Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University not opening residential campus in Houston, Texas

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has decided not to open a new residential campus in Houston.

Instead, it will move its campus currently located on Space Center Boulevard to a bigger building at Ellington Airport, admit more students and offer additional degrees.

Mark Friend, dean of academic affairs of the university’s central region office in San Antonio, said the university hired a consulting firm to do a study, which concluded that there will be no additional residential campus at this time.

“We determined that we can meet the needs of industry and Houston community with an extension of our Worldwide Campus,” he said.

The Houston campus is part of the Daytona Beach, Fla.-based university’s central region and its “Worldwide Campus,” which entails 150 small campuses and education centers in the United States and around the world – many of them on military bases.

It has two full residential campuses in Daytona Beach and Prescott, Ariz., and Houston would have been its third.

Until the recent decision against another residential campus, the choice was to be between Rockford, Ill. and Houston.

Friend said the Houston campus will move from Space Center Boulevard to a yet-to-be-determined building at Ellington Airport “no later than spring.”

The plan is to grow enrollment from currently 400 students to about 1,000 and offer logistics and supply chain management, project management, occupational safety and systems engineering as additional degrees. The Houston campus currently offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in professional aeronautics, aeronautical science, management and technical management, according to its website.

Embry-Riddle first offered courses in Houston in 1997 in various locations around Ellington Field. It moved to its own space at 16441 Space Center Boulevard in 2005, said Bill Gibbs, marketing director for the central region.

Friend said Houston and Embry-Riddle are a perfect match because Houston has so much to offer for the aviation industry, especially at the Johnson Space Center.

“Houston is nothing but dynamic, growing and positive,” he said, “and it’s certainly one of the primary aviation centers in the United States.”

Gibbs said the Rockford, Ill., campus is also in the process of moving to a bigger location and enroll more students.

He did not exclude the possibility of another residential campus in the future and that the decision is merely “temporarily postponed.”

Dan Seal, Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership’s executive director of Special Initiatives, welcomed the university’s decision to expand.

“The real prize in this announcement is the additional growth that will result from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Houston expansion,” he said in an e-mail. “Airports, like Ellington Airport, are always catalysts for economic development. Adding the prestige of Embry-Riddle, as the world’s premier aeronautical university, to the equation as it develops a world class workforce at Ellington Airport, is like a (super) magnet multiplying the opportunities for business growth in the Bay Area Houston region!”

Seal met many times over the last 12 months with Embry-Riddle administrators, including John P. Johnson, president of the university, along with Mario Diaz, director of the Houston Airport System, members of his staff, and representatives from Houston.

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com