1990s
The University appoints Dr. Franklyn Jenifer as its third president. Jenifer had previously been president of Howard University and the chancellor of the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education. During Jenifer’s tenure, UT Dallas’ enrollment would increase more than 61 percent. The campus would undergo dramatic physical transformation with major new facilities, including the School of Management, the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, and the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. Jenifer would be named president emeritus of UT Dallas in 2005.
UT Dallas pairs up with the city of Richardson to put on the first Sounds of Class, an annual family-friendly music festival.
The Galerstein Women’s Center, named for UTD’s first female dean, Dr. Carolyn Lipshy Galerstein, opens. It is renamed the Galerstein Gender Center in 2017.
Dr. Hasan Pirkul joins the School of Management as its new dean and Caruth Chair.
The chess team debuts at UT Dallas, launching a proud tradition of competitive excellence. Since its establishment, the UTD chess team has won the President’s Cup — known as the Final Four of College Chess — four times, won the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship, and made history by playing Instituto Superior de Cultura Física in the first US-Cuba chess match in 50 years.
The Collegium V Honors Program begins to provide promising students with small class sizes, innovative teaching methods and a variety of extracurricular activities.
UTD alum Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman establishes the Center for BrainHealth. The center is now home to labs with 60 fully funded research projects, including youth brain injury assessment, caregiver training, law enforcement mindfulness training and adolescent reasoning training.