New Acting President of Texas A&M announced Friday

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Outgoing Texas A&M President Dr. Katherine Banks, who was mired in controversy for the majority of her tenure, resigned from Texas A&M Friday.

Replacing her as Acting President is General (Ret.) Mark A. Welsh III.

Born in San Antonio, Gen. Welsh arrived at Texas A&M in 2016 as a highly decorated Air Force veteran who served for 40 years. During that time, he won countless awards and honors, including the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross, among others. He was also named the Chief of Staff of the Air Force by Barack Obama in 2012, before serving the entirety of his four-year term.

In addition to these military accomplishments, Gen. Welsh was also a fellow in various capacities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and Johns Hopkins University. He also graduated from the General Manager Program at Harvard University.

When George H. W. Bush died in 2018, Gen. Welsh spoke to KBTX about the Bush School’s namesake. This interview revealed, perhaps, a glimpse of the acting president’s philosophy.

“Service is a kind of university-wide thing here,” he said. “It’s not just a Bush thing. We have this incredible set of values that guide the university. We have this namesake that is just the role model that we want our students to follow.”

George P. Bush, a grandson of President Bush, tweeted a congratulatory message to Welsh Friday.

Proud to hear @BushSchool Dean Mark Welsh will step in as acting President of @TAMU. I’ve served on his advisory board for several years now and know he’ll be great.

— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) July 21, 2023

Gen. Welsh spoke to KBTX in 2019 about how he was notified by President Bush about his new role back in 2016.

“When I actually got this job, [President Bush] called me. I was working at the Pentagon at the time I got in the car to go home that night and I had three voicemails. And, I opened the first one it was from an unknown number and it was President Bush… going through a congratulatory message to me. It lasted about two minutes and I finished that and I felt horrible that I hadn’t been there to answer the phone and then I thought he wouldn’t have left the other two messages, would he? But he had three almost identical messages during the course of the day just to make sure that I got his congratulations,” Welsh said at the time.

KBTX spoke with one of Gen. Welsh’s colleagues at the Bush School, Dr. Raymond Robertson, who said Welsh is the definition of a leader.

“I think he’s exactly what the university needs right now,” Robertson said. “I’ve never had a better leader or a better boss Mark Welsh is incredibly experienced. He’s very level. He’s very consistent and balanced and provides a vision of leadership. That is really been unsurpassed. I mean, he really is a remarkable consensus builder and he’s really great at creating an amazingly positive environment. So I think that this is an amazingly good choice for the University, especially in these tumultuous times.”