Brandon Creighton spent two decades in the Texas Legislature writing the rules for higher education. Now he has to live by them.
Last year, as chairman of the Senate’s education committee, Creighton authored Senate Bill 37, a sweeping overhaul that reasserted regents’ authority over curriculum and top-level hiring at Texas public universities. This year, as chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, he found himself back before his former colleagues at an interim hearing, testifying about how the implementation is going at the institution he now runs.
“It’s like establishing the rules of the playing field… and then going to the front lines immediately and being held accountable by my former colleagues for enforcing and applying exactly what I had established,” Creighton says. He doesn’t seem to mind the arrangement. “I like my team to win.”
Creighton’s path to the chancellor’s office started about as far from one as Texas offers. He grew up on a ranch outside Conroe in a town called Cut and Shoot, in a family full of public school teachers, and worked as a pipe fitter and electrician’s helper at a chemical plant before finding his way to campus — “to air-conditioned buildings,” as he puts it—and eventually law school. He represented House District 16 from 2007 to 2014 and Senate District 4 from 2014 until this year, becoming one of the Legislature’s dominant voices on education. In September, the Texas Tech regents named him sole finalist for Chancellor; he took office in November as the system’s sixth chief executive.
He is not alone in making the jump. Within roughly 100 days, he and two other former Republican lawmakers took the helm of Texas’ major university systems. Former Comptroller Glenn Hegar went to Texas A&M, and former Rep. John Zerwas went to the University of Texas. Chancellor Creighton calls the rivalry with his fellow chancellors “certainly friendly competition.” They are all in a similar situation, he says. “We understand high expectations are upon us.”
The first test of those expectations is living up to the requirements of SB 37. Texas Tech reviewed 14,000 courses across its universities and health sciences centers in a process Creighton says involved guidance memos, regents’ subcommittees, and faculty and student input. The examples ranged widely, and included new math curriculum calibrated to oil and gas industry expectations, course content brought in line with recent statutes and executive orders, and evaluations of low-enrollment classes weighed against the cost of the faculty assigned to them. In the end, he says, less than one percent of courses were changed or modified. Legislative testimony this summer indicated Tech’s curriculum reviews are running ahead of schedule, and Creighton believes the effort will travel: “We’re looking at that not just as a state model, but a national model.”
Asked what he would change about his own law, Creighton notes lawmakers may now debate whether enforcement of its new rules belongs with the state auditor, where the bill placed it, or the attorney general’s office. “That’s up to the members,” he says. “I’m on this side of the fence now.”
In an early move, Creighton has placed a big bet on artificial intelligence. In February, the Texas Tech system announced a partnership with Nvidia to deploy the chipmaker’s GB300 NVL72 platform, a next-generation supercomputing hardware that vaults past the systems most research universities run today. University officials say the move made Tech one of the first universities in the country on Nvidia’s newest architecture; Creighton notes the company’s other academic partners include the U.S. Naval Academy and Naval Postgraduate School.
The deal, he says, came from old-fashioned retail politics. Tech industry leaders knocked on doors in Santa Clara after Nvidia’s talks with an Ivy League school collapsed over what he describes as academic indecision. His pitch leaned on West Texas fundamentals such as proximity to the wind, solar and natural gas resources surrounding Tech’s campuses, the flexibility to operate inside or outside the ERCOT grid, and a regulatory environment Santa Clara can’t match. He also pitched a concept he calls “sovereign data independence,” or secure, American-controlled computing housed at a public university with Department of Defense clearance, anchored by Tech’s Reese Technology Center, a decommissioned Air Force base. Texas Tech, he notes, is among a small group of universities approved to work on national defense research priorities. “I made a presentation that Texas Tech should be an example for sovereign data independence for America,” he says. “And they said, let’s do this deal.”
What the new Chancellor wants from the hardware is “not just a one-hour credential tied to a marketing degree that teaches you how to use an app,” but Nvidia engineers on campus working alongside students, and computing power aimed at Texas problems. They will focus on cancer and dementia research, health care costs, and grid efficiency. He points to research on cooling technologies that could dramatically cut data centers’ water needs and behind-the-grid power generation that adds capacity rather than straining it. “You’re either designing the menu or you’re on it,” Creighton says. “I believe that Texas Tech should be leading in those categories, and the state of Texas will be the beneficiary.”
He credits the platform he inherited, which includes a 97 percent placement rate at the Rawls College of Business, a law school that has won multiple national negotiation championships in recent years, a nursing school he ranks among the country’s best, and a young veterinary school in Amarillo he says posts some of the nation’s top licensing exam scores.
When the Legislature convenes again in six months, Creighton’s says he will view it from the outside the same way he did from the inside. “Every session is a higher education session.” He says the legislature’s work ties into the workforce, the private sector, and the quality of life of the next generation.
“The Texas Legislature is the most deliberative venue in America for solutions,” he says. “I’m looking forward to the 90th to see what’s ahead.”