Southern Methodist University


Southern Methodist University is a private research university in University Park, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South—now part of the United Methodist Church—in partnership with Dallas civic leaders. It is currently non-sectarian in its teaching and enrolls students of all religious affiliations. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production".
As of fall 2025, the university had 12,544 students, including 7,545 undergraduates and 4,999 postgraduates. As of fall 2024, its instructional faculty is 1,163 members, with 788 being full-time.
In the 2020 academic year, the university granted over 3,827 degrees, including 315 doctorates, 1,659 master's and 1,853 bachelor's degrees and offers over 32 doctoral and over 120 masters programs from eight schools: the Edwin L. Cox School of Business, the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, the Dedman School of Law, the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, the Algur H. Meadows School of the Arts, the Moody School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Perkins School of Theology, and the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

History

The university was chartered on April 17, 1911, by the southern denomination of the Methodist Episcopal Church. At the time of the charter, church leaders saw a need to establish a Methodist institution within a metropolitan area. Originally, this new institution was intended to be created in Fort Worth through a merger between Polytechnic College and Southwestern University. However, the church's education commission instead opted to create a new institution in Dallas to serve this purpose after extensive lobbying by the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. Robert Stewart Hyer, previously president of Southwestern University, was appointed as the first president of the new university.
The effort to establish a new university in Dallas drew the attention of the General Conference of the Methodist Church, which was seeking to create a new connectional institution in the wake of a 1914 Tennessee Supreme Court decision stripping the church of authority at Vanderbilt University. The church decided to support the establishment of the new institution while also increasing the size of Emory University at a new location in DeKalb County, Georgia. At the 1914 meeting of the General Conference, Southern Methodist University was designated the connectional institution for all conferences west of the Mississippi River.
SMU named its first building Dallas Hall in gratitude for the support of Dallas leaders and local citizens, who had pledged $300,000 to secure the university's location. It remains the university's symbol and centerpiece, and it inspired "the Hilltop" as a nickname for the school. It was designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge after the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Dallas Hall opened its doors in 1915 and housed the entire university along with a bank and a barbershop. The hall is registered in the National Register of Historic Places.
Classes were planned to officially begin in 1913, but construction delays on the university's first building prevented classes from starting until 1915. In the interim, the only functioning academic department at SMU was the medical college it had acquired from Southwestern University.
As the first president of Southern Methodist University, Hyer selected Harvard crimson and Yale blue as the school colors in order to associate SMU with the high standards of Ivy League universities. Several streets in University Park and adjacent Highland Park were named after prominent universities.
In 1927, Highland Park United Methodist Church, designed by architects Mark Lemmon and Roscoe DeWitt, was erected on campus.
During World War II, SMU was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
In 1987, the university football program's repeated, flagrant recruiting violations led to the NCAA administering what is called the death penalty against the program. The punishment included cancellation of the 1987 football season, most of the 1988 season, and a two-year ban from Bowl Games and televised sports coverage.
On February 22, 2008, the university trustees unanimously instructed President R. Gerald Turner to enter into an agreement to establish the George W. Bush Presidential Center on 23 acres on the southeast side of the campus. The center, which includes a presidential library, museum, institute, and the offices of the George W. Bush Foundation, was dedicated on April 25, 2013, in a ceremony which featured all living former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and then-incumbent U.S. president, Barack Obama.
The library and museum are privately administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, while the university holds representation on the independent public policy institute board. The project raised over $500 million for the construction and endowment of the George W. Bush presidential center, which has a 249-year ground lease from SMU, with extensions, and operates completely separate from SMU.

Split from the United Methodist Church

In light of the turmoil within the Methodist Church over what it described as "fundamental differences" over LGBTQ policies, the university decided to separate itself from control of the church.
In November 2019, the SMU board filed with the state of Texas amended articles of incorporation that eliminated the United Methodist Church's rights as listed in the 1996 articles. The amendment made it clear that SMU is solely maintained and controlled by its board as the ultimate authority for the university and removed an overarching statement that the school would be "owned, maintained and controlled by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference." Within a month, the Church filed a lawsuit alleging that the trustees of SMU have no authority to amend the Articles of Incorporation without the prior approval and authorization of SCJC. In March 2021, Dallas County judge ruled in favor of Southern Methodist University in the lawsuit.

Historical Plano campus

From 1997 to 2020 Southern Methodist University operated a small campus, consisting of 16 acres and 4 buildings, in Plano, Texas, in Legacy Business Park. This campus hosted SMU's video game design school, SMU Guildhall, and other graduate-level programs. After the university sold the Plano campus to a developer in 2019, SMU Guildhall and all other programs housed there moved onto the main Dallas campus in the new Gerald J. Ford Hall for Research and Innovation on December 4, 2020.

Organization and resources

Institutional organization

SMU has eight degree-granting schools each headed by a dean, with all undergraduates entering the university in the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences as pre-majors:
Southern Methodist University's 2019 endowment of $1.664 billion ranked 67th largest among the endowments of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, and it was one of only 110 institutions with an endowment greater than $1 billion as of June 30, 2019.
The university's endowment surpassed $2 billion for the first time in the university's history in 2021, having previously surpassed $1 billion in 2005.
On February 26, 2016, SMU announced that through its "Second Century Centennial Campaign" which concluded on December 31, 2015, had raised $1.15 billion, the largest fundraising campaign of any institution in North Texas's history, the largest total for a private Texas university, and the fourth largest of any university in Texas. The Centennial Campaign, coinciding with the 100-year anniversary of the university's founding in 1911 and opening in 1915 also made SMU one of only 34 private colleges and universities in the United States to complete a campaign of $1 billion or more.
Its previous fundraising campaign, "A Time to Lead", which concluded in April 2002 and raised $542 million was the largest fundraising campaign in the school's history at the time. Under R. Gerald Turner's leadership and through two successive campaigns in under 20 years, SMU has received well over $1.6 billion in commitments in support of institutional priorities.
By 1986 as the university neared the 75th anniversary of its founding, SMU's endowment had grown from $60 million a decade earlier in 1976 to nearly $325 million, at the time the 27th largest in the country. The previous "The Design for the Third Generation" fundraising campaign, which concluded in May 1983 raised nearly $120 million in gifts and pledges.

Campuses

Main campus

The main campus of Southern Methodist University is mostly located in University Park, a municipality in Dallas County, Texas. The campus extends into the Dallas city limits, and into the city limits of Highland Park. It is located on 234 acres of land just west of US Route 75. Dallas Hall is the centerpiece for this campus and is the administrative center for the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.
Most of the campus is centered around Bishop Boulevard, an elongated, tree-lined loop road that also serves as the site for "Boulevarding", SMU's version of the tailgating seen on many American college campuses. The campus was ranked as the most beautiful campus in America by Condé Nast Traveler in 2016 and also hosts the George W. Bush Presidential Center, located on the east side of the campus. The library and museum are privately administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, while the university holds representation on the institute board.