On February 16th the Senate Higher Education Committee met and heard testimony from Raymund A. Paredes, Ph.D.; Texas Commissioner of Higher Education. A large portion of testimony during the head the hearing focused on Closing the Gaps initiative. Paredes noted that Texas is more than 2/3 of the way to achieving participation goal which is to have 630,000 more students enrolled in higher education in 2015 than Texas did in 2000.