UTEP’s Natalicio announces plans to retire once successor is named

If UTEP President Dr. Diana Natalicio had one thing she would do differently, it would be to “win more football games.”

Natalicio announced Tuesday she was planning to retire after 30 years as president of the university and 45 years on the school’s faculty.

She will retire once a successor is appointed and takes office.

Natalicio spoke to members of the media to more fully explain her decision.

She declined to talk about her legacy because she isn’t leaving the university immediately.

“This is just an early alert” to my intentions, she said.

She joked about winning more football games, but on a more serious note addressed the two biggest changes she has seen in her time at UTEP — changing technology and the rising cost of higher education.

“Our lives are different because of technology and student’s lives have changed,” she said during the media conference.

“It has changed the way we teach and look at careers,” she said.

Universities, like UTEP, will continue to adapt to changes in technology, she said.

The biggest threat is the rising cost of higher education, especially at public universities, she said.

“We have to spend some time as a society deciding what is important,” Natalicio said. “I’m not sure we understand as a society how important it is for young people to have opportunities.”

If young people don’t have access to affordable higher education, that will “create an underclass without much hope or opportunity,” she said.

In a letter to students and faculty members posted online earlier in the day, Natalicio said it was just time to retire.

“I have concluded that this may be an appropriate time to begin bringing to a close this chapter in my higher education story, nearly all of which I have joyfully spent at UTEP,” she said in the online statement.

“I am therefore announcing today my plans to retire as UTEP’s president once a successor has been officially appointed and assumed the position,” she said.

“To be absolutely clear, this is not a farewell message to you, but rather an early alert about my plans,” she said.

While Natalicio said she is saddened as retirement approaches, she is “as energized today by UTEP’s many assets and future potential as I was 30 years ago.”

Natalicio said the university has “navigated the challenging issues facing higher education in the 21st century.” and has “balanced equal and intersecting commitments to both access and excellence.”

But plenty of work still needs to be done, Natalicio said.

“I will save my reflections on those challenges for another time,” she said.

“Instead, first and foremost, I want to express appreciation for our UTEP students whose success — on our campus and as alumni — has strongly validated our sustained confidence and investment in them,” she said.

Natalicio is the longest serving president of a public research university in the United States. In 2016, she was named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In an exclusive interview with Estela Casas in May 2017, Natalicio said: “For me, it is about trying to shape the university to shape the needs of people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to go to school and I find that enormously satisfying.”

In summer 2016, Natalicio collapsed on campus and was briefly hospitalized before returning to work.

Last month, Natalicio and new UTEP Athletics Director Jim Senter announced major renovation plans for the aging Sun Bowl football stadium. This may be her last project at the university.

And it may also help Natalicio change her one regret — and win more football games.