RICHARDSON — Hobson Wildenthal, a longtime administrator at the University of Texas at Dallas, has long been troubled by the fact that his college wasn't getting the credits it deserved. That's why he was so happy after meeting a candidate for a tenure-track position last year.
The candidate told Wildenthal that he had recently interviewed at a university on the East Coast. When candidates told interviewers that they earned their PhDs from the University of Texas, their next question was surprising: UT Austin or Dallas?
Wildenthal laughed as he recalled the story of a University of Texas at Austin graduate. “One of the best stories I've ever heard,” he said.
The fact that such questions are being asked is a sign of the progress the University of Texas at Dallas has made in recent years. U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it third among public universities in the state, behind UT Austin and Texas A&M University. Since 2005, the university's four-year graduation rate has increased from 30 percent to more than 50 percent. Meanwhile, it is Spent more than $1 billion on campus construction, It continued to attract talented students from Texas.
The university's average ACT scores for freshmen consistently match or exceed the freshman classes at UT-Austin and A&M. And, according to federal statistics, 10 years after enrolling, these freshmen earn, on average, more than freshmen admitted to prestigious private schools like Baylor University and Texas Christian University.
UT-Dallas is one of several universities that have been trying for years to be mentioned in the same paper. As a “Tier 1” category UT-Austin and A&M. But UT Dallas has taken a different path than many of its peers. We have kept our student population relatively small, resisted the temptation to establish sports teams or other programs outside of our core focus, and invested in specialized areas.
He still has a long way to go to join the ranks of UT-Austin and A&M. But just a quarter-century after it began admitting new students, it has probably made more progress in a short amount of time than any other school in Texas.
“The university is becoming a better university,” said Raymond Paredes, chairman of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Commission. “There are some universities that don’t move as quickly because they try to do too many things at once.”
Useful limitations
Caitlin Fortner, a junior international political economy major, embodies the evolution of UT-Dallas. Her family is from Georgia and she attended military boarding school in Indiana. She had no ties to Texas until she arrived at the University of Texas at Dallas.
She visited Duke University, the University of Chicago, Ivy League schools, and more. However, her college counselor's description of UT-Dallas piqued her interest and she decided to investigate further. Ultimately, she was drawn to the university because of its generous financial aid and its large number of international students.
now, Fortner is She was excited to take a chance on the school. She still lives on campus and serves as student body president. She said she enjoys the atmosphere of a small private school despite being a public school.
“A lot of people still think of us as a day school or a school that doesn't have a lot of student life, but that's not true,” she says.
UT-Dallas officials have worked hard to attract students who: fortner. However, they acknowledge that much of the credit goes to things beyond their control. The university is located in an affluent suburb of Dallas, near the headquarters of technology and Fortune 500 companies. And in the early years of the university, there were limits to its growth. These limitations turned out to be a huge advantage.
Originally called the Southwest Graduate Research Center, it was founded in the 1960s by the founders of nearby Texas Instruments. At the time, they said their goal was to establish the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Southwest. But that idea was threatening to some people associated with other North Texas universities.
The university joined the UT System in 1969, but was limited to teaching upper-level students and did not admit freshmen or sophomores. And schools were not allowed to create programs that competed with neighboring universities.
Congress removed many of these restrictions in the 1990s, including the ban on freshmen and sophomores. But to avoid competition with local community colleges, UT-Dallas officials said the school was ordered to use the same admissions standards as UT-Austin, the UT System's flagship school.
That created big challenges. The University of Texas at Austin is a popular and well-established public university, but because of the large number of applicants, it can impose high standards. UT-Dallas was in its infancy, and it took a lot of convincing for top students to study at Richardson. His first freshman class enrolled fewer than 200 students. “And the retention rate was abysmal,” Wildenthal said.
Mr. Wildenthal arrived as president in 1992 and immediately focused on recruiting. In his first year, he convinced university officials to offer full scholarships to semifinalists for National Merit Scholarships, which are awarded based on PSAT scores.
Wildenthal predicted the program would increase the number of freshmen at the University of Texas at Dallas by about 20 students, but not more than 40. Instead, it increased by more than 250 people. The surge in students strained universities' financial and educational resources.
“We succeeded to the death,” Wildenthal said, but added, “We never looked back.”
still under construction
Regulations imposed by Congress forced UT Dallas to grow in its own way. In most cases, new public universities start out with low standards in hopes of attracting students and increasing their presence. But UT-Dallas needed to attract high-quality students and start small.
Because of its small size, the university had to focus on specific areas of expertise, such as engineering or business. And student qualifications have made faculty jobs more attractive to professors, University of Texas at Dallas officials said.
But over the past decade, the university has strived to expand. And it began to attract the attention of the outside world.
David Daniel oversaw much of the growth. As the university's president from 2005 to his 2015 tenure, he oversaw an increase in the number of tenure-track and tenure-track faculty from his 350 to his 536. The university also added a parking garage, five dormitories, and multiple academic buildings.
As a result, there has been a slow transition from commuter schools to traditional universities. The majority of students still come from the Dallas area. In 2015, he enrolled more than 400 new students from Plano. However, the school attracted about 225 students from the Austin area and 200 from the Houston area in 2015. We also attract new students from approximately 40 states.
Daniel, who took over as vice chancellor of the UT System earlier this year, said he wants to see UT Dallas become like Georgia Tech, more commonly known as Georgia Tech. Thirty years ago, Atlanta's universities were considered “pretty good engineering schools regionally,” Daniel said. While it remained small, it is now a powerhouse, the latest public school to join the prestigious invitation-only Association of American Universities.
The University of Texas at Dallas' selection of its next president illustrates that focus. Richard Benson, dean of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, one of the nation's top engineering schools, will assume the top job on July 15. (After Daniel's resignation, Wildenthal will serve as interim dean.) ).
Benson will arrive with more work. UT-Dallas lacks research space, student housing, and classrooms. And research spending still needs to double to truly compete with top schools, Daniel said. But he said it would be “less than five to 10 years” before the university could seriously compete with its aspiring peers, such as Georgia Tech and the University of California, San Diego.
“It's like building a 30-story tower. We're 15 to 20 stories up,” he said.
Disclosure: The University of Texas at Dallas is a former sponsor of The Texas Tribune. The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University are corporate sponsors of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be found here.
