University of North Texas at Dallas

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The University of North Texas Dallas Campus, sometimes known as the UNT System Center, is the Dallas extension campus of the University of North Texas, offering upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.

Once the Dallas Campus' on-site enrollment reaches the full-time equivalent of 1,000 students, the system can establish the free-standing University of North Texas at Dallas, the first public university within the Dallas city limits. (The University of Texas at Dallas is actually in Richardson.) For the Spring 2006 semester, the Dallas Campus reported an unofficial headcount of 1,487 students, or the full-time equivalent of 560.4 students; those numbers have not been certified by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. [1]

[edit] History and development

State Sen. Royce West suggested a feasibility study regarding the creation of a state university in southern Dallas County during the 75th Texas Legislature in 1997 (this area of Dallas County is predominantly African American and served only by the private Paul Quinn College). The Dallas City Council approved a resolution in June 2000 directing its city manager to secure up to $3 million by January 2002 to buy about 200 acres in southern Dallas' I-20 corridor for the future UNT Dallas campus.

A 2001 bill passed by the Texas Legislature and signed into law by Governor Rick Perry authorized the UNT System to establish UNT Dallas once enrollment at the Dallas Campus reaches 2,500. Another bill passed into law in 2003 changed the requirement, allowing work to begin on UNT at Dallas once the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board certifies enrollment of the equivalent of 1,000 full-time students for one semester; it also allowed the system to issue bonds for the development of the current Dallas Campus.

A ground-breaking ceremony for the first building on the future campus took place in October 2005, and the UNT System's time line for the project calls for the first UNT Dallas classes to be offered in January 2007.