History
of the University of Texas at Dallas
Prior to World War II, Eugene
McDermott, Cecil Green and J. Erik Jonsson, the
founders of Geophysical Services, Inc., were in the business of searching for
natural resources. The war changed the focus of the company from searching for
natural resources to creating instruments that aided in finding enemy planes
and submarines. GSI spawned Texas Instruments and in 1958, TI employee Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit that launched a new
era for the company, for North Texas, and for the world.
During the expansion of Texas
Instruments, the Founders were forced to import engineering talent from outside
the state, while the region’s bright young adults
pursued education elsewhere. McDermott, Green and Jonsson
saw that Texas needed highly educated minds if the state were to remain
competitive in the decades to come. They noted that, in 1959 alone, Columbia
University conferred 560 doctoral degrees - more than the entire Southwest
region. They wrote at the time, “To grow industrially, the region must grow
academically; it must provide the intellectual atmosphere, which will allow it
to compete in the new industries dependent on highly trained and creative
minds.”
Therefore, they established the
Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (later renamed the Southwest Center
for Advanced Studies) in 1961. The center recruited some of the best scientific
talent in the nation. The Texas Legislature concurred with the vision of the
Founders and mandated in 1967 that science and technology educational
opportunities needed to exist in North Texas. McDermott, Green and Jonsson
decided to donate SCAS and its lands to The University of Texas System, and on
June 13, 1969, Governor Preston Smith signed the bill creating The University
of Texas at Dallas. The SCAS scientists formed the core of UT Dallas’s
educational infrastructure.
By terms of its enabling
legislation, UT Dallas offered only graduate degrees until 1975 when the
addition of juniors and seniors increased enrollment from 408 in 1974 to more
than 3,300 students. By the fall of 1977, the enrollment reached over 5,300. In
1986, UT Dallas established the Erik Jonsson School
of Engineering and Computer Science. Today, the Jonsson
School plays a critical role in providing a highly educated work force for the
advanced technology industry.
In 1990, the Texas Legislature
authorized UT Dallas to admit lower division students. UT Dallas’s first
freshman class consisted of only 100 students. Despite its small size, this
cohort’s achievements set the standard for future classes. Since then, freshman
classes have grown in size while the university has maintained high enrollment
standards. Nationally published data indicate that UT Dallas’s freshman class
compares extremely well with those from many prominent national universities.
The Rise to National Prominence
The university’s ability to
attract and retain these students has propelled UT Dallas into national
prominence within a few short years. US News and World Report ranks UT
Dallas as one of the three best public universities in the state along with
UT Austin and Texas A&M. Kiplinger’s Personal
Finance Magazine, in its October 2000 article “100 Best Values in Public
Colleges”, ranked UT Dallas 60th among all public universities nationally.
The quality of the students who attend UT Dallas has remained consistently high.
Over forty percent of the incoming
freshmen are in the top 10% of their high school
graduating class and their average SAT scores place them in the top twenty
percent of all college-bound students.
The addition of freshmen has
accelerated the rise in the percentage of full-time undergraduates from 31% in
1986 to nearly 70% in 2006. Masters, doctoral and post-baccalaureate students
currently comprise 36% of the student body. Given its location and mission,
UT Dallas will continue to have significant numbers of professionals
attending undergraduate or master’s courses part time.
The transition of the university
from a part-time upper division school to a four-year university with an
emphasis on engineering, mathematics, the sciences, and the management of new
technologies has been greatly facilitated by the university’s faculty. By
retaining key faculty members and attracting more nationally and
internationally prominent researchers and instructors, UT Dallas has enabled
its faculty to provide quality instruction to an increasingly diverse student
population while sustaining the university’s longstanding research
tradition. In the past decade, the faculty has increased the level of
external research funds substantially. During this same period, the university
expanded its teaching mission, became a full-fledged institution, enhanced its
areas of focused excellence, and became independently recognized as one of the
top public universities in the nation.