President's Note

For 120 years, the University of North Texas has evolved to meet the world’s needs. U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges 2010 guide recently recognized our commitment to advancement when it named UNT among the nation’s top universities that are “leading the pack” for innovative changes in academics, faculty, students, campus life, diversity and facilities. UNT was the only public university in Texas to make the magazine’s “Top Up-and-Coming Schools” list.

Our restricted research expenditures and awards are each up more than 60 percent since 2007, and this fall our graduate enrollment jumped by 11 percent. We are investing in faculty and creating cutting-edge research environments while building world-class science and engineering programs to ensure continued success.

These developments are helping UNT become a more robust research university, while ensuring that our more than 36,000 students succeed. We’ll reach our goals faster aided by a new state program that supports UNT and Texas’ other emerging research universities.

UNT is excelling as a comprehensive university. This fall we opened an Institute for the Advancement of the Arts in downtown Denton. And our legacy as a teacher’s college remains strong. After just one year, our Teach North Texas program, which seeks to strengthen math and science education and meet a nationwide need to fill teacher shortages in these critical areas, is exceeding expectations. Enrolling more students than anticipated, TNT expects to graduate more than 60 qualified, specialized new teachers annually.

After receiving initial funding that included $2.4 million in grants from the Greater Texas Foundation and the National Mathematics and Science Initiative, the program was awarded an additional $500,000 this fall from the Texas Instruments Foundation that will help it grow.

The program’s strides also coincide with President Barack Obama’s increasing emphasis on STEM education. I was proud to be one of about 80 university administrators who signed a pledge to President Obama to collectively prepare 10,000 science and math teachers annually by 2015.

Thanks to our strong legacy, UNT will keep moving forward with vision and purpose.

With green pride,

Gretchen M. Bataille
President

Departments

President's Note

"Leading the pack" for innovative changes

Initiatives

National research status, new senior faculty

Awards

Top engineers, chemists, Fulbright specialists

News Briefs

New clusters, plant defense, Nature research

Faculty Researchers

Experts in children’s issues, bioinformatics, interactive performing, mesoscale technology

Student Researchers

Exploring tribal archives, corporate fraud, nanoscale circuits, international politics

Faculty Books

Spanish language media, math, Arab art

End Note

Investing in research