In April 1965, the Texas Legislature transferred Arlington State College (ASC) from the Texas A&M University System to the University of Texas System (UT System). The following year, Maxwell Scarlett was the first African-American graduate in ASC history. In March 1967, ASC was renamed the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Jack Woolf, president of ASC and UTA since 1959, resigned in 1968 and was succeeded by Frank Harrison; Harrison was president until 1972. UTA awarded its first master's degrees in 1968, all in engineering. Reby Cary, the university's first African-American administrator, was hired the following year.
Wendell Nedderman succeeded Harrison as UTA president in 1972, serving for 20 years. During his tenure the university constructed 24 buildings, created 64 new degree programs, and grew from 14,028 students to 25,135. UTA's student demographics changed substantially under Nedderman. The ratio of male to female students shifted from about 2:1 to nearly 1:1; African Americans increased from 2.6 to 7.2 percent of the student body, Hispanic students increased from 1.9 to 6.3 percent, and Asian and Pacific Islander students increased from less than one to 8.5 percent. By the mid-1970s, UTA was one of Texas' most accessible universities for disabled students.
In April 1992, Nedderman was succeeded as university president by Ryan C. Amacher. Focused on recruiting minority students and employees and aggressively marketing the university, Amacher and his administration polarized the campus before his sudden resignation in March 1995 amid charges that he showed budgetary favoritism to athletics and spent too much on non-essentials at the expense of academic programs. He was replaced by University of Texas at Austin dean Robert Witt, as UTA's enrollment declined for seven consecutive years during the 1990s. Enrollment increased again by 1999, reaching an all-time high of 25,297 students in fall 2004. In November 2003, Michigan State University dean James D. Spaniolo succeeded Witt as president. Spaniolo was succeeded a decade later by Vistasp Karbhari, who resigned in 2020 in the face of a lawsuit by a former vice president and the release of an audit.
The UTA campus has grown since 1965; new buildings include College Park Center, the Engineering Research Building, and the Science and Engineering Innovation and Research (SEIR) Building. Student traditions have developed, which include bed racing, oozeball, and International Week. Notable athletics events during the UTA era include the termination of the university's football program in 1985, the women's volleyball team advancing to the Final Four in the 1989 NCAA Division I women's volleyball tournament, and national championships for the Movin' Mavs (nine) and Lady Movin' Mavs (two) wheelchair basketball teams.
Last years as Arlington State College (1965–1967)
In April 1965, the Texas Legislature transferred Arlington State College from the Texas A&M University System to the University of Texas System (UT System). ASC's enrollment was 11,873. Historian Gerald Saxon wrote that the transition included a new ASC requirement that incoming students have an "aptitude for doing college work", measured by SAT scores and high-school class rank. After ASC joined the UT System in 1965, it established its College of Business, College of Liberal Arts, and College of Science. Jack Woolf, college president since 1959, continued in that post after the transition. Shortly after ASC joined the UT System, system chancellor Harry Ransom asked Southwestern Medical School associate dean for graduate studies Frank Harrison to work part-time at ASC establishing graduate programs.
During the mid-1960s, the student body was 75 to 80 percent male. The school had a relatively-large number of nontraditional students: 34 percent of its students were married, 60 percent were 21 or older, and 61 percent worked at least part-time (44 percent at least 20 hours per week). The two Texas counties providing the most students were Tarrant County and then Dallas County; California supplied the most out-of-state students, and Iran the most international students. Maxwell Scarlett was the first African-American graduate in ASC history in 1966, receiving a bachelor's degree in biology after transferring from North Texas State University. ASC had become established as a commuter school by 1967, with only a small number of students living in campus dormitories.
The school had a 1965–66 budget of $9.4 million, of which less than $200,000 was spent on research. It offered bachelor's-degree programs in accounting, government, and sociology by 1966, also introducing a number of secondary teaching certificate programs. During the summer of 1966, ASC was authorized to offer four master's-degree programs beginning that fall. In the mid- to late 1960s, courses in engineering and the sciences were especially popular.
Previously-independent student clubs were allowed to affiliate with national fraternities and sororities in 1966, after the school became part of the UT System; the Texas A&M University System had not permitted national Greek organizations at ASC. In 1967, the first ASC chapters of national fraternities and sororities were established. During the 1966–67 academic year, student representatives were included on university-wide committees for the first time.
Early years as the University of Texas at Arlington (1967–1972)
In March 1967, ASC was renamed the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Woolf said, "I think we have reached a name which does not shackle the future development of the institution." On March 6, 1967, Texas governor John Connally signed into law a bill which renamed each UT System university "the University of Texas at [location]". Unlike the previous plan of the Texas A&M University System to rename ASC "Texas A&M University at Arlington", UTA's new name was received positively by students, faculty, and administrators. It was widely perceived as increasing the university's prestige, name recognition, and funding and recruiting abilities. The first degrees with the new name were awarded on May 31, 1967.
UTA's September 1967 enrollment increased to an all-time high of 11,873, despite the opening of the first Tarrant County Junior College (TCJC) campus that fall. That year, the Institute of Urban Studies was established at UTA by the Texas Legislature. The institute provides planning for economic development, site selection, transportation and feasibility studies.
Woolf resigned as president in 1968, continuing as a mechanical-engineering professor until his 1989 retirement. Gerald Saxon wrote that Woolf had lost faculty confidence, due largely to his support for remaining in the A&M system and a hierarchical view of leadership unsuited to the UT System. During his decade as president, Woolf guided the university from junior- to senior-college status, from the A&M system to the UT System, from an enrollment under 5,000 to approximately 12,000, and from a budget of $2.2 million to $11.8 million. In 1966–67, the average salary for full professors was $12,400 to $13,500. By 1968, when Woolf resigned, faculty salaries at UTA were the fourth-highest in Texas; they were the lowest at any state university or college when he was appointed president in 1959. In 1995, UTA renamed the first building constructed during his presidency Woolf Hall.
Frank Harrison replaced Woolf as president until 1972. Appointed acting president shortly after Woolf resigned in September 1968, Harrison was appointed president after a nation-wide search which concluded in June 1969. A native of Dallas, he was educated at Southern Methodist University and Northwestern University before becoming an anatomy professor at the University of Tennessee and Southwestern Medical School. Harrison began organizing UTA's graduate program in 1965, and was familiar with the university, the system, and the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex by the time he was named acting president two years later. Although was president for only four years, Harrison left a legacy of new programs at UTA: 10 at the bachelor's level, 24 at the master's level, and two at the doctoral level. Another Harrison legacy was his transformation of UTA's administrative culture, making it more democratic and open than during the A&M era. He improved communication, gave faculty seats on committees, and published the university budget for the first time. Enrollment during Harrison's tenure grew from 12,556 in fall 1968 to 14,028 in fall 1972. Much of the growth was due to an expansion in graduate enrollment from 301 to 1,008 from 1968 to 1972.
UTA's Energy Research Center was founded in 1968 to study electrical generation and transmission, and it was followed by over ten other research centers in other fields. The school awarded its first master's degrees (all in engineering), began its business graduate programs, and its School of Social Work began offering the region's first master's degree in social work that year. The School of Social Work added a bachelor's-degree program in 1979 and a doctoral program in 1983. It has been housed since its 1968 inception in the former Ousley Junior High School building on the north edge of campus, built in 1922 as Arlington High School. In 1969, UTA began a Bachelor of Fine Arts program and a doctoral program in engineering. Reby Cary, the university's first African-American administrator, became the associate dean of student life that year.
The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in Richardson, founded as a private institution in 1961 by Texas Instruments, joined the UT System in 1969. UTA was neutral on the addition of UTD to the system, but state representative Don Gladden, Arlington mayor Tom Vandergriff, and Tarrant County representative W. C. Sherman were opposed. Governor Preston Smith achieved a compromise which placated UTA and UTD supporters by initially restricting UTD to junior-, senior- and graduate-level courses until it began awarding bachelor's degrees in 1975, giving UTA six more years as the region's only comprehensive public university.
In 1970, Linda Garza was the first woman to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering from UTA. Between 1970 and 1973, UTA phased out its two-year associate degree programs in engineering and transferred them to TCJC. In August 1971, the school awarded its first doctoral degrees. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare mandated that the university implement an employment affirmative action program by February 1972 that year, after determining that less than one percent of the university's employees in 1970 belonged to minority groups.
Continued growth (1972–1992) Harrison resigned in 1972 to become president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and Wendell Nedderman was named his successor at UTA. Saxon described Nedderman as "a popular choice" who was "genuinely liked and admired by staff and faculty". Nedderman, a native of Iowa, was educated at Iowa State University and Texas A&M University before serving on the USS Patterson during World War II. In 1947, he began working at Texas A&M before becoming the engineering dean at UTA in 1959. In Arlington, Nedderman was a graduate-school administrator, vice president for research and graduate affairs, and vice president for academic affairs before he was named acting president in 1972. Nedderman was president until July 1992; during his tenure, the university constructed 24 buildings, created 64 new degree programs, and its student body increased from 14,028 to 25,135 students.