Round Rock Campus’ Inaugural Vice President, Dr. Julie Lessiter

By Diego Gonzales

Blog Content Contributor

Texas State University has picked its inaugural vice president for the Round Rock Campus, Dr. Julie Lessiter. Lessiter’s responsibilities as vice president include supporting academic and research initiatives that take place at the Round Rock Campus.

Lessiter was formerly the vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at Louisiana State University Shreveport from 2018 to 2023. During her time there, she helped in the development of the 10,000-square-foot Cyber Collaboratory, an effort that assisted in building workforce certifications and programs. She also led the effort in creating the school’s first strategic enrollment plan. This initiative led to a 100% enrollment increase in a five-year period.

From the INSIDE TXST newsletter, Lessiter shared her thoughts on joining the Round Rock team. “I’m so thrilled to be a part of Texas State Round Rock, and want to deeply thank President Damphousse and his leadership team for this opportunity,” Lessiter said. “The energy and excitement I felt from everyone I met on my visit was infectious. I hope to build upon the great work already in motion at Round Rock and continue to create a positive impact for our campus constituents and the community.”

Along with Lessiter, Texas State will also be hiring a Director of Student Success and Academic Services and a dedicated student recruiter to support the campus initiatives.

The Fall semester for the Round Rock campus will include plenty of new programs and expansions to existing programs. Goals include expanding the bachelor’s degree program for mass communications, OWL (Organization, Workforce, and Leadership) studies, and computer science. Other efforts include expanding non-credit professional development and training workshops and offering targeted scholarships to recruit Austin Community College graduates to enroll in degree programs offered on the RRC.

“I think [the targeted scholarships] is a nice idea,” said Lorena Gonzales, ACC Sophomore. “A lot of students, myself included, go to community college to save money, so to offer an exclusive scholarship seems like a really good opportunity. There are people I know who go to ACC who want to eventually transfer to a four-year university after taking some core classes, so it would be very convenient to just work hard at ACC and be rewarded for your work by the university you want to transfer to.”

The Round Rock campus is currently in the progress of its seven-year plan to bring 10,000 students to its campus by the year 2030. Completing this goal would make the school the third largest in the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area. Lessiter will start their position at Texas State on August 2, 2023.