The Board of Regents of the University of North Texas renamed the Graduate School the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies when Toulouse retired from the university in 1990. His contributions to graduate education made the honor richly deserved. Toulouse served as graduate dean from 1954 to 1982 when he was named provost and vice president for academic affairs.
During Toulouse's tenure as graduate dean, almost every graduate program currently authorized at UNT was established. His leadership role in establishing these programs helped to make UNT the most comprehensive graduate institution in the North Texas region and one of the three largest graduate institutions in the state.
In addition, graduate student enrollment grew from approximately 300 students to more than 5,500, which then represented almost a third of UNT's total enrollment. Toulouse also provided the leadership in establishing the Federation of North Texas Area Universities in 1968.
Toulouse's efforts also had an extraordinary effect on the development of research at the university. As dean, he pursued a goal of enhancing research across the entire campus, involving as many professors as possible to build a strong base for attracting external funding. His insight and good judgment in managing the university's limited resources for research led to major increases in the quality and impact of research at UNT. In this, he laid the foundation for the explosive increase in external research funding of the 1980s.
The University of North Texas, with an enrollment of approximately 25,000 students in 1996-97, is the fourth-largest institution of higher education in Texas. UNT is recognized as a comprehensive teaching and research institution and as a leader in the performance of many public services, assisting in the economic diversification of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and the state of Texas. In 1992, UNT was elected to full membership in the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
In 1987, the Select Committee on Higher Education designated UNT as one of five comprehensive research and graduate institutions in Texas. Since 1976, UNT has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Doctoral I University.
Since its founding in 1890, North Texas has awarded more than 149,000 bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. It has offered master's degrees since 1935 and doctoral degrees since 1950. UNT has more than 75,000 active alumni in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and another 44,000 active alumni reside elsewhere.
UNT is located in the city of Denton, easily accessible via interstate highway from Dallas (37 miles) and Fort Worth (35 miles). The university campus is composed of 131 structures on 456 acres.
The University of North Texas is the largest and most comprehensive research and doctoral degree-granting institution in North Texas. The university is committed to excellence in teaching and the discovery and application of knowledge through research and creative activities. As a metropolitan university, the institution is dedicated to continued growth as a leader in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Denton area; the Metroplex; and state, national and international education communities.
The university:
The university fosters its relationship with the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth and cultivates partnerships with elementary and secondary schools, community colleges, other universities, businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations to improve the quality of education and community life.
The institution that is now the University of North Texas was established in Denton in 1890 by Joshua C. Chilton as the Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institution. In 1899 the Texas Legislature accepted the buildings and grounds of what was then North Texas Normal College. Nine presidential terms and five more name changes have taken place since that date.
Graduate work at the master's level was first offered at the University of North Texas in 1935 in response to an increasing demand from Texas school systems for teachers with more than four years of college-level education. A Graduate Division and a Graduate Council were formed to make policy. Master's degrees were first offered in art, biology, chemistry, economics, education, English, physical and health education, and Spanish, with the first master's degrees conferred in 1936.
Beginning in 1946, master's programs were added in other departments and by 1950 the master's degree was available in almost every area in which the institution offered the bachelor's degree.
The Graduate School was established in 1946 as part of a major reorganization of the institution. The Board of Regents approved the first doctoral programs an EdD in education and a PhD in music in 1950. Today, doctoral programs are offered in all schools and colleges except the School of Merchandising and Hospitality Management. Throughout the development of the graduate program, the pattern has been to build master's programs on the base of well-established undergraduate programs and to build doctoral programs on the base of well-established master's programs.
In 1961 the Texas Legislature approved the designation of North Texas State University in recognition of the institution's widening scope in higher education. The university was designated in 1964 by the Governor's Committee on Education Beyond the High School as one of the five major state-supported universities in Texas. In 1968, the Texas College and University System Coordinating Board confirmed the university's mission to offer "top-quality doctoral programs ... in the basic arts and sciences, teacher education, business administration and the fine arts" as well as "cooperative doctoral programs in other fields." In further recognition of its doctoral programs and scholarly research, the university has been classified since 1976 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Doctoral I University. On May 15, 1988, NTSU became the University of North Texas.
A new dimension in graduate education came in 1968 with the establishment of the Federation of North Texas Area Universities. With the guidance of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the federation was founded to expand and enrich the variety of graduate degrees available to residents of the area by sharing the resources of the University of North Texas and Texas Woman's University, at Denton, and Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly East Texas State University).
Master's and doctoral degree programs have been developed that permit students at one of the three participating institutions to complete a portion of their graduate work at either or both of the other two, although a single institution grants the degree. The University of North Texas grants eight master's and seven doctoral degrees that are part of the federation consortium. In addition, 16 program committees have been formed to encourage cooperative activities between the participating universities.
The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth educates osteopathic physicians and biomedical scientists and emphasizes education, research and community services that promote and support disease prevention and primary health care.
The center, begun in 1970 as the privately funded Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM), became state-assisted and affiliated with the University of North Texas by action of the Texas State Legislature in 1975. The Health Science Center is governed by the University of North Texas Board of Regents. Currently, the Health Science Center's two components are TCOM and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
The graduate school offers master's and doctoral degrees in the biomedical sciences with specializations in anatomy and cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, microbiology and immunology, pharmacology, and physiology.
Medical students enrolled at TCOM also may acquire research training through enrolling in a joint DO/MS or DO/PhD program in biomedical sciences. Graduate students at UNT or the UNT Health Science Center may enroll at either campus through special arrangements of the respective graduate schools. Joint research and service activities are underway in such areas as aging, health promotion and public health.
At the undergraduate level, UNT and the UNT Health Science Center's Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine offer a joint program in which selected premedical students complete three years on the UNT campus in Denton, then transfer to the medical school in Fort Worth to begin the four-year medical curriculum. The basic science courses taken in the first year of the medical curriculum serve to complete a BA in biological sciences or chemistry or the BA or BS in biochemistry at UNT. Students in this program thus save a year in their medical training, reducing the usual eight-year program to seven.
The Health Science Center campus is a
15-acre, $71 million medical-care complex in the heart
of
Fort Worth's cultural district. It is home to the Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library,
where virtually all the world's medical knowledge may
be accessed by students, faculty, and the public through sophisticated medical information systems.
Faculty expertise has fostered the development of five institutes at the UNT Health Science Center: the Texas Institute for Research and Education on Aging, the Substance Abuse Institute of North Texas, the North Texas Eye Research Institute, the Wound Care Institute and the Institute for Forensic Medicine.
Students interested in a graduate program in biomedical sciences at the Health Science Center should contact the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, UNT Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, TX 76107, or call (817) 735-2560.
UNT research programs focus on the solutions to problems at national, regional, state and local levels. To implement this approach, the university is developing new facilities specifically designed to provide state-of-the-art capabilities.
External research funding reached $20,640,918 in the 1996 fiscal year. Of this total, 63.1 percent was for research, 18.8 percent was for instructional projects, 11.1 percent supported public service efforts and 7.0 percent supported student services and other projects. Federal government agencies provided 29.9 percent of the funds, state agency funds amounted to 17.4 percent and private sources (including business and industry) provided 52.7 percent. Specific areas of research are described in the catalog section devoted to each academic unit.
External funding is an essential feature of university research. Many graduate faculty members receive grants and contracts from private foundations and corporations and from federal, state and municipal agencies. These funds are used in support of all forms of research activity, including employment of graduate research assistants. Fellowships are sometimes available in departments that have received federal training grants.
Research is integral to graduate education. It provides the opportunity for a student to demonstrate creative and problem-solving talents in a unique way that is wholly different from the organized classroom experience. Research activity by graduate students, under faculty supervision, is at the heart of the graduate teaching/learning experience. Inquiries about financial support should be made directly to the academic unit in which the student intends to enroll.
During the last few years, UNT has made a consistent commitment to expanding and improving the space and equipment available for research. The opening of the 60,000 square-foot Science Research Building in 1985 brought state-of-the-art facilities for research in the departments of biological sciences, chemistry and physics, the biochemistry program and the Institute of Applied Sciences. Together with other specialized laboratories spread throughout the campus, UNT provides high-quality space and equipment to support its teaching, research and service missions.
In addition to funds granted by external sources to support research, funds appropriated by the Texas Legislature in support of research by faculty members of the university are allocated through a peer-review process by a faculty committee of eight members appointed by the Faculty Senate. The committee is chaired by the associate vice president for research and dean of the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies. The associate vice president for academic affairs is an ex-officio member. Faculty research grants are administered through the Office of Sponsored Research Administration.
Faculty research funds provide equipment, material and part-time support of graduate students and faculty members. For example, a graduate student may be employed as a research assistant in one of the many research projects underway on the campus, generally in the department in which the student is studying for an advanced degree. As part of a research assistantship, students often are able to undertake projects that contribute to completion of their thesis or dissertation requirement.
Results of faculty research include articles in professional and technical journals, published books and the development of new areas of research that may attract funding from sources outside the university.
Library facilities at the University of North Texas function as the nerve center for teaching and academic research. Four campus facilities house just under 2 million cataloged holdings, including books, periodicals, maps, documents, microforms, audiovisual materials, music scores and electronic media.
Willis Library holds one of the country's
largest music libraries, extensive phonographic disc
and tape collections, a broad humanities and
social sciences collection, the University Archives, and
the Rare Books and Texana collections. Other
unique library collections include the private jazz
collection of Stan Kenton, Don Gillis, Whit Ozier and
Leon Breeden; the private library of Anson Jones, president of the Republic of Texas; Texas
county
histories; miniatures; and examples of important early publishing, printing and binding styles.
The library is also a depository for U.S. and
Texas government documents.
The Media Library in Chilton Hall houses a large collection of audiovisual materials, including motion pictures, tapes, recordings and videodiscs.
The Science and Technology Library, housed in the Information Sciences Building, emphasizes physics, chemistry, biology, computer science and library science and includes an outstanding collection in mathematics.
The Library Annex houses over 300,000 lesser used materials, a portion of the University Archives, and the preservation and technical services departments of the University Libraries. Items located in the annex are so noted in the libraries' on-line catalog and a reading room is available for users in the annex. The Library Annex, located just off Airport Road on Precision, is near the main campus.
Through the university's membership in the Alliance for Higher Education (AHE), students with an AHE identification card may borrow materials at more than 20 academic libraries in the area. Contact library staff for details. Active participation in the AMIGOS Bibliographic Council provides access to a variety of computerized library services, including interlibrary loans, bibliographic database searching and shared cataloging. The libraries have a large number of electronic databases available for public use both on and off campus via computer linkage. The UNT Libraries hold a membership in the Center for Research Libraries. The center, which functions as an extension of the local collections, is dedicated to acquiring and lending materials that complement and supplement the collections of the major research libraries of North America. The University Library has recently been designated a major research library by the U.S. Department of Education.
Central computing services in support of instruction and research are provided through Academic Computing Services, a division of the Computing Center, located in Room 119 of the Information Sciences Building. These services include support for a wide range of hardware and software resources as well as training, consulting and information services.
In addition to the services directly supported by Academic Computing Services, additional computer services also are available from the University Libraries as well as many college, school and departmental computer support centers. Examples include the libraries' on-line card catalog and CD-ROM databases; general access as well as instructional microcomputer labs in the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business Administration, School of Community Service, Department of Computer Sciences, College of Education, School of Library and Information Sciences, School of Visual Arts, and numerous other departments; and UNIX-based minicomputers in the Department of Computer Sciences. Computer networks also are installed in most academic departments, providing connectivity with a variety of general-purpose and specialized computing equipment as well as to the Internet.
The primary central computing resources for academic computing at the University of North Texas consist of an IBM 9672/R51 mainframe computer and two UNIX super minicomputers. The IBM machine supports two operating systems for instruction and research: VM/ESA and MVS/ESA which use the CMS and COM-PLETE teleprocessing monitors. MVS provides batch processing while CMS is used for interactive computing under VM. The UNIX minicomputers use the latest commercial versions of the UNIX operating system.
Access to these and other computers is gained through an extensive fiber optic and cable television-based local area network (LAN) on campus. In addition, off-campus access is provided through dial-up lines that support standard asynchronous as well as PPP protocols, with telephone service points in the Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth areas that are free of long-distance charges.
Fourteen general access microcomputer laboratories, strategically housed in ten buildings across campus, are available for general use by all students for access to the mainframe, UNIX systems, and for general use of microcomputer software. Both IBM and Macintosh computers are available, with draft and laser-quality printers in most labs.
Academic Computing Services provides support for most major programming languages on the IBM, Sun, and UNIX systems. Several statistical analysis packages are supported on the various host systems, including SAS and SPSS. Electronic mail facilities are available on all systems for intra-campus communications as well as for communications through the Internet. In addition, access to other Internet services such as the World Wide Web, Telnet and Gopher are provided from any of the computers on the campus LAN. The Computing Center also serves as a repository for a substantial body of machine-readable data including the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) data archives, Standard and Poor's COMPUSTAT, and the Center for Research in Security Prices' CRSP data sets. The university libraries also maintain a number of databases and other research materials on CD-ROM servers that are accessible through the campus network.
Academic Computing Services provides support for a variety of microcomputer-based software applications. Site licenses are maintained for microcomputer versions of SPSS and SAS, both of which provide statistical analysis capabilities. The general access microcomputer labs are open to all students and offer a wide variety of microcomputer applications accessible over a high-speed LAN.
Consulting and training services are provided by Academic Computing Services to facilitate the use of both microcomputer and host computing facilities by students. A series of short courses is offered each semester to allow students to gain the expertise necessary to use campus computer systems effectively. An extensive local library of documentation also is available for self-study and a number of computer-based training programs are accessible on host systems and from within student labs. Should problems arise, experienced consultants are available to assist students.
Students wishing to participate in computer-based conferences on a wide variety of computer-related and non-computer-related subjects can take advantage of USENET news bulletin board system.
Finally, BENCHMARKS, the Computing Center's newsletter, is published on a regular basis and serves as an excellent resource for current information on computing systems at UNT.
The University of North Texas is composed of the following colleges and schools.
See Program Options in this section of the catalog for specific degrees offered.
Note: Consult the dean of the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies for program opportunities and requirements and see "Toulouse School of Graduate Studies" in the University section of this catalog describing the program.
For information on these programs, contact:
Dr. Thomas A. Yorio, Dean of the Graduate
School for Biomedical Sciences
3500 Camp Bowie Blvd.
Fort Worth, TX 76107-2690
(817) 735-2560
Website: http://www.hsc.unt.edu
The Federation of North Texas Area Universities is a collaborative effort between the University of North Texas, Texas Woman's University and Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly East Texas State University). As noted in an earlier section, master's and doctoral degree programs have been developed that permit students at any one of the three participating institutions to complete a portion of their graduate work at either or both of the other two.
The university's cooperative degree programs are administered through the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies. As a member of the federation, UNT offers interinstitutional graduate programs in a number of disciplines. Each cooperative degree program is coordinated by a federation committee for that discipline.
Enrollment of UNT students at TWU and TAMU-C under the cross-registration arrangement is contingent upon their meeting any prerequisites for admission to the class or classes in which they wish to be enrolled, and upon the availability of space in the class.
UNT is approved to award the following degrees through programs offered by the federation.
Fourteen Southern states participate in the Academic Common Market, an interstate agreement for sharing uncommon programs.
Residents of these states who are accepted for admission into selected out-of-state programs may enroll on an in-state tuition basis. To qualify, an applicant must (1) be accepted into a program to which his or her state has made arrangements to send its students, and (2) submit proof to the university of legal residence in the home state. Residents of the Southern states should contact the Texas state coordinator for the Academic Common Market, in care of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, P.O. Box 12788, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas 78711, or contact the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies at UNT for more information.
A list of certain graduate degree programs offered by UNT that are currently accepted by various states that are members of the Common Market may be obtained from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board or the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies at UNT.
UNT Undergraduate Catalog General Information Table of Contents
UNT Undergraduate Catalog Table of Contents
UNT Graduate Catalog Table of Contents
UNT Undergraduate Catalog Course and Subject Guide