Looking closely at the stops along the University of Utah’s summer road trip itinerary, something becomes abundantly clear—the institution’s reach across the state.

From starting conversations about graduate medical education with Intermountain Health and Utah Tech University leaders in St. George, to breaking ground for the new University of Utah Eccles Health Campus and Eccles Hospital in West Valley, the U’s reach as Utah’s flagship institution of higher education is undeniable.

Few higher education leaders embark on the kind of north-to-south and east-to-west forays into practical diplomacy and outreach that the University of Utah does every other summer. This year, the tour celebrates the U’s 175th anniversary, traversing from Logan to St. George. The first leg of the road trip, from June 11 to 13, stopped at green energy and packaging businesses, universities and hospitals, new and evolving cities and military installations.

“I want us to be a university with impact. We have a vision and a plan for the future, and it’s not much different from what we said 175 years ago,” said U President Taylor Randall, at a dinner with alumni in St. George. “It’s a moment of reinvention and re-anchoring ourselves on some of the basic principles of the past: The relentless pursuit of knowledge and truth, the relentless focus on students and the absolutely relentless focus on improving the society which we serve.”

The semi-annual tour, or road trip, embodies that ethos as leaders from the U met with colleagues in business, health care and government to make the case for the value of higher education and collaboration at a time of swirling national headwinds.

New Utah Tech President Shane Smeed noted the current partnerships between the U and his institution to provide medical education, including physician assistant and physical therapy graduate programs. In the fall of 2026, the university will enroll a new medical school cohort of 10 students focused on providing primary care in rural parts of the state and the Intermountain region. Students would spend their first year in medical school in Salt Lake City, then shift to Southern Utah for continued classes and, ultimately, residency.

“We need to continue to operate as a system,” Smeed said. “We have opportunities to collaborate for the benefit of our students—whether it’s the physician assistant program or this new [medical school expansion] that will be a game changer for rural health care. That’s one of the great strengths of the Utah system.”

Southern Utah University President Mindy Benson offered the U’s delegation a behind-the-scenes look at the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s costume shop and a dress rehearsal of “Macbeth.” Benson noted she and Randall were appointed within months of each other in 2021 and are now the elder statesmen among Utah institutions’ presidents.

“It’s always good to have you here,” she said.

The tour stopped, for a second time this year, at Brigham Young University’s Creamery and was treated to bacon cheeseburgers and a new concoction, “In-Shane-ly Chocolate,” named for BYU President Shane Reese.

“It’s an opportunity to sit down in a casual environment and get to know [university leaders] a little bit better,” Steve Hafen, BYU’s administrative vice president, told the Deseret News. “The University of Utah is an outstanding educational institution with good leadership, and we want to learn from them. And I think they want to learn from us.”

At the site of Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Utah County campus, Vineyard city leaders showed Randall and other university leaders plans for “Utah City,” a ground-up, mixed-use development including transit, a “greenline promenade” park, upscale restaurants, Bella’s Market grocery store and 1,000 new apartments—all coming online within the next year. The cancer institute was the anchor that made Vineyard leaders’ vision for a fledgling town center come into focus, Mayor Julie Fullmer said.

Next up, the tour stopped at Camp Williams in Bluffdale to see the progress on the state-funded, $100 million U.S. Army Reserve headquarters building. When it opens in the spring of 2026, the 215,000-square-foot Army Readiness Building will allow the military to vacate the remaining 51 acres it controls at Ft. Douglas and clear the way for the university to expand with new research, office, student housing, community gathering and parking spaces.

Finally, the tour wrapped up with a stop at the West Valley hospital project. The Eccles Health Campus, funded with a $75 million transformational gift, will establish an 800,000-square-foot hospital and medical campus on the west side of Salt Lake County, ensuring that the more than 725,000 residents who live west of I-15 will have greater access to health care.

“We are so proud of this partnership,” Randall said. “These are the types of projects that bring people together. They are projects that make us wrestle with the hard problems of society. They give us momentum and hope that what we will see in the future is something better than what we see today.”