University of North Texas
The University of North Texas is a public research university in Denton, Texas. It consists of eleven colleges, two schools, an early admissions math and science academy for exceptional high-school-age students from across the state, and a library system that comprises the university core. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, UNT spent $44 million on research and development in 2018.
North Texas was founded as a nonsectarian, coeducational, private teachers college in 1890 and was formally adopted by the state 11 years later. UNT is the flagship institution of the University of North Texas System, which includes additional universities in Dallas and Fort Worth. UNT also has a satellite campus in Frisco.
Population, economic setting, and major location developments
The Denton campus is located in the largest populated region of Texas under two categories defined by the U.S. Census: core based statistical area and combined statistical area. From an economic perspective, the Denton campus lies within the Dallas-Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which as of 2011, had the sixth highest GDP of the nation's 366 metropolitan areas. As a state, Texas, as of 2011, had the second highest GDP in the country.On behalf of the state, the university, in its civic advocacy for the state, prevailed with three new-location, capital-intensive expansions over the last years.
- The university acquired in 1975 and subsequently developed a medical school in Fort Worth
- The university created a campus in South Dallas in 2000
- The university laid the groundwork for establishing the first public law school in the region the 2nd is UT Dallas' Law School.
In 2004, North Texas opened UNT Discovery Park – – in Denton, north of the main campus with technology incubator facilities dedicated to science and engineering. In 2011, the College of Visual Arts and Design launched the Design Research Center in downtown Dallas in the Design District.
Official designations
In 1985 the Governor's Select Committee on Higher Education recommended that North Texas be designated an "emerging national research university." Nine years earlier, in 1976, the Carnegie Foundation designated North Texas as a "Class 1 Doctorate-Granting Institution." Four decades later, in February 2016, Carnegie elevated North Texas to its top category – Doctorate-Granting Institutions with "highest research activity." At that time, Carnegie had 115 universities listed at that level.In 1988, U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett cited UNT for its innovative approach to undergraduate education in the Classic Learning Core, an integrated liberal arts curriculum similar to those usually found only in small, private colleges. In 1992, UNT was elected to full membership in the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. And, in 2011, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board included UNT as one of eight Emerging Research Institutions in its accountability system.
Enrollment
Certified enrollment as of the fall of 2017 was 38,081, the sixth largest in the state. For the 2011 academic year, the university awarded 8,608 degrees, of which 24 percent were at the graduate level. North Texas awarded 459 PhD degrees from fiscal years 2009 to 2011.Academics
Of the thirteen constituent collegiate units, ten sponsor 97 bachelor's degree programs, and the remaining three units serve other roles. The Toulouse Graduate School coordinates admissions, recruiting, and other aspects of the 81 masters and 38 doctorate degree programs offered by the ten collegiate units. The Honors College, the eleventh college, is described below. The Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science—for exceptional high-school-aged Texas scholars—awards high school diplomas that reflect two years of accelerated and enriched college classical core academics in biology, chemistry, physics, lab work, mathematics, English, history, political science, interdisciplinary seminar, and electives.The student-faculty ratio at UNT is 23:1, and 28.8 percent of its classes consist of fewer than 20 students. The most popular majors include business, management, marketing, communication, journalism, English, multi/interdisciplinary studies, and visual and performing arts.
North Texas has been a member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools since 1924 and is among the twenty-seven universities in Texas at Level VI, the highest level., the university was home to seventy-one research centers and institutes, and sixty-one are sponsored by colleges. Three have been sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and seven have been sponsored by the university's Office of Research and Economic Development. years ago, North Texas launched fifteen research clusters—collaborative, cross-disciplinary teams composed of researchers, faculty, students, multiple departments and/or colleges and outside institutions. Simultaneously, the university launched six additional strategic research areas, some of which involving frontiers in science, medicine, and hi-tech.
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is composed of nineteen academic departments, twenty-three centers and institutes, seven interdisciplinary programs, five public services, and eight student services.College of Science
North Texas has been offering Bachelor of Science degrees for years, Master of Science degrees for years, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in several scientific disciplines—including chemistry, biology, and physics—for years. North Texas is a sponsoring institution member of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, a consortium of 105 major research universities that leverage scientific research through partnerships with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. It has been a member of the consortium since 1954. The college sponsors 24 distinct research units in the form of centers, institutes, clinics, and laboratories, including the Institute of Applied Science, which conducts science-based interdisciplinary environmental research about the human impact on the environment and uses its findings to develop solutions. Its collaborators include biologists, ecologists, geologists, engineers, computer scientists, chemists, geographers, archaeologists, policy experts, and philosophers.G. Brint Ryan College of Business
The College of Business is host to five academic departments: Accounting, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate and Law, Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Marketing and Logistics, and Management. It offers seven undergraduate programs, fourteen MBA and master of science programs, and six PhD programs. In Fall 2011, the college moved into a new state-of-the-art Gold LEED certified $70 million facility named the Business Leadership Building. The college is accredited in both business and accounting by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business—accreditation for the former stretches back years and the latter, years.The college of business was renamed in 2019 to the G. Brint Ryan College of Business following a gift from alumnus G. Brint Ryan, alumnus and UNT System Board of Regents Chairman. The $30 million gift awarded by Ryan and his wife Amanda will create at least six endowed chairs and provide funding for academic program initiatives over seven years. Among the areas of focus are taxation and tax research, entrepreneurship, finance, logistics, information technology, cybersecurity and behavioral accounting.
Undergraduate business education
In 2011, 4,272 students were enrolled as business majors at the undergraduate level—15% of total undergraduates at the university.Business Graduate School
In 2011, 718 students were working on graduate degrees—639 at the masters level and 79 at the PhD level. 470 were in the MBA program, half of whom were full-time, 169 were in Master of Science programs for accounting, 15 were in the Business Computer Information Sciences. The college is host to three research centers, one applied academics center, and one institute: the Center for Decision and Information Technologies; the Institute of Petroleum Accounting; the Murphy Center for Entrepreneurship; Center for Logistics Education and Research; and the Professional Development Institute.U.S. News & World Report's "2013 Best Online Education Programs" ranked North Texas 20th in the nation among the Best Online Graduate Business Programs.
College of Education
The College of Education is a legacy of the university's founding as a teachers college years ago. The college is organized as four departments and one center: Counseling and Higher Education, Educational Psychology, Kinesiology, Health Promotion and Recreation, Teacher Education and Administration, and The Kristin Farmer Autism Center. As of the Fall 2012, enrollment was 4,178—27% at the graduate level. As of the 2010–2011 school year, the college certified over 1,147 teachers, the second largest number in the state by a university. years ago, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved renaming the "School of Education" to the "College of Education." At that time, the college was the largest in Texas and the Southwest, the largest doctoral program in the state, and the twenty-fifth largest producer of teacher certificates in the United States. Its prior name, "School of Education," dates back to 1946, when the teachers college outgrew itself and reorganized as six schools and colleges. The doctor of education program is in its year and the masters program is in its year.College of Engineering
The College of Engineering, founded in 2003, inherited longstanding programs Computer Science, Information Technology, and Engineering Technology—with majors in Construction Engineering Technology, Electronics Engineering Technology, Manufacturing Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Nuclear Engineering Technology—and launched Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical and Energy Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. The college is host to three research centers, one of which being the Net-Centric Software and Systems Center, a research consortium hosted by UNT and organized as a National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. It is primarily funded by industry members and universities. The focus is developing computing models for the future—models that go beyond applications with preordained fixed capabilities—models capable of services that are dynamically created, verified, and validated in the field and.College of Information
The College of Information was created in October 2008 by consolidating two existing academic units: Learning Technologies and the School of Library and Information Sciences. The School of Library and Information Services was created in 1970 as an outgrowth of its former structure as the Department of Library Services. The college sponsors three research centers, one being The Texas Center for Digital Knowledge.College of Merchandising, Hospitality, and Tourism
The college is structured as a professional school with a global perspective. Enrollment exceeded 1,500 in fall 2011, a 51-percent increase over six years. The college offers bachelor's degrees with majors in digital retailing, home furnishings merchandising, hospitality management and merchandising, and master's degrees in hospitality management, international sustainable tourism and merchandising.College of Music
The College of Music is a comprehensive institution of international rank. Its heritage dates back years, when North Texas was founded. The college has the largest enrollment of any music institution accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. It has been among the largest music institutions of higher learning in North America since the 1940s. The music library, founded in 1941, has one of the largest music collections in the United States, with over 300,000 volumes of books, periodicals, scores, and approximately 900,000 sound recordings. North Texas was first in the world to offer a degree in jazz studies. U.S. News and World Report ranked the jazz studies program as the best in the country every year from 1994, when it began ranking graduate jazz programs, to 1997, when it retired the category. The One O'Clock Lab Band has been nominated for 7 Grammy Awards.College of Health and Public Service
Previously called the College of Public Affairs and Community Service and before that the College of Community Service, the college adopted its current name in Fall 2017. The college is organized in seven departments: Audiology and Speech Language Pathology; Behavior Analysis; Criminal Justice; Emergency Management and Disaster Science; Public Administration; Rehabilitation and Health Services; and Social Work.The department of public administration is home of the nation's first comprehensive degree program in emergency and disaster management that launched years ago. The degree incorporates interdisciplinary curricula from other colleges that include applied philosophy and environmental ethics. The degree is tailored for both management practitioners and researchers and is collaborative with the Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI—based in Denton—which oversees Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Denton became home to FEMA when its predecessor, the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization, constructed the nation's first Federal underground defense center in 1959.
The college is host to five research institutes, one being the Turkish Institute for Police Studies. The institute has, since its founding in 1999, been based at North Texas. Its institution is a collaboration between the Turkish National Police and U.S. universities in areas of terrorism, organized crime, narcotics, administration, intelligence, and investigation.
UNT and Texas Women's University began a joint Master of Social Work program in 2017.
College of Visual Arts and Design
The College of Visual Arts and Design has the 10th largest enrollment of any art and design school accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, and the second largest of any that awards doctorates. The college name changes reflect the curricular expansion of programs. In 1992, what then had been the "Department of Art" within the College of Arts and Sciences, became "School of Visual Arts;" and in 2007, it became the "College of Visual Arts and Design." Art classes began at UNT in 1894, four years after its founding. Master's degrees were initiated in the 1930s and the first Master of Science degree in art was awarded in 1937. Since 1972, the college has served as curator and custodian of the Texas Fashion Collection that was started by Stanley Marcus in 1938.Honors College
The Honors College offers academic enrichments, including honors seminars and exclusive classes only for high-achieving undergraduates. There is no age limit. Its classes can either supplement or substitute core coursework. Its objective is to challenge exceptional students at higher levels and to promote leadership. The college is an autonomous collegiate unit on equal footing with the other collegiate units. Academically, it offers no degrees; but its courses are integrated with the baccalaureate programs of the other ten constituent colleges and the journalism school. Graduates are awarded a special medallion. The college offers many perks, including scholarships, exchange programs, and exclusive housing—Honors Hall.The college began as an honors program years ago. Its initial enrollment of 50, back then, quickly grew to 400. But the program lost support under a system of borrowing faculty members. The Honors Program was reconstituted in 1994 and was elevated as a college in 2005.
Mayborn School of Journalism
Curricular journalism at North Texas dates back to 1945. As a department, Journalism eventually became part of the College of Arts and Sciences. The Graduate Division of Journalism began in the fall of 1970 under the direction of Reginald Conway Westmorland, PhD. In 1999, twelve years after the death of Frank W. Mayborn, its graduate program was renamed the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism. On September 1, 2009, the entire program was elevated as its own collegiate unit and named the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism. Eight Pulitzer Prizes have been won by five of its alumni, among whom are Bill Moyers and Howard Swindle. Other notable alumni include Samir Husni and Cragg Hines. Since 1969, the news-editorial sequence has been accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications; and since 1986, the entire program has been accredited. The school is in its year as founding host of the annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.Virginia Ellison ''—a North Texas alumna who also taught English and journalism, sponsored the Student Press Club, and served as director of publicity at North Texas from 1942 to 1944—won a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship in 1945, the year she earned a degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science
TAMS is a two-year residential early college entrance program that has, since 1987, served exceptionally qualified Texas students who otherwise would be attending high school as juniors and seniors. It was the first of its kind in the nation and, as of 2012, the only in the state and one of five in the nation.Toulouse Graduate School
The Toulouse Graduate School, founded years ago, is the academic custodian and administrator of all graduate programs offered by nine colleges and one school. It maintains records, administers admissions, and serves various roles in recruiting. It was renamed in 1990 in honor of Robert Bartell Toulouse, EdD, who joined in 1948 as a professor in the College of Education, then served dean of the Graduate School from 1954 to 1982. Toulouse, before retiring as professor emeritus, had served other roles at the university, including provost and vice president of academic affairs from 1982 to 1985.Libraries
UNT Libraries are made up of four public service points and two remote storage facilities. Willis Library is the main library on campus, housing the business, economics, education, humanities and social sciences collections along with microforms and special areas such as the Music Library, Government Documents, the Digital Library Division, Archives, and the Rare Book and Texana collections. The Media Library in Chilton Hall houses a large collection of audiovisual materials, including films, audiobooks, and video games. Video recording equipment and gaming consoles are available for checkout. The Eagle Commons Library in Sycamore Hall focuses on physics, chemistry, biology, art, psychology and mathematics. It also houses the Collaboration and Learning Commons, a place to study in groups, create multi-media projects, and record presentations. The Discovery Park Library supports the College of Engineering and the College of Information, Library Science, and Technologies. It covers multiple areas of engineering, library and information science, and learning technology.The Intensive English Language Institute (IELI)
Established in 1977, IELI is the largest intensive English program in North Texas, serving international students who wish to learn academic English in preparation for university studies in the United States. IELI is a constituent of UNT International, an interdisciplinary unit and exponent of globalization in higher education that provides leadership and support of international teaching, research, and study-abroad initiatives. , IELI has been located in Marquis Hall on the UNT Denton campus.Student life
Residential life
All freshmen are required to live on campus to satisfy a residency requirement. 15.5% of students, or 5,620, live in on-campus residence halls. In addition, 37.3%, or 13,494, live within the city of Denton while 4,021, or 11.1% live outside of the city of Denton but within Denton County and 36.1% or 13,043 students live outside of Denton County.Student residence halls
There are 14 residence halls on the Denton campus. UNT also offers the Residents Engaged in Academic Living Communities program. The REAL communities offer students the ability to live with other residents in their major, and allow them to interact with each other and participate in programs that are geared toward their major or discipline. On August 22, 2011, -year-old Maple Street Hall became the first all-vegan college cafeteria in the country. The given 14 residence hall at the University of North Texas are : Bruce Hall, Clark Hall, College Inn, Crumley Hall, Honors Hall, Kerr Hall, Legends Hall, Maple Hall, Mozart Square, Rawlins Hall, Santa Fe Square, Traditions Hall, Victory Hall, West Hall.Pohl Recreation Center
The Pohl Recreation Center is the student recreation center located on the campus of the University of North Texas.Social Greek organizations
The social Greek community is made-up of four councils that oversee 39 fraternities and sororities. Four percent of students of both genders are members of social fraternities and sororities.Traditions
Primary colors
North Texas adopted green and white as its official primary colors during the 1902–1903 school year. In recent years, black has been added as another primary color.Mascot
UNT's mascot, the American eagle, was adopted on February 1, 1922, as a result of a student-faculty council debate and ensuing student election.The eagle has had three nicknames, beginning with "Scrappy" in 1950. The human costumed eagle character, launched in 1963, carried the name "Scrappy" until 1974—during the throes of the Vietnam War—when students adopted the name "Eppy" because it sounded less warlike. Since then, the name has switched back and forth, from Eppy to Scrappy; but for the last years, the name "Scrappy" has endured.
In the spring of 2002, a student group attempted to make the albino squirrel the school's secondary mascot. The student body narrowly rejected the measure. In August 2006, the albino squirrel, believed to bring luck to students who spotted him before an exam, was killed by a red-tailed hawk. By May 2007, another albino squirrel had been born on campus but was hit by a car in December 2016.
Nickname for intercollegiate athletics
The name "Mean Green," now in its year, was adopted by fans and media in 1966 for a North Texas football defensive squad that finished the season second in the nation against the rush. That season, Joe Greene, then a sophomore at North Texas, played left defensive tackle on the football team and competed in track and field. The nickname "Mean Joe Greene" caught-on during his first year with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969 when Pittsburgh fans wrongly assumed that "Mean Green" was derived from a nickname Joe Greene had inherited while at North Texas. The North Texas athletic department, media, and fans loved the novelty of the national use of its nickname, and its association with Joe Greene's surname and university's official school color. By 1968, "Mean Green" was branded on the backs of shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and the cover of the North Texas football brochure.Fight song
Francis Edwin Stroup, EdD, emerged in 1939—ten years after graduating from North Texas—as the winning composer of a university sponsored fight song competition organized by Floyd Graham. He taught summers at North Texas from 1939 to 1942. The song, "Fight, North Texas," has endured for years and the lyrics have changed minimally to reflect the name changes of the university. While serving as an associate professor at the University of Wyoming from 1946 to 1950, Stroup rewrote the lyrics for the chorus to "Ragtime Cowboy Joe," which was adopted in 1961 as the university's fight song. After serving as head of the Physical Education Department at Southern Arkansas University from 1950 to 1959, Stroup became Professor of Physical Education at Northern Illinois University. While there, Stroup rewrote the lyrics to the chorus of Alonzo Neil Annas' NIU "Loyalty Song", which was informally adopted in 1961 and officially 1963 as the "Huskie Fight Song." Stroup also composed songs for Drake University and the University of Chicago. A collegiate academician who played piano mostly by ear and neither majored nor worked in music, Stroup lived to be 101, a number exceeding the songs he composed by one digit. Stroup was inducted in the Halls of Fame of Northern Illinois University and the University of North Texas.Alma mater
In 1919, Julia Smith, while a music student, and Charles Kirby Langford, then a third-year letterman on the football team and an outstanding overall athlete, composed "Glory to the Green and White" which was adopted as the school's alma mater in 1922. Smith wrote the music and Langford wrote the lyrics.Other traditions
The Spirit Bell—a bell brought from Michigan in 1891—was a curfew bell from 1892 to 1928. The Talons, a spirit and service organization formed in 1960, acquired it in the 1964, mounted it on a wagon, and began the tradition of running it around the football field to rally fans. It was retired to the University Union in 1982 after it developed a crack. A similar Spirit Bell is currently in use at games. A different organization by the name "Talons" was founded in 1926 as the first social fraternity at North Texas.On Homecoming Fridays, the Talons light a bonfire built from wooden pallets, typically in a 40-by-40-by-25-foot-height structure. The tradition has endured since the 1930s.
"Boomer" is a cannon fired by the Talons at football games since the 1970s. It is a 7/8th scale M1841 6 pound, smooth bore muzzleloader, resting on hand-crafted solid oak from the campus. Talon alumni have restored it three times, the most recent being in the Fall of 2007, adding a custom for transport and equipment.
The Mean Green Machine, a green and black 1931 Ford Model A Tudor Sedan, is driven by the Talons Motorpool Committee at football games and special events. It was donated by alumnus Rex Cauble in 1974. In 2012, a team of engineering students installed a NetGain WarP 9 electric engine., the Mean Green Machine has been re-equipped with a modified Model A engine after complications with the electric engine.
McConnell Tower, the clock tower atop the Hurley Administration Building at the center of campus, is bathed in green light for victories. The clock is depicted on the official class ring with two different times on its faces: 1:00 and 7:00—the curfew initiated in 1892.
The eagle talon hand signal is formed by curling the thumb and index and middle fingers forward—the ring and pinkie fingers stay closed against the palm.
"In High Places," is a tall bronze statue of a flying eagle created by Gerald Balciar and dedicated during the university's centennial in 1990.
Broadcast, print, and digital media
Broadcast
, licensed and owned by the university and operated by students, has, for years, broadcast to the North Texas region. Jazz has always been a feature of the station; but in 1981, it became the predominant format. KNTU began broadcasting in stereo in 1986 and, on March 22, 1988, increased its broadcasting power from 6,700 watts to 100,000, extending its reach to about a 60-mile radius from its tower located on the Denton campus. KNTU is part of the Mean Green Radio Network, which reaches 10 million listeners. Under the guidance of now-retired faculty member Bill Mercer, several sports broadcasters and radio personalities have emerged from North Texas, including Dave Barnett formerly of ESPN, George Dunham, and Craig Miller.NTTV, UNT's 24-hour cable television station, features student-produced and student-centric programming.
Student publications
North Texas Review is an annual publication of the English Department. It is produced by UNT students and exclusively features works—art, poetry, fiction, non-fiction—by UNT students.Student yearbooks through the years have included Cotton-tail, Yucca, Wings, and Aerie. Aerie ceased publication after the 2007 edition, following a trend of the digital age cited by The Economist in 2008.
North Texas is the home of American Political Science Review as of 2012. The journal moves among national universities every four to six years. UNT will be the first university in the South or Southwest to house the publication.
The North Texas Daily is the official university daily newspaper, staffed by students. Print issues are published Tuesday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters, and weekly during the summer. The paper was founded in 1916 as The Campus Chat and adopted its current name in 1971.
The North Texas Pigeon is the University of North Texas' unofficial news source inspired by The Onion. It was started in 2014 to inform and entertain students. The website and all articles on it are the products of UNT students.
Intercollegiate athletics
, North Texas sponsored fifteen athletic teams that compete at the intercollegiate level of NCAA Division I—for men: football; for men and women: basketball, track & field, cross country, and golf; for women only: Diving, Soccer, Softball, Swimming, Tennis, and Volleyball. UNT has been a member of Conference USA for years.NCAA-D1-FBS Football
In its –year history of intercollegiate athletics, the North Texas football team has won 24 conference championships, with the last four occurring from 2001 to 2004 in the Sun Belt Conference. , the team has appeared in eight bowl games, winning two including, the 2002 New Orleans Bowl and the 2014 Heart of Dallas Bowl. Currently, Seth Littrell serves as the head coach, and is in his th year as head coach. From 1952 to 2010, home football games were played at Fouts Field. In 2011, UNT began playing in newly constructed Apogee Stadium. The football team claims its main rivalry is with that of SMU's.
NCAA-D1 Men's Basketball
The North Texas men's basketball team won the 2006–07 Sun Belt Conference championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The season marked the beginning of four consecutive seasons of 20-plus wins. North Texas won the Sun Belt Conference championship again during the 2009–10 season, and again advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The – season marks the season that the UNT Coliseum has served as the home for Men's basketball.
NCAA-D1 Women's Basketball
The head coach of the North Texas mean green Women's basketball team is Jalie Mitchell.
Arts in the community
UNT on the Square, which opened October 21, 2009, is an off-campus portal to fine arts at the University of North Texas in downtown Denton at 109 North Elm Street on the west side of the historic Denton County Courthouse, a few doors south of where North Texas was founded in temporary quarters years ago. The facility – – is the home of the UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, also founded in the fall of 2009. Herbert Holl, PhD, is its inaugural director. Concerts are held weekly and art exhibitions are in constant rotation.Notable alumni
, the University of North Texas had approximately 326,000 living alumni, of which, over 208,000 reside in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.Music
A significant number of notable alumni have flourished in the field of music, including Roy Orbison, Tom "Bones" Malone and "Blue Lou" Marini, Lecrae Moore, co-founder of Reach Records, Grammy Award-winners Don Henley, Norah Jones, Pat Boone and Duain Wolfe, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.Rock n Roll Jazz fusion legend and fine artist Robert C. Havens. Jazz saxophonist Billy Harper received his bachelor's degree in music in 1965. KDGE disc-jockey Josh Venable attended the university as well as Keith Carlock who has toured with Toto and Steely Dan. Eugene Corporon, conductor of the College of Music's Wind Symphony, is a prolific recording artist and conductor. Steve Turre, a jazz trombonist and member of the Juilliard faculty, is among the most prolific living studio musicians in the world and is in his year as trombonist with the Saturday Night Live Band.
The rock musician Meat Loaf, famous for his appearance in Rocky Horror Picture Show, produced an album trilogy, Bat Out of Hell, the first of which has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide. After years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and has stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums of all time. Kristopher Carter Composer; Emmy Award winner for the Batman Beyond cartoon series. Roy Orbison, Grammy Award-winning singer and guitarist; songs included "Oh, Pretty Woman," considered one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and "Crying"
Dave Pietro, Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and member of the Maria Schneider Orchestra and Snarky Puppy they are the Two-time Grammy Award-winning band, known for its combination of jazz, funk and world music 1986 alumnus Sara Hickman has had a noteworthy career as a singer-songwriter, producing over twenty albums, making two appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, getting a national hit, "I Couldn't Help Myself," which reached #3 on the Billboard magazine "Adult Contemporary" chart in 1993, and being named Official Texas State Musician for 2010. Award-winning opera and musical-theater composer Craig Bohmler received his Bachelor of Music there in 1978.
Intercollegiate and pro sports
Sports entertainment
members David and Kevin Von Erich, and Stone Cold Steve Austin were student athletes at North Texas. David, recruited in 1976 by Hayden Fry to play football, flourished as a 6–6, 220-pound forward on the basketball team under Bill Blakely. Kevin was a running back under Hayden Fry in 1976 until a knee injury. Austin, who drew inspiration to become a wrestler from the Von Erichs, played football for North Texas in the mid-1980s.Government and public service
Alumni in public service include Michael C. Burgess, congressman for the 26th Texas district; Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs since April 2015, he was former Saudi ambassador to the United States and former adviser to the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia; Ray Roberts, former U.S. Congressman and namesake of Lake Ray Roberts; Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner who, while in office, was a pioneering supporter of organic farmers and ranchers; and Robert L. Bobbitt, who served as Texas Speaker of the House, Texas Attorney General, and chairman of the Texas Highway Department.Chester A. Newland, PhD, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science with high honors from UNT in 1954 and also became head of the UNT Political Science Department in 1963, was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to become the inaugural director of the LBJ Library in 1968. He also served as director of the Federal Executive Institute from 1973 to 1976, and again from 1980 to 1981. In 1954, Newland was the founding president of North Texas chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, a national political science honorary organization. Jim Hightower was a student in political science at North Texas while Newland served as director. Clint Lorance, an Army officer, was convicted of second-degree murder for battlefield deaths in Afghanistan, and ultimately pardoned.
Broadcast media and entertainment
, who earned a PhD in clinical psychology from North Texas in 1979, is in his year as host of Dr. Phil, an internationally syndicated CBS TV show.Bill Moyers studied journalism at North Texas in the 1950s.
George Dunham, co-host of the "Dunham & Miller" radio show on KTCK, graduated in 1988.
Erin Cummings, stage, film, and television actress from Huntsville, Texas, graduate in 2000 with a degree in journalism.
Noble Henry Willingham, Jr. an American television and film actor who appeared in more than thirty films and in many television shows, including a stint opposite Chuck Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger.
Science and research
earned a Bachelor of Science degree from UNT in 1931 and went on to become a major contributor to the development of printed circuity and the miniaturization of computers.James Pawelczyk was a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1998. The crew served as subjects and operators for experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. His research interests include neural control of the circulation, particularly skeletal muscle blood flow, as it is affected by exercise or spaceflight. Pawelczyk is currently a physiologist at the Noll Physiological Research Center at Pennsylvania State University.
Mark Mattson is a well-known neuroscientist who has made major contributions to understanding how the brain responds to challenges, and to knowledge of why nerve cells become dysfunctional and degenerate in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
Primary and secondary education
Ela Hockaday founded the Hockaday School in Dallas in 1913. She earned her B.A. from North Texas in 1897.Higher education
, who earned a bachelor's degree in English from North Texas, served as president of the University of Texas at Austin from 1974 to 1979, the first female in the country to head a major university and the only female in that role in UT's -year history. As UT's fifteenth president, she broke a -year jinx by becoming the first not to be fired. She met her husband, Burl Gordon Rogers while attending North Texas and married him in 1935. Burl went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from UT in 1940, and thereafter, in 1941, moved to Westfield, New Jersey, for his new job at General Aniline Works in Linden. But on June 19 of that year, Burl died from burns after a mixture of chemicals flared in a laboratory at work a week earlier. In honor of Burl, Lorene gave money to UT for a scholarship in 1996, and in turn, the UT Board of Regents established the Burl Gordon Rogers Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Chemistry.William Marvin Whyburn, from the North Texas class of 1919, became the fourth president of Texas Tech University in 1944, and served in that capacity for four years. He went on to become an internationally acclaimed mathematics professor at UCLA, and was particularly known for his work on ordinary differential equations. His brother, Gordon Thomas Whyburn, was also a notable mathematician.
Bill Allen Nugent, in 1982, became the first chancellor of the University of Arkansas in its 110-year history. Robert Blocker, DMA, who has served as dean of several renowned institutions—including the UNT College of Music—has, for the last years, been the dean at the Yale School of Music. Bill Thomson, PhD, served as Dean of the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, from 1980 to 1992. Bill Lee, PhD, as dean from 1964 to 1982, built the University of Miami School of Music into an international powerhouse across several music genres, including jazz.
Architecture
, renowned architect, enrolled in 1924 and studied machine drafting and architectural drawing for two years.Business and commerce
enrolled in 1983 and studied Marketing and Business Computer Information Systems. He helped build startups from millions to billions in roles that included chief revenue officer and president of 3 of the most successful startups in software business history – Wang, Oracle, i2 Technologies. On April 6, 2018, Lancaster was inducted into the UNT College of Business Hall of Fame. The MBA alumni include Michael R. Bowlin, former president and CEO of ARCO.Brint Ryan of Ryan, LLC public accounting firm. As of 2018, Ryan, LLC was valued at over US$1 billion following a US$317 million acquisition of 42% of the company by Onex Corporation .
Humanities
—who completed graduate work at UNT in economics, history, and humanities in the 1960s—in 1984, became Bishop of the United Methodist Church, making her the second woman and first African American woman to become a bishop of any major Christian denomination in the world. In 2000, Kelly was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.Sarah Monique Broom, who completed a bachelor's degree in anthropology and mass communications at the University of North Texas is a former writer for Oprah Magazine and the author of The Yellow House, a memoir which earned the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2019.
Arts
has graduated from the painting program and is now known for her drip art.Sustainability
In Education and Operations In 2005, UNT launched the first PhD program in Environmental Ethics in the world. Three years later, the university became the first large public university in Texas to sign the "American College and University President's Climate Commitment"., twenty-four of the 658 signatory institutions of higher learning were from Texas. Of those twenty-four, five were full undergraduate-graduate institutions. Of those five, UNT was the largest. The objectives include achieving carbon neutrality by 2040 and ensuring that all new university buildings and facilities meet a minimum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Silver rating by the U.S. Green Building Council The university continued to promote sustainability in 2017 when it purchased a year worth of renewable energy credits, to allow the University of North Texas to be powered by renewable energy.In Facilities The Life Science Complex, built in 2011, became UNT's first LEED certified structure, earning a Gold rating. The Complex is a state-of-the-art research facility that houses the university's biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental physiology, genetics and plant sciences programs. The building features four climate-controlled rooftop greenhouses and one of the country's most sophisticated aquatics laboratories with more than 2,500 tanks. Also in 2011, Apogee Stadium, the -year-old football stadium, became the first newly built sports stadium in the nation to earn a Platinum LEED certification, the highest of four certifications. The facility features wind turbines, eco-friendly building materials, and native landscape architecture.
In National Rankings The following year, The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges, 2012 Edition, listed UNT for the second consecutive year, citing its top 17-percent ranking among green-compliant universities nationwide under ACUPCC. The article stated that forty percent of the energy on campus is derived from renewable sources, and 43 percent of the buildings have undergone energy retrofits. The campus has posted strong numbers in recycling: since 2009, the university has recycled nearly 1,000 tons of waste materials. UNT offers graduate degrees in Environmental Science and Public Administration and Management.