UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012 - (Page 25)

Not long after that, a big company moved nearby, and the one-time village without plumbing or home mail delivery suddenly became a small city. The big company (also a big employer) thought the small city practically perfect in every way except one: no university. The big employer (Texas Instruments) decided to create the kind of university (UT Dallas) that would complement both its needs for highly educated employees and, it was hoped, the city’s ambitions and dreams. And so the Richardson-UTD town-gown marriage was arranged. While early records recount near love at first sight—or even before—like any long partnership, observers say, this one is tempered and shaped by the tests it has weathered, and the stresses and strains of everyday life together. Like an old married couple, Richardson and UT Dallas have a shared history of difficulties overcome and achievements celebrated. They take pride in one another’s accomplishments and try hard not to get on each other’s nerves. Ask anyone who has watched them for awhile how Richardson and UTD get along, and one of two stories is told. The first involves fireworks that scared a neighbor’s dog. The second involves 5 p.m. traffic along Floyd Road, when working students arriving for night classes meet Richardson residents trying to get home and start dinner. The fireworks issue was solved with a simple postcard alerting neighbors to dates and times of big events occurring on campus, and an invitation to “come outside and enjoy the show” when pyrotechnics were on the schedule. The traffic problem, on the other hand, has involved years of teamwork, and some significant investments and concessions on both parts. The University’s entrance was moved from Floyd to Campbell Road. More recently, growing traffic motivated a shared initiative to build a road within the campus proper. So, like any relationship, this one has had its issues—some ended with just a bit of improved communication and others requiring ongoing adjustments to the growth and change that would be inevitable in any long marriage. As the two approach their 50th anniversary together in 2019, work continues to be sure everyone’s needs are being met. Before the organization that would ultimately become UTD opened as the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest in 1962, locals were practically giddy about it. Early news articles located it “in the Plano area” or “just north of Dallas” or in the “Dallas North metropolitan complex.” A Dallas Times Herald headline crowed: “Like Science Fiction, SpaceAge Signs Appear for Area.” The article reported on the nascent tech corridor: “ … now, on the farmlands of Richardson and Plano where cattle graze, one of the nation’s leading science meccas will start rising …” As the school grew, local papers described groundbreakings and research grants, the beards the professors sported (Were they copying beatnik style? The Dallas Morning News wondered.) and the annual Christmas get-together of the Graduate Research Center Wives Club. The UT Dallas campus does touch Plano, Dallas, Dallas County and Collin County as well, but its beating heart has always been in Richardson. In 1966, Richard T. Lipscomb, associate director of development for the school, forecast in a speech to the Richardson Chamber of Commerce that payroll at and around the Graduate Research Center would be $100 million within 10 years. In 1967 the center became the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, and Richardson ran an advertisement in the Times Herald boasting that it was “Contributing to the amazing growth of Richardson” and that “… it will make a great contribution to This City and all mankind.” The University of Texas at Dallas Winter 2012 25

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012
Contents
On Campus
From the Lab
Arts and Culture
Courtside Success
Athletics
Research Is Teaching
Town and Gown
In Your Footsteps: An Alumni Perspective
Alumni Notes
In Memoriam
Hindsight

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012

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