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The University of Texas at Arlington: 1895-1995A Narrative History Prepared Bysaxon@uta.edu Assistant Director for Special Collections and Development Time LineThe University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is the sixth largest university in Texas, with a fall 1994 enrollment of 23,280 students. Located in North Texas between Dallas and Fort Worth, UTA offers a full array of baccalaureate degrees (fifty-five), the master's degree in fifty-eight disciplines, and the Ph.D. in nineteen. The university has a modern physical plant located on 388 acres in Arlington, a city of 280,000 people. The university's 642 fulltime faculty members are involved in ground breaking research in the school's nine colleges and departments, attracting $11 million annually in sponsored research from government and private sources. [1] The college was not always this way, of course. UTA will be one hundred years old in September 1995, and its history is a colorful and tumultuous one. Indeed, during its one hundred years, the college has had eight name changes, going from a small private academy, to a part of the Texas A&M system, and finally to the University of Texas system.
UTA traces its beginnings to Arlington College, a private school which opened in
September 1895 on a site near the present E. H. Hereford Student Center. In today's terms it was
not a college at all, but rather a school for children in primary, intermediate, and secondary grades
(grades 1-10). The impetus for building and opening the school came from Edward Emmett
Rankin, a prominent Arlington hardware merchant. In the spring of 1895, Rankin convinced the
two co-principals of the Arlington Public School,
Lee Morgan Hammond
and
William M. Trimble
, to start a private school in the town. Rankin hoped that such a school would offer
Arlington parents a welcome alternative to the ill-equipped and underfunded public school.
[2]
Hammond and Trimble invested $500 apiece in the school and Rankin helped them raise the rest by selling fifteen $100 scholarships to parents of students and to Arlington residents. The James Ditto and A. W. Collins families provided the land for the college and a two-and-a-half story wood school building was constructed at a cost of $5,000. Arlington business owners sold the construction supplies to Hammond and Trimble at cost. The school charged tuition on a sliding scale based on a student's grade level, from $1.50 per month for a child in the lower grades to $3.50 per month for a secondary school student. The school employed six teachers, including Hammond and Trimble who served as co-principals. Enrollment grew from 75 students for 1895- 1896 to a high of 150 in 1897-1898. After this, enrollment dropped as the school became embroiled in the debate on public education in Arlington.[3]
By the late 1890s, the school building was used to accommodate both public school
students and private. A number of factors led to this, but chief among them was the deplorable
condition of the public school building in the town of less than 1,000. An agreement was struck
between the public school board and Arlington College officials leading to the board's leasing of
the college's building. The college did retain one room and one teacher. By the first year of the
new century, Trimble and Hammond had sold their interests in the college and the Arlington
College Corporation was established to administer, fund, and help run the college. The
corporation had twenty-five stockholders and a five-person board of trustees.
[4]
In 1902, the voters of Arlington approved a proposition which created an incorporated school district, leading
to the election of a board of seven trustees. Later that year, the voters approved a bond issue for
school construction, laying the groundwork for the building of a new public school and the
vacating of the college.
[5]
In summer of 1902, the Arlington College Corporation deeded its
property to W. M. Dugan, Ditto, and J. H. Watson, who, in turn, soon reached an agreement with
James M. Carlisle
to open a military school in the fall of 1902 on the grounds of the college.
[6]
The Carlisle Military Academy operated from fall 1902 through spring 1913. Administered by Carlisle, a well-known educator and former superintendent of public instruction for Texas, the academy existed, according to its charter, for "the purpose of conducting an educational institution for the literary, military, and manual training of boys. . . ." The charter also empowered Carlisle to enroll "a limited number of girls." The school accepted students ten to eighteen years old and placed them into grades roughly equivalent to today's fifth through tenth grades. The school provided an education based on both intellectual work and military training, and all students (male and female) were required to wear uniforms and follow Carlisle's rigid code of behavior. [7] From 1902-1907, the school experienced dramatic growth in enrollment, going from 71 students during its first year to 150 in 1907. [8] As a response to this growth and the strain it placed on the school's limited facilities, Carlisle initiated a building program, adding new barracks, indoor plumbing, a gym and swimming pool, and a track for athletic events. He also purchased additional land around the academy to accommodate the school's expansion. [9] Beginning in 1908, however, enrollment began to slip because of a "financial panic" and a drought in the region. Fewer students meant less revenue coming from tuition, and Carlisle struggled to meet his financial obligations and debts. To offset his debts and increase his cash flow, Carlisle converted the school's land to capital stock, which he sold for $100 a share. [10] Unable to stem the enrollment decline, the academy went into receivership in May 1911. In addition, a number of individuals, companies, and vendors pressed to be paid for services rendered or products sold to the school. When they were not paid, many of them filed suit against the academy in district court and in justice of the peace courts as a result. [11] In October 1911, the lienholders of the mortgages on the academy's property filed suit against Carlisle to force him to sell the land. The lienholders included Citizens National Bank of Arlington and nine Arlington citizens, and they hoped to find a buyer who would maintain the land and physical plant as a "military school or college." [12] Carlisle resisted, but eventually lost the case and was required to sell off the school land and property. Thomas Spruance purchased the land and some of the personal property. The court also ordered Carlisle Military Academy Corporation dissolved and its "old record books, papers, etc., that are worthless" destroyed. [13] A beaten and dejected Carlisle left Arlington in the summer of 1913 to start another school in Whitewright, Texas.[14] H. K. Taylor came to Arlington on the heels of Carlisle's leaving. Having administered schools in Kentucky and Missouri before coming to Arlington, Taylor brought with him am impressive background as an administrator and a realization of the difficulties he would encounter in Texas. In fact, Taylor's son-in-law, J. J. Godbey, had been the headmaster at Carlisle Military Academy, and he played a major role in convincing Taylor to move to Arlington. [15] Taylor reached an agreement with the property owners of the school grounds and facilities and, as a result, started Arlington Training School, a school which operated from fall 1913 through spring 1916. Like Carlisle's school before it, Arlington Training School emphasized military and intellectual instruction for male students and intellectual training for female students. The school offered instruction for grades four through ten and had a comprehensive curriculum for each grade level. [16] Enrollment at the school was disappointing, growing from 66 students during its first year, to 95 the next, and leveling out at that number for the following year. [17] Despite less-than-expected enrollments, Taylor pushed to improve the school's facilities and boost enrollment. In 1914, he began selling scholarships to parents who wanted their children to attend the school. He also hammered out a contract with the school's property owners in 1915, where he agreed to lease the grounds for five years and the board agreed to begin an ambitious building and improvement campaign. Taylor also sold stock in the school and organized a board of directors, which included the owners of the school's property. Arlington Training School was incorporated in July 1915. [18] Shortly after this, Taylor and his board became embroiled in a controversy stemming from a difference of opinion over the value of the improvements being made on campus. Simply stated, Taylor believed that the board had not fulfilled its agreements to improve the school adequately, while the board believed that it had. Taylor broke his contract with the board by refusing to operate the school after May 1916. This difference of opinion reached Tarrant County's 17th District Court, pitting Taylor against his board. The court eventually ruled in the board's favor, requiring Taylor to pay $1,500 in damages plus court costs. Taylor had already left Arlington to join the faculty at Texas Woman's College in Denton when the decision was handed down. [19] By the time of the court's ruling, John B. Dodson of Dallas had opened Arlington Military Academy on the old college grounds. Dodson's academy lasted only through the 1916-1917 school year, and failed to attract enough students to become viable. [20] The closing of Arlington Military Academy in May 1917 brought to an end the efforts of educators and the Arlington community to support a private school in town. Each of the schools--Arlington College, Carlisle Military Academy, Arlington Training School, and Arlington Military Academy--had opened with high hopes and closed amid mounting financial pressures and even lawsuits. In the end, the Arlington community proved incapable of providing the support necessary to keep these private schools operating. By 1917, however, Arlington leaders believed that the community would benefit more from a junior college than from a private academy. Consequently, these leaders set out to do everything in their power to convince the Texas legislature that Arlington would be an ideal location for such a college. Arlington leaders got what they wanted when the Texas legislature, largely because of the lobbying efforts of Vincent Woodbury Grubbs, established a "Junior Agricultural and Industrial College" on the old college campus and affiliated the school with Texas A&M (then called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas). [21] In return for the college's founding and its state-supported status, Arlington and its residents were required to donate the twelve-acre college campus, buildings, and an additional one hundred acres of farmland to the state for the school. Shortly after this was done, the college, named Grubbs Vocational College, opened in September 1917 with Myron L. Williams as its chief administrator. The legislative act establishing the college defined its mission as being for "the education of white boys and girls in this State in the arts and sciences in which such boys and girls may acquire a good literary education . . . together with a knowledge of agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, stock raising and domestic arts and sciences. . . ." [22] The college offered a curriculum consisting of two years of secondary school work (tenth and eleventh grades) and two years of college work (freshman and sophomore years of college). [23] At the college level, there were initially two basic tracks: agriculture for the young men and household arts for female students. Shortly after the school opened, it broadened its course offerings to include courses in the manual arts, such as automotive mechanics and electrical work, and commercial courses in shorthand, typing, and bookkeeping. [24] True to its A&M affiliation and its own military academy roots, the college required all male students to be in the Corps of Cadets. Though the college opened with a disappointing 66 students in fall of 1917, its enrollment increased dramatically in the years that followed, growing to 808 by the spring semester of 1923, the last semester the school was known as Grubbs. [25] In fact, Williams and the A&M president at the time, William B. Bizzell, worked hard to rename the school. Williams wanted to remove the "limiting word" "vocational" from the name and, if possible, shed the image of the school as a private institution. With a name like Grubbs Vocational College, most people believed the college to be privately funded. In July 1923, the Texas legislature changed the name to North Texas Junior Agricultural College. Shortly after this, the word "junior" was dropped from the name and the college was called North Texas Agricultural College, or NTAC for short. [26] The school was known as NTAC from 1923 until 1949, a period of twenty-six years. For twenty-one of these years (1925-1946), Edward Everett Davis served as dean of the school, leading it through the hard times of the depression and WWII. Despite the hardships which national and international events placed on the school, the college sustained an impressive growth rate, going from 456 students in the 1925-1926 school year to more than 2,500 in 1946-1947. [27] During these years, the college broadened its course offerings to meet the technical needs of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, an area marked by rapid growth and industrialization. NTAC maintained a trades/vocational track in automobile repair, engineering, agriculture, business administration, carpentry, accounting, and machine shop, and a college track offering the first two years of a college education to students working toward a baccalaureate degree. In 1933-1934, the college discontinued its "sub-college division," which provided the last two years of high school for students from rural areas. [28] By the late 1940s, the college's students, faculty, and administration lobbied for yet another name change. They believed that the school's name was inadequate and actually misleading to the general public. They especially wanted to see the word "agricultural" removed from the name because agriculture courses were only a small--and by this time minor--part of the curriculum. They argued that by keeping "agricultural" in the name, many potential students would be misled about the nature of the courses offered at the college. The Texas legislature agreed and, in summer of 1949, changed the name of the school to Arlington State College. Once again, the school had a new identity. [29] Perhaps the most momentous changes in the school's one hundred year history occurred when it was known as Arlington State College. During these years, 1949-1967, the school underwent fundamental changes in all aspects of its operations, going from a junior to a senior college in 1959 [30], beginning the peaceful integration of African-Americans into its student body in1962, [31] moving from the A&M to the University of Texas system in 1965, [32] and adding graduate-level programs in 1966. [33] Enrollment also exploded during this period, increasing from 1,790 students in 1949 to 11,873 in 1967. New construction increased dramatically as eleven major buildings were added to the campus landscape. [34] As the school evolved to meet the needs of a metropolitan region, a number of its traditional programs, such as homemaking and agriculture, were dropped. They were replaced by more offerings in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering. And in 1954, ASC rescinded its long-standing policy that all male students be in the Corps of Cadets. Military science became an option like any other at the school. ASC's sports programs enjoyed national success during this period, with the football team winning back-to- back championships in the Junior Rose Bowl in 1956 and 1957 and its swimming team winning numerous meets in the mid-sixties on the strong performance of 1968 Olympic gold medalist Doug Russell. [35] The college's eighth name change occurred in March 1967, when it became officially known as The University of Texas at Arlington. The bill, which was pushed by the UT system and signed into law by Governor John Connally, changed the name of each of the components in the UT system to "The University of Texas at (location)." The first graduation ceremony where the new name appeared on diplomas was held on May 31, 1967. By this time, the school had become a university in name as well as fact. [36] Since joining the University of Texas system, UTA has become the second largest school in the system and the most comprehensive general academic component of the system in North Texas. The university's ten academic units include: Architecture, Business Administration, Engineering, Graduate School, Liberal Arts, Nursing, Science, Social Work, Teacher Education, and Urban and Public Affairs. UTA is primarily a non-resident campus which caters to a student population which is generally older, more mature, and taking fewer hours than students on many residential campuses. Of the university's 23,280 students, approximately 7.9% are African- American, .5% are Native American, 6.6% Hispanic, 8.5% Asian, 70.6% White, and 5.9% International. UTA awards approximately 3,000 bachelor's degrees, 1,000 master's, and 75 doctoral degrees a year. As the university begins its second one hundred years, it is poised to become not only a school of regional importance, but one of national recognition. [37] UTA Libraries Online |
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