1980s
- All
- Academics(6)
- Campus(1)
- Culture(3)
- Faculty & Staff(6)
After starting construction in 1979, the Student Union opens its doors and soon wins an architecture award.
Dr. Edward (Ted) Harpham becomes assistant professor of the School of Social Sciences.
Dr. Alexander Clark is appointed interim president.
Dr. Robert H. Rutford becomes the University’s second president in May 1982, a position he occupies until 1994. A glacial geologist and expert in geomorphology and Antarctica, Rutford led a party into the Antarctic Ellsworth Mountains in the 1960s and served as director of the division of polar programs for the National Science Foundation from 1975 to 1977. His dedication to the UTD community would later be honored with his appointment as president emeritus in 2007.
Dr. Frank M. Bass becomes the UT System Eugene McDermott Professor of Management.
In honor of UT Dallas’ first on-staff Nobel laureate, Dr. Polykarp Kusch, the University endows the lecture series “Concerns of the Lively Mind,” which would later be renamed the “Polykarp Kusch Lecture Series” in 1985. Notable lectures include Dr. Rainer Schulte’s “Translation: A Model for Intercultural Communication” in 2010 and Dr. Hobson Wildenthal’s “The Lifecycle of a Science from Conception to Metamorphosis” in 2017.
The Morris Hite Center for Marketing Science opens its doors for students to learn the latest research related to new products and management.
Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth joins the UT Dallas faculty as an assistant professor in arts and humanities.
The University realizes its dream for an engineering school when the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Sciences opens its doors.
The youngest scientist to ever be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Brian Berry joins the School of Social Sciences.
Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman earns her PhD at UT Dallas. Thirteen years later, she establishes the University’s Center for BrainHealth.
Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, translation expert, and professor of 19th- and 20th-century European literature and history, establishes the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. UT Dallas is just one of two schools in the nation that offers a master’s or PhD in Holocaust studies.
The Texas Legislature passes HB 42, authorizing UT Dallas to enroll freshmen and sophomore students. Enrollment is limited to 2,000 entering freshmen with lower division enrollment limited to 5,000 students. This legislation marks the expansion of UTD into a full-scale university, from freshmen students all the way to PhD candidates.