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.