UT Dallas started as a research lab. Texas Instruments founders set up the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest in 1961, and it became part of the state university system in 1969. The first building, designed by O'Neil Ford, opened in 1964, and a 2010 landscape plan turned the concrete campus into one of pools, magnolias and shade. This walk runs from the chess boards at the south end of the mall, under the steel trellis, past a big red sculpture and the library, to the building where it all began.
About this site
University of Texas at Dallas is a public college or university in Richardson, Dallas County. It is one of 18 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Dallas County.
The site sits at 32.9856, -96.7483 near Richardson. The nearest cataloged historic site is History of Aviation Archives (museum), about 0.7 miles away. Others within a short drive include West Coast University-Texas, First Baptist Church of Richardson, and Richardson.
Photo: Stan9999, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
History
UT Dallas grew out of an ambition by Texas Instruments founders Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott and Cecil Green to give North Texas the scientific talent its electronics industry needed. With physicist Lloyd Berkner, they launched the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest, which was chartered on February 14, 1961, and first operated out of space at Southern Methodist University. In 1962 the founders acquired land in Richardson, on the boundary between Dallas and Collin counties, and its first facility, a laboratory for earth and planetary science now known as the Founders Building, opened in 1964. Renamed the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies in 1967, it was handed to the state and became the University of Texas at Dallas in 1969, initially enrolling only graduate students. Juniors and seniors arrived in 1975, and the school became a full four-year university when it admitted its first freshmen in fall 1990. Since then the campus has filled in around a tree-lined central mall with engineering, science and management buildings, and enrollment has climbed past 30,000. UT Dallas is known for its engineering, computer science and business programs, a nationally ranked chess team founded in 1996, and its designation among the country's top-tier research universities.
Founders Building, the campus's first facility (1964). Photo: Stan9999, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsGreen Hall and the Spirit Rock. Photo: Stan9999, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsErik Jonsson School Engineering and Computer Science complex. Photo: Stan9999, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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