Cigarroa Featured Speaker at Rice’s President’s Lecture Series
Weaving family anecdotes into the narrative, University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, MD, described his vision for education in Texas at Rice University Monday, Nov. 7. Cigarroa was the featured speaker in Rice’s President’s Lecture Series, discussing “Hispanics in Texas: Educational Opportunities for the Next Generation.” The UTHealth Office of Advancement and the Rice Graduate Alumni Committee co-hosted a reception prior to the talk.
Cigarroa is enthusiastic about the role the UT System is playing in broadening opportunities for the state’s growing and increasingly diverse population, noting the System’s expansion in South Texas. He also made a point of praising UTHealth leadership for its contributions to creating those opportunities, saying that UTHealth President ad interim Giuseppe N. Colasurdo, MD, “gets it.”
Development Board members Harry Gee, Jim Dannenbaum and Vice Chair Julius Glickman at the reception hosted by UTHealth and Rice University before Chancellor Cigarroa’s lecture on Rice campus.
The head of the UT System talked about his own career choices and the pivotal role his family played in the decisions that led him to the position he holds now—including heart-to-heart talks with his physician father and his mother’s refusal to allow him to drop out of medical school.
Appointed chancellor of the UT System in 2009, Cigarroa is a nationally renowned pediatric and transplant surgeon and a native of Laredo, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and received his medical degree from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.