UTSA and UT Health SA Joint Clustered & Connected Hiring Program

Timeline:  

• Anticipate up to 5 new hires to begin Fall 2026
• April 2025: Launch the joint Clustered and Connected request for proposal process
• May 30, 2025: Proposals due and selection of clustered areas
• September 2025: Post and advertise searches following the faculty hiring process

Objectives:

• Encourage and foster collaboration among our strong existing faculty within, or across, the identified cross-cutting areas that enhance research visibility and competitiveness.
• Enable collaborative opportunities that broaden and deepen existing, recognized expertise and create new links among them to enhance the institution’s national profile.
• Advance research capacity, competitiveness, and success.
• Enable the institution to devote a critical mass of faculty to convergent, transdisciplinary knowledge areas that are not solely addressed through existing academic structures.
• Bring various experts together to increase and enrich collaborations across traditional disciplinary divides.
• Strengthen existing curricular offerings on the undergraduate and graduate levels, and create opportunities for new offerings and programs that link to identified opportunities and needs.
• Advance the impact of our academic programs by addressing society’s most pressing needs through interdisciplinary collaboration, leveraging the strengths of social sciences, humanities, business, health and STEM to tackle grand challenges through meaningful engagement with industry, government, institutional partners, and our communities.

Evaluation Criteria:

• Ability to enhance national/international pre-eminence in priority areas. How will this cluster advance our competitive position compared to other universities across the nation who have existing programs or expertise in this area?
• Concretely link outstanding disciplinary strengths across schools/colleges/departments, the cluster promotes transdisciplinary collaboration and convergent approaches, leveraging a range of experts to advance excellence and realize the goals of a world class university. How will this cluster help reach the goals?  What grand challenges will this research cluster team be able to address? What new ideas can emerge from the varied experiences and expertise brought together in this cluster?
• Ability to increase external sponsored support to meet the federal funding goals for the next 10 years. What are the targeted solicitations, funding agencies, impactful publications and outcomes that will raise the research reputation in a way that is currently not possible without this cluster?
• Commitment to share extant resources, take advantage of existing core facilities, and augment the facility infrastructure that supports research. Addresses infrastructure gaps that would be needed for the cluster hire’s success. What new infrastructure would be needed to support this cluster if any?
• Inclusion of multiple units and at least one college from UTSA and one school from UT Health San Antonio. How will the cluster broaden our research impact outside traditional disciplinary areas and structures? How does this cluster bring together and deepen relationships of disparate areas of expertise that would not normally team?

Cross-Cutting Priority Areas:

Applications are highly encouraged from these cross-cutting priority areas, though proposals are welcomed in other research areas.

• Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics
• Biomedical Sciences
• Tissue Regeneration
• Neuroscience
• Cancer
• Aging
• Human Optimization and Performance

Application Process:

1. Groups of proposing faculty (with one faculty specifically identified as lead, and team members stated) should prepare brief proposals (no more than 3 pages) describing the following and considering the evaluation criteria listed above:
   1. the grand challenge
   2. national funding opportunities for convergence research/scholarship
   3. evaluation of the competitive position, including past funding successes and impactful research either in the targeted grand challenge area or in a supporting area
   4. hiring concept and rationale
   5. hiring plan to attract connected/clustered hiring of 2 to 5 leading or promising scholars to campus that addresses the objectives and criteria
   6. fit with existing institution scholars, centers/institutes and infrastructure. CCP proposals can put forward tenured proposed hires at any level (senior, mid-career, or mixed), depending on the current faculty composition and the goals and opportunities of the proposed cluster.
2. The proposing faculty group must have supporting signatures of the cognizant college/school dean(s) and institute director (if applicable) for consideration of alignment at least 5 business days before the deadline. Deans also are encouraged to communicate with one another to hone these cross-campus proposals.
3. Submit your proposal to provost@utsa.edu by the May 30, 2025 deadline.

Review & Selection:

CCP proposals will be reviewed and prioritized by the College/School and University leadership, using the program objectives and evaluation criteria listed above. Depending on how many proposals are submitted, a two-stage selection process may be used that includes presentations by the proposing faculty. The resulting prioritization and recommendations will be discussed with Deans, with final decision regarding proposal selection made by Drs. Eighmy, Cigarroa, Shipley and Potter. The merit of individual proposals will be reviewed in the context of our existing capacity, along with other submitted proposals. Please note that as a part of the review process, leadership may recommend modifications to CCP proposals in order to optimize the benefit to the University, and further changes to proposals also may be sought prior to initiation of the search process.

Deans, Department Chairs and the Proposing Faculty Group will be notified of the outcome of the proposal review.

Contact

Please feel free to submit questions or input to provost@utsa.edu.