Branch spoke to the 7th grade students of the Episcopal School of Dallas visiting the Texas Capitol.  Branch answered the thoughtful questions asked by the students and posed for photos with the group in the Outdoor Capitol Extension Atrium.

Chairman of the North Texas Superbowl Host Committee, Bill Lively, addressed the members of the Dallas Area Legislative Delegation on February 10th.  Mr. Lively provided an initial picture of the Superbowl's economic impact on the North Texas region and discussed the year-long initiative to commemorate the Superbowl via small and minority business and by encouraging students to be civic minded via community service.

February 28, 2011

Rep. Dan Branch and Carnegie Mellon Research VP Discuss Benefits, Challenges

Kicking off a new series of communitywide events, the UT Dallas Development Board recently hosted a panel discussion on the potential impact of a national research university on North Texas.

State Rep. Dan Branch and Dr. Rick McCullough BS’82, vice president for research at Carnegie Mellon University, addressed an audience of almost 200 at Communities Foundation of Texas.

February 23, 2011

Ben Wermund

The University of Texas’s 20-year, $300 million television deal with ESPN — expected to rake in an annual $5 million for academics alone — should be a model for Texas universities facing big cuts to funding, state lawmakers said Wednesday.

State Rep. Dan Branch, the Dallas Republican who heads the House Higher Education Committee, lauded UT president William Powers, Jr., for his “entrepreneurial spirit” and his willingness to “rethink and reinvent higher ed” at the committee’s first meeting of the session.

February 23, 2011

Reeve Hamilton

For higher education issues, it appears that “productivity” is to this session what “tier one” was to 2009.

House Higher Education Chairman Dan Branch, R-Dallas, who two years ago passed landmark legislation establishing a seven-school competition to catapult the state’s next national research university, recently filed a trio of bills aimed at getting more bang for each buck invested in higher ed. He’s calling them the Higher Education Outcomes-Based Funding Act, the TEXAS Grant College Readiness Reform Act and the Higher Education Productivity Act. That’s House Bills 9, 10, and (much further down on the list) 1460, respectively.

February 21, 2011

Gromer Jeffers, Jr.

Dallas County is poised to lose two seats in the Texas House, after census data showed the county was caught on the wrong side of the state’s dramatic population shifts.

Of the 16 legislative districts in Dallas County, only Rep. Helen Giddings’ DeSoto-based District 109 gained population. The rest are far short of the average that state House districts will have to meet when lawmakers redraw the lines this spring.

February 20, 2011

Ben Wermund

Cutting $14.2 million AP program for high schoolers could end up costing far more.

Cutting Texas' landmark Advanced Placement incentive program might seem to some like an easy way to save $14.2 million a year.

But higher education experts argue that the money that would be saved by cutting the program, which covers a portion of student exam fees and pays for teacher training, is a drop in the bucket compared with higher education money saved when students graduate from high school with college credits already under their belts.

February 18, 2011

Branch

Editorial

What’s an efficient university? What can be done to keep taxpayer money from going to waste? How can state schools be held more accountable for students they sign up but never graduate?

It’s good to see lawmakers in Austin focused on those questions as they decide how to spread around the hurt in their painful budget exercise.