring in students who stay in the area after graduation, conduct research, provide health care and more. College presidents work with business leaders, local government officials and nonprofits to address community needs.
Under Benson and Turner’s leadership, UTD and SMU have been major drivers behind the city’s corporate boom, particularly in the technology and finance sectors, Walker said.
“The universities are our attraction to the companies moving here,” he said.
He pointed to companies such as McKesson, AT&T and JPMorgan that opened headquarters in the region in the last two decades. More than 300 companies have relocated to the Dallas area over the past 15 years.
Part of that growth is thanks to Turner and Benson’s focus on aligning schools’ offerings to North Texas’ workforce needs, which assures corporate leaders they’ll have a talent pool to tap from in the area.
UT Dallas provides a pipeline of software engineering graduates to financial services companies in the region, such as Goldman Sachs. The growth of UTD’s School of Business, which saw two new buildings under Benson’s leadership, has also caught the attention of corporate leaders looking to put down roots in Dallas, Walker said.
Now roughly 150,000 UT Dallas graduates live and work in the D-FW area, a testament to the school’s focus on “turning out the sort of graduates the region needs,” Benson said.
One alum is John Olajide, who graduated from UTD in 2004 and founded Axxess, a healthcare technology company, three years later. Olajide, who was born in Nigeria, was drawn to the school’s telecommunications engineering program — and Dallas’ reputation for being a business town.
“When I graduated, I was already on my entrepreneurial path. I knew Dallas was a great place to be able to do that,” he said. “I could sow seeds and they could blossom into something really special. So I stayed.”
Now Olajide’s company taps graduates from his alma mater, as well as SMU and TCU. He calls the talent pipelines one of the company’s “secret sauces.”
“All the top business leaders know who Dr. Benson is,” he said. “He let the business community know that a lot of the people who already work for you are from UT Dallas. So now the businesses know that they benefited from this, and they’re starting to invest more.”
TCU’s medical school is also expected to bring the region economic growth, with a projected annual economic impact of $4 billion and 31,000 jobs generated for North Texans by 2030, according to administrators. It also aims to address the region’s shortage of healthcare professionals head-on.
Boschini prioritized keeping medical students in the region after graduation by establishing partnerships with local hospitals. For example, every year roughly 60 students rotate through the nearby Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center-Fort Worth, getting to know both the system and community.
After finishing medical school, students can complete graduate residency at one of the hospital’s six programs. Medical leaders hope they will then remain in the area to practice.
“It exposes them to our community. They begin to lay roots down. They become economic contributors. So everyone wins by the creation of that school here in Fort Worth,” said Charles William, president of Baylor Scott & White D-FW.
Hinojosa pointed to SMU’s Turner as a critical partner in addressing the city’s needs.
When Dallas ISD confronted its shortage of Spanish-speaking teachers in 2002, Turner oversaw the establishment of an SMU graduate program that granted 150 DISD teachers certificates in bilingual education. He also helped guide a partnership between SMU, DISD and Toyota in West Dallas for a STEM-focused campus that opened in 2021.
Dallas College Chancellor Justin Lonon praised Turner’s efforts to set up transfer pathways and scholarships between the community college and the private school, making it easier for students to continue their education without moving out of the city.
“A lot of universities don’t customize. They say, ‘Look, this is what we offer. Take it or leave it,’” Hinojosa said. “But Gerald customized things for Dallas.”
BOLSTERING ARTS AND CULTURE
The longtime leaders also “reshaped the cultural landscape” of the region, said Stacie Adams, CEO of the North Texas Business Council for the Arts. They didn’t just put North Texas on the map as an arts and culture destination, but ensured the area was an “ecosystem where artists want to and can stay and have a career,” she said.
Over Benson’s eight year tenure, he remade UTD, which has long held a reputation as a STEM powerhouse, into a school that also prioritized the arts. The university now boasts the acquisition of the Crow Museum of Asian Art and the creation of a 12-acre cultural district called the Anatheum, which will house a performance hall, among other features.
“UTD doesn’t have a sports presence the way UT Austin does, but the people will come for the art,” Benson said, adding that he anticipates concerts at the performance hall will bring an influx of visitors.
Boschini similarly oversaw the establishment of TCU’s music center, which provides rehearsal rooms and learning resources for students, and the Van Cliburn, a 715-seat performance hall that hosts live music events for Fort Worth residents, in 2022.
Meanwhile, Turner spent six years vying for SMU to be the home of George W. Bush’s presidential library, which now draws tourists, researchers and world leaders to Dallas.
SMU was competing against Baylor, the UT System, the University of Dallas and others. In the end, it was Turner’s “vision and leadership” that drove the Bushes to settle on SMU in 2008.
“When you’re talking about how important arts and culture are, it isn’t just something you say. It’s something that is shown through your actions,” Adams said of how the university leaders prioritized investing in the arts. “If you don’t make those efforts to show up, then there’s a risk that arts and culture will just go away.”
'CONTINUE THE MOMENTUM'
Turner and Boschini are the rare leaders who have steered their schools for decades. Even Benson, who led UTD for nine years, outlasted the average college president in the United States, who spent 5.9 years in the position, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the American Council on Education, a higher education industry group.
Their long tenures “provided a level of stability and protection and singular direction for these institutions to all grow,” said Harris, the SMU professor. As these leaders leave, they take their institutional history, relationships with community stakeholders and “some of that stability” with them, he said.
“What you have to hope is that by bringing in new leadership with fresh perspectives, you’re able to continue the momentum,” Harris said. “You hope you’re able to continue to build upon the pre-existing strengths, and then look to broaden and expand under new leadership.”
The schools’ next presidents will have to accomplish that while facing a higher education landscape — in Texas and across the nation — under increased scrutiny.
The Trump administration’s slashes to federal funding could significantly impact research efforts and innovation that many companies in the region are drawn to, Walker said.
UT Dallas, for example, received nearly $7 million in federal funds in 2023 to improve the North Texas semiconductor industry workforce and conduct wind energy research. That same year, the Department of Defense invested $30 million into the school to create new battery technologies and worker training programs.
University leaders are also navigating fears of deportation among international students as the administration expands reasons why students could be stripped of visas. That could impact enrollment at colleges like UT Dallas, which has more than 5,500 international students. The local economy could take a hit, with international students contributing $2.5 billion last year to Texas, according to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators.
“I am worried that the U.S. is making it more difficult for these individuals to come — to have a visa or to remain here or even just creating the impression that we would rather that they not come,” Benson said. “That’s certainly not my philosophy. I hope that we can continue to be that beacon for international talent.”
Olajide, the UTD alum who founded Axxess, pointed to Benson’s heavy investments in international recruiting, including new offices in New Delhi, India and Lagos, Nigeria. He said the school’s next leader, Prabhas Moghe, will have to find ways to keep attracting such students.
“I am confident that working with other leaders across the country, Dr. Moghe will find partners in helping make that happen,” said Olajide, who sat on the school’s presidential search committee.
The next university presidents will also have to make college more accessible to Dallas and Fort Worth residents in order to prepare them for available jobs in the state, Walker said.
Texas is on track to have over 1.8 million job openings annually between 2022 and 2032. Most of these jobs require education beyond high school, but workforce advocates fear some Texans may lack access to these opportunities due to insufficient credentials for those roles.
Jay Hartzell, SMU’s new leader, told The Dallas Morning News in January he was committed to making SMU feel like it “is a hard place to get in, but if you can get in, you can afford it.”
Will Leathers, an SMU senior and the school’s student body president, said he hopes Hartzell, the former president of UT Austin, imbues a “big school feel” into SMU without sacrificing its relationship with Dallas.
Hartzell has said he hopes to build upon Turner’s work to “make the walls on campus more permeable.”
He wants to emphasize volunteer opportunities and internships for students in Dallas so they will choose to stay in the city after graduation, and highlighted SMU’s “power to convene” people, such as the school’s Tate Lecture Series.
It’s important that “all of Dallas feels like special things happen here and they want to be a part of that,” Hartzell said.
TCU’s new chancellor, Daniel Pullin, plans to prioritize Boschini’s emphasis on community engagement with Fort Worth.
He said he will scale the medical school’s existing programs, including nursing, and add new ones, such as occupational therapy, to address the shortage of healthcare professionals. Additional investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer science will serve “corporate partners” who have computing needs, he said.
Harris hopes that the next leaders also play another role, one that could vault them onto the national stage, as state and federal leaders question the value of higher education and extend their reach into colleges.
“We need presidents now, more than ever, who can articulate why higher education is important, about what it brings to the region,” Harris said. “There’s a loss of faith from political leaders, from the population. I would certainly hope, as these presidents step into their role, that they’re going to be able to articulate that.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
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