Dudley R. Herschbach joined the Texas A&M University faculty this fall, the third time in the school's 129-year history that its professorial ranks have boasted a Nobel laureate. Herschbach, a 1986 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, is one of approximately 215 new faculty members successfully recruited in the first three years of Texas A&M's faculty reinvestment program - an ambitious effort to add 447 new faculty positions and hailed by Texas A&M President Robert M. Gates as "unlike anything going on in America today."

Although much of the faculty reinvestment funding comes from special legislative appropriations and from reallocating university resources, the Permanent University Fund - more specifically, the Available University Fund (AUF) - has figured prominently in the overall faculty enhancement initiatives. For example, $17.4 million in AUF money has been used over the past five years for matching funds to create approximately 30 endowed faculty chairs. Other initiatives, such as using matching funds for purchasing special equipment in support of National Science Foundation grants and contracts, and for start-up funding to help attract more scientists and engineers to Texas A&M, have received significant AUF support.

AUF funding has helped the university significantly enhance its library operations. Library holdings at Texas A&M recently surpassed the three-million-volume milestone and the libraries are ranked 33rd by the Association of Research Libraries.

Faculty reinvestment and other initiatives, including those made possible by PUF/AUF support, are making an impact on the quality of education at Texas A&M. The student-faculty ratio has decreased from 22:1 to 20:1 and the number of classes with more than 50 students has dropped from 33 to 25 percent.

This initial success has provided validation of a belief Dr. Gates underscored when he introduced the plan during a time of shrinking state appropriations - a belief that investing, not retrenching, was the right thing to do. Under his direction, Texas A&M reallocated $30.5 million to help get the faculty reinvestment program off the ground, despite the fact that most universities were cutting back at the time. It is an action he says demonstrated that the university was committed to expanding and retaining its faculty. The result of such dramatic change? In the first 18 months of the program, the university hired more new faculty members than it lost between 1992 and 2002.

The campus itself is in the midst of a physical makeover. More central-campus space is being allocated to academic functions. New additions include the Jack E. Brown Engineering Building and the Jerry and Kay Cox wing of the Wehner Building, which houses the Mays Business School. Several construction projects associated with health sciences, veterinary medicine and agricultural sciences are planned for West Campus in the next two years. The university is also in the detailed planning stage for a $95-million interdisciplinary life sciences building, the largest investment in teaching and research in the university's history.

Such accomplishments remain critical as the university pursues "Vision 2020," its blueprint for joining the ranks of consensus top 10 public universities nationally by the year 2020. Texas A&M has made significant progress and is now ranked 21st among national public universities by U.S. News & World Report. But for Dr. Gates, the impetus for faculty reinvestment is not driven by rankings; it's about improving the quality of education at Texas A&M.