130 Things You Might Not Know About UTA

The history of UT Arlington is inspiring, complicated, memorable—and weird. Take a guided tour of 130 lesser-known facts, occurrences, events, milestones, and mishaps that helped shape the University into what it is today.
By Teresa Newton

As we look back at 130 years of UT Arlington history, it’s not hard to find moments that inspire, like when the University (then called Arlington State College) became the first school in the Texas A&M System to integrate; moments that thrill, like when the Movin’ Mavs wheelchair basketball team won its first national championship; and moments that entertain, like when Rihanna performed a sold-out concert at Texas Hall.

And then there are the other moments.

The moments that befuddle, bedevil, and bemuse.

That spook, shock, and startle.

That involve everything from Picassos to UFOs, from jiu-jitsu to Junior Aggies, and from broken ankles to buried elephants.

This is a story that celebrates those moments. The often forgotten, sometimes hard-to-believe moments that make up the rest of UTA’s history. We’re throwing open the archives and dusting off the photo albums in celebration of the University’s milestone 130th anniversary.

The Early Years (1895-1949)

1. Though it was called Arlington College, the first school located on campus was not a higher education institution at all—it was a private school covering first through 10th grade (at the time, the highest level of high school).

2. Arlington College consisted of a two‑story wooden building with six classrooms and no plumbing. It was erected near the site where the University Center sits today.

3. Arlington College closed in 1902 when the Arlington Independent School District was formed. Before then, the city’s public schools were part of the county system.

4. When Arlington College closed, James M. Carlisle—a former state superintendent—took the opportunity to move his Carlisle Military Academy from Hillsboro, Texas, to the Arlington campus. The academy stayed open until 1913 before being (briefly) replaced by Arlington Training Academy.

5. The school’s next incarnation was Grubbs Vocational College. Opened in 1917, it provided two years of high school and two years of vocational or college education.

6. Its namesake, Vincent W. Grubbs, resented that he was not selected as dean of the school.

7. Ottie Lyon, Grubbs’ only secretary in 1918, made $720 a year. Her pay was erratic; the dean (who was not Vincent Grubbs) forgot to include her in the budget. Still, she worked 40 years in the Registrar’s Office.

8. Grubbs Vocational College changed its name in May 1923 to North Texas Agricultural College (NTAC) because administrators thought the original sounded like a private trade school.

9. Twenty‑six years later, NTAC changed its name to Arlington State College because administrators thought the word “agricultural” was too limiting.

10. “No dead‑beats in faculty or student body” was the slogan of Edward Everett Davis, NTAC dean from 1925–46. In his first year, 102 of 456 students withdrew and only 17 of 40 faculty members remained.

11. 1925 was a banner year for NTAC’s hogs—15 of them won a total of 75 ribbons at four state and two regional fairs.

12. More than 2,000 students preregistered for fall 1947 classes. To meet demand, NTAC had to add eight temporary classrooms, four dorms, and 22 new instructors.

Wartime and Veterans

13. During Grubbs’ first year, it hosted a Student Army Training Corps that inducted students into the U.S. Army as privates. The program became the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in 1921.

14. From 1919–20, Grubbs created an entire program for disabled soldiers returning from World War I.

15. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, NTAC immediately initiated a national defense training program on a 24‑hour schedule in the Engineering Department. Through it, 400 men between ages 18 and 35 received instruction in machine operation, aircraft welding, final aircraft assembly, and metal riveting.

16. During World War II, NTAC offered courses to help the war effort, including airplane repair, camouflage, aerial photography, and flight training. Women took sheet metal classes in 1942 and were permitted to take engineering courses in 1943.

17. The ROTC was the first in the country to offer a Commando Unit, training cadets in commando techniques, barbed‑wire clearance, bayonet fighting, and jiu‑jitsu.

18. NTAC was one of 131 colleges selected in 1943 for the Navy V‑12 program, designed to increase the number of commissioned officers available for wartime service. Participants became Navy ensigns and Marine second lieutenants. Four Navy and three Marine platoons were assigned to campus in 1944–45.

19. A massive flag with a star for every NTAC student in the service (1,056 total) was made by coeds and the mothers of students. Creating the flag helped teach freshman girls how to sew.

20. Veterans made up 46% of NTAC’s student body of 2,500 for the 1946–47 academic year, thanks to the G.I. Bill.

21. A campus peace protest against the Persian Gulf War in January 1991 was followed a month later with a pro‑war rally for Operation Desert Storm.

From ASC to UTA (1950-present)

22. Enrollment at ASC totaled 9,116 in fall 1963, compared to Texas A&M University’s 8,122.

23. Students voted to replace the University’s “Rebel” theme with the “Mavericks” in February 1970, but it took a vote by the UT System Regents to finally make it official in January 1971.

24. Lady Bird Johnson visited campus twice: first with her husband—then‑Vice President Lyndon Johnson—for a 1962 luncheon; second as a UT System Regent for the 1976 commencement ceremonies.

25. In 1985, the Fort Worth Star‑Telegram donated more than 1 million photographs, negatives, newspaper clippings, and oil records from the 1880s–1960s to the UTA Libraries Special Collections.

26. In 1970, 220 foreign students from 33 countries enrolled at UTA, marking the University’s first step toward becoming the heterogeneous campus it is today. In 1965, 31 students came from 14 foreign countries; a decade later, international students totaled 1,035, and UTA added its first international student advisor.

27. UTA President Wendell Nedderman would try almost anything once. He spent a day in a wheelchair to understand accessibility challenges, traded places with a student and attended their classes, and even broke an ankle when competing in Oozeball.

28. After ASC received senior-college status in 1959, tensions arose between the school and the A&M System that oversaw it. These were aggravated by a proposed name change to “Texas A&M University at Arlington.” A few protesters encouraged an alternative of “Arlington State College at Bryan.” The two parties agreed to split, and the University of Texas System swooped in to take A&M’s place.

Classes and Academic Programs

29. Sewing and stenography were popular classes for girls at Grubbs Vocational College. Vocational programs for boys included metal forging, woodworking, welding, and auto mechanics.

30. Typing was one of the biggest classes at NTAC; both men and women kept the 70 typewriters clicking all day long.

31. The Bible Department at NTAC existed only one year, 1938.

32. NTAC’s School of Aeronautics was the oldest and largest flying school in the Southwest and offered classes in sheet metal and other useful airplane skills.

33. Marksmanship was a physical education course offered to students at NTAC, ASC, and UTA. A gun range in the basement of College Hall was replaced in 1962 with one in the Physical Education Center. Rifle and pistol teams competed on the intramural level.

34. Agriculture and home economics programs ended at ASC in 1957 and 1959, respectively.

35. UTA’s Religion Department in the 1970s achieved separation of church and state by having instructors’ churches pay for their salaries.

36. An auto repair class on minor and major tune-ups was offered at UTA in 1978.

37. UTA’s glass art program is the only accredited one in Texas.

Fees, Rules, and Regulations

38. Tuition at Carlisle Military Academy began at $245 per year plus a $30.05 uniform fee.

39. Arlington Training School charged $300 for ages 14 and older, with a 15% discount for ministers’ kids.

40. All Carlisle Military Academy students were required to write home at least once a week and attend a Sunday afternoon letter‑writing session.

41. At first, Grubbs charged no tuition and only $20 per month for room and board and $15‑20 per year for textbooks.

42. Myron L. Williams, Grubbs and NTAC dean from 1917–25, prohibited dancing and smoking on campus, enforced a 7:20 p.m. curfew, required students to attend chapel three or four times a week, and gave demerits for rule infractions. The dance ban ended with his departure.

43. Grubbs female students had to sew their own uniforms, gingham dresses, while on campus.

44. Women’s dress codes in 1924 forbade them from wearing the color red. Rules in the mid‑1960s prohibited women from wearing slacks, jeans, shorts, or miniskirts on campus.

45. All male students at NTAC were required to be members of the ROTC cadet corps, though there were exemptions available for married men and those over 30. This requirement ended in 1954.

46. In 1931 during the Great Depression, NTAC advertised “Free Tuition, Broad Curricula, High Standards, Easy Access” to boost enrollment. By 1934, tuition averaged $28 per semester.

47. Agricultural students could work on the NTAC farm to help pay part of their tuition.

48. Smoking on campus, even in classrooms, was common at one time. UTA officially became tobacco‑free in August 2011.

Campus Infrastructure

49. Ransom Hall, opened in 1919 as the Administration Building, was later named for William A. Ransom, an ASC English professor.

50. Built in 1928, the circular building attached to Preston Hall started out as a cattle-judging site. Over the years, the Roundhouse has been a slaughterhouse, an art printing lab, a history office, and a planetarium.

51. Rosebud Theatre’s name honors NTAC President E.H. Hereford, nicknamed “Old Rosebud,” who always wore a rosebud in his lapel.

52. On-campus housing consisted of barracks for cadets until the first dormitory, the original Davis Hall, was built in 1936. Boarding houses near campus met coed and non-cadet needs. After WWII, veteran dormitories and boarding houses were added.

53. The original Davis Hall (later named Brazos House), built with federal Public Works Administration funding, was named for NTAC’s dean, Edward Everett Davis (see No. 10 for a glimpse at his charming personality). Though it was demolished in July 2019, its archway design was integrated into Brazos Park in 2020.

54. Lipscomb Hall, opened in 1957, was the first on-campus dorm for women.

55. The names of famous architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Michelangelo, are inlaid on green tiles lining the breezeway of the Architecture Building.

56. As soon as the new two-story library opened in 1964, plans were made to add four additional stories. That project was completed in 1966. Watch a news clip from the opening.

57. The Mainstage Theatre’s profile was rather unflattering when it opened in 1965. Its toilet shape created humorous moments until it disappeared from view (and jokes) when the rest of the Fine Arts Building was constructed around it.

58. From 1968–2023, the School of Social Work was housed in the old Arlington High School building, originally built in 1922.

59. The idea of lowering Cooper Street below campus level started in the early 1970s. When wheelchair athlete Andrew David Beck was killed crossing Cooper Street in January 1989, authorities acted. The new lowered road spanned by three pedestrian bridges opened in November 1990.

60. UTA’s basketball and volleyball teams played on the Texas Hall stage until 2010, when College Park Center opened.

Historic Firsts

61. Robert L. Stewart, UTA’s first graduate in space, was also the first Army astronaut, a member of the first Space Shuttle mission, and one of the first two men to walk in space without a lifeline attached to the shuttle. He served on five shuttle missions and retired as a brigadier general.

62. ASC/UTA issued its first bachelor’s degrees in 1961, first master’s degrees in 1967, and first doctoral degrees in 1971.

63. In 1962, the Texas A&M System allowed ASC to become the first A&M school to integrate. Black students were admitted in September of that year, and brothers Oscar and Tommy Chambers were among the first to register.

64. Maxwell Scarlett (’66 BS, Biology) was ASC’s first Black student to graduate.

65. In 1968, UTA was the first university in the nation to have a student group sponsored by the American Helicopter Society.

66. Reby Cary became the University’s first Black professor and administrator in 1969. He later served as an associate dean of student life and director of Minority Student Affairs.

67. In 1972, UTA hosted the first intramural drag racing team and sponsored the first college drag race meet in the nation.

68. Penny Willrich became the first female Student Congress president in 1976.

69. Susan Manifold was the first female corps commander for UTA’s ROTC in 1977.

70. UTA’s first three shuttle buses began running in 1982, taking students from Maverick Stadium to the UTA Library.

71. Kalpana Chawla became the first woman of Indian origin to go to space when she made her first trip in 1997. After she perished on a 2003 mission, UTA created a memorial display in her honor in Nedderman Hall.

72. In 1986, UTA graduates received the first-, second-, and third-highest grades on the Texas CPA exam, the first time that had happened for any university in the state.

73. Dalmas Taylor became UTA’s first provost in 1993.

74. Jennifer Cowley became the first female president of UTA in 2022.

Found on Campus

75. Trading Horse Creek, which runs through Doug Russell Park and along Mitchell Street, once demarcated the southern border of the city of Arlington.

76. A cemetery is tucked away in Doug Russell Park, a remnant of the Berachah Industrial Home for homeless girls and unwed mothers. The home operated from 1894–1935.

77. Original artwork by Picasso, Dali, and other artists—all donated by the late Allan Saxe—are stored with the Art and Art History Department.

78. Housed on the third floor of the University Administration Building, the University Mace is taken out twice a year for graduation ceremonies, when the scepter-like object is carried at the head of academic processions as a symbol of authority. Art Professor David Keen designed it in 2007.

79. Founded in 1956, the Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center houses one of the best herpetological collections in the United States. With more than 200,000 specimens from 90 different countries, it is one of the largest centers in the world.

80. Each of the spirit horses stationed around campus has a theme. A 130th anniversary horse will be unveiled in fall 2025.

81. From 1964 to 2013, the University Center housed Bowling & Billiards. The destination featured a 12-lane bowling alley with automatic scoring, a nine-table billiard hall with regulation-sized tables, a snooker table, large-screen televisions, and a game room featuring foosball and darts.

82. The Aerodynamics Research Center houses the country’s only university-based arc-heated hypersonic wind tunnel. It was brought online in 2019.

83. The pool tables from Billiards & Bowling found a new home in the Maverick Activities Center.

84. In the late 1970s, widows and divorcees who had been stay-at-home wives could find emotional support, financial education, and job training through the Transitions Office in the Women’s Center. Watch a video about the Transitions Office from 1978.

85. An on-campus bar, The Dry Gulch, served up beer, billiards, live music, and a few food items in the University Center’s basement. When the pub opened, the legal drinking age in Texas was 18. The age limit was raised to 21 in 1986, and the bar closed in 1992.

86. Winning race cars built by UTA’s Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) team are parked inside Nedderman Hall and Woolf Hall. The team has won numerous U.S. and international championships since the program began at UTA in the 1980s.

Student Clubs and Organizations

87. The Baking Club of the 1950s was composed of students in the industrial baking degree program, who happened to all be men.

88. The Ex-Students Association formed at a postwar reunion of 500 former students on July 4, 1946.

89. The jazz orchestra has played on campus in some form since 1947.

90. Commuters were called “day dodgers” at NTAC. The Cadet Commuters Association formed as a social club for male students in 1947.

91. Student Congress formed in 1960, with James “Sarge” Chappell elected as the first president. Royce West became the first Black student elected president in 1974.

92. ASC’s Rodeo Club formed in 1949 and later became the Vaqueros. Besides hosting and competing in rodeos, the group sponsored an annual Western Day. View a clip from 1958 news report about a rodeo hosted by rodeo clubs from ASC and TCU.

93. The Flying Club started in 1965 for faculty and students and met at the then-new Arlington Municipal Airport.

94. The Texas A&M System did not allow Greek social fraternities or sororities, so Greek Life on campus began only after ASC joined the University of Texas System.

95. In the 1970s, students held a campus talent show that included a “no-talent” division.

96. The Maverick Marching Band is one of very few college bands without a football team.

97. Today’s Campus Cat Coalition cares for stray cats on campus, fostering and socializing the friendly felines to help find them homes. Feral cats are spayed or neutered.

Technology (or Lack Thereof)

98. When it opened in 1919, Ransom Hall boasted a “moving picture machine and stereopticon for illustrating various kinds of manufacturing processes.”

99. NTAC’s and ASC’s radio production programs included a short-wave station, W5EUY.

100. In 1961, ASC’s first computer was an IBM 1401 for payroll and grade reports, while academic areas used an IBM 1620 Model I in the Engineering Building. The latter had no data storage device.

101. In 1976, the library featured coin-operated typewriters.

102. The Discovery ’76 Solar House was the first solar-powered house in Texas. The three-bedroom, 1,950-square-foot facility was an experimental building made by UTA’s Construction Research Center. The solar banks held about three days’ worth of energy.

103. Combine 70 video-display terminals, 3,000 software engineering students, a 30-minute time limit, and a first-come, first-served policy, and you’ll have the 1983 computer experience at UTA. Students would wait for hours for their chance to use the machines.

104. Registration by phone debuted in 1993.

105. In 2008, UTA installed North Texas’ first green roof on the Life Science Building, and the Engineering Research Complex became the first certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building on campus.

Sports and Athletics

106. In 1943, the NTAC Hornets football team was exceptionally strong. SMU and TCU recruited Marines to play on their squads, but the military ordered the students to report to NTAC instead.

107. ASC won consecutive Junior Rose Bowl championships in 1956 (vs. Compton College) and 1957 (vs. Cerritos Junior College). The ’57 team included eight All-Americans.

108. Some 60 students rode their bicycles to East Texas State University in Commerce in 1967 to see a UTA football victory. Three riders made the full distance of 80 miles. One rode both there and back. A police escort and support vehicles aided the travelers.

109. Maverick football called Turnpike Stadium home from 1970–76 when Memorial Stadium could not meet its needs. The team used Craven Fields, a high school stadium, from 1977–79, then moved to Maverick Stadium when it opened in 1980.

110. Low game attendance and a $950,000 deficit ($2.8 million in 2025 money) influenced the decision to end Maverick football in 1985. Although fans raised $600,000 in pledges over three years, it was not enough to save the program.

111. The women’s basketball team made its NCAA Championship Tournament debut in 2005; the men’s team followed suit in 2008.

112. UTA student Doug Russell struck gold at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the 100-meter butterfly and as part of the 400-meter individual medley relay. Russell held or shared three world records, was an 18-time All American, and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

113. UTA eliminated its swimming program in the early 1980s.

114. Randy Snow won the silver medal at a 1500-meter wheelchair exhibition event at the 1984 Summer Olympics. He won two gold medals in tennis and a bronze in basketball at subsequent Paralympics and in 2004 became the first paralympic athlete to be inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame.

115. Cancer survivor Kevin Procaccino, an architecture major, carried the Olympic torch through campus for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Allan Saxe carried the torch for the 1996 Atlanta games.

116. The wheelchair basketball team started as the Freewheelers and changed its name to the Movin’ Mavs in 1988.

117. Ted Akin didn’t make ASC’s bowling team on his first try in 1962. The next year he did, then went on to win the National Intercollegiate Bowling Championships.

118. In 1973, after the passage of Title IX in the 1972 Educational Amendments Act, UTA began sponsoring four women’s intercollegiate sports: basketball, softball, track, and volleyball. Cross country, tennis, and golf were added in later years.

119. In 1965, Dashelle Maines became the first woman to earn a varsity letter on a men’s collegiate team in swimming in Texas. She was also the first woman at ASC to compete in varsity athletics and earn a varsity sports letter.

120. Esports started at UTA with a student group in 2011. The team won the 2017 Heroes of the Dorm National Championship, one of the nation’s biggest tournaments. The University officially made esports a varsity sport in fall 2019.

121. UTA will be the first D1 university in Texas to offer a women’s flag football team when the program launches in 2027.

Weird and Wacky

122. Though campus legend speaks of a white elephant buried on campus, the truth is perhaps even stranger. Professor Emeritus John D. Boon set the record straight in 1995, explaining that, in an effort to expand the paleontology program’s fossil collection, the Biology Department purchased the remains of an elephant that had died earlier at the Fort Worth Zoo from a local rendering company (cost: $24). To clean the bones, the department dug a large hole (cost: $25) and buried the remains in what is now the southeast corner of Maverick Stadium’s parking lot. Several years later, the bones were exhumed and added to the collection. Read a page from a script of a 1970 newscast covering the un-burial of the elephant.

123. A second elephant skeleton was purchased but never buried—instead, the bones were cured on the roof of the Life Science Building.

124. Nearly 1,000 UTA students, faculty, and staff tried to break the record for “unsupported lap-sitting” in 1982. They did not succeed. (The official Guinness World Record was set later that year by 10,323 (!) Nissan Motor Company employees in Japan.)

125. A vintage World War II trainer plane crash-landed on a campus athletic field in March 1988.

126. The oldest object in the UTA Libraries Special Collections dates back to 1493. The map, created in Nuremberg, Germany, shows the world divided among the descendants of the Biblical figure Noah’s three sons.

127. Streaking, the sport of running naked, hit campus in 1973–74. Notable moments include when two au naturel sprinters stopped to dance atop tables in the UC, joggers took to roller skates for a faster getaway, and a rare lady streaker pulled a Lady Godiva and traversed campus on horseback. The craze thankfully ran its course by summer.

128. A UTA-led team discovered a new species of archosaur while excavating a site in far north Arlington in 2008.

129. UTA hosted a Non-Invitational Belly Flop Competition in 1980 that definitely made waves.

130. A collection of photographs and negatives related to the so-called Roswell UFO incident of 1947 are among the most requested items in the Special Collections. The UFO in question—said to be a weather balloon—was flown to the Fort Worth Army Air Field, where it was photographed by Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporters. These images have been featured in numerous History Channel programs and, most recently, in an episode of the Netflix Unsolved Mysteries reboot.

Extra Moments

Way back in 1978, UTA offered courses for college credit to high school students remotely via closed circuit television network.

In 1994, art student Chris Booth took up residence in an art gallery and made her own life an exhibition. Watch a news report about it here.

Before performing at Texas Hall in 1985, Jim Belushi taught a master class at UTA for theater students. Watch a clip here.