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Francisco Cigarroa ’79Ten years ago, surgeon Francisco Cigarroa ’79—embroiled in what he called a “healthy debate” with administrators at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center—got a letter from the UT System. He thought he was fired, he recently told the San Antonio Express-News. Instead, it was an invitation to apply for the health sciences center’s presidency—a move that put Cigarroa on track to become the nation’s first Latino head of a major university system. On February 2, he took office as chancellor of the UT System, presiding over 15 campuses with more than 194,000 students. One of ten children raised in Laredo by a cardiologist father and a mother who, he says, believed firmly in discipline, Cigarroa made his reputation as a pediatric transplant surgeon (acquiring the nickname manos do oro, or “golden hands”) before moving into administration. As head of the health sciences center, he proved himself a talented fund-raiser—more important now than ever in the current economy, unless Cigarroa wants to wield his scalpel on the UT system’s $11.5 billion budget.
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