Texas Woman's University
Texas Woman's University is a public coeducational research university in Denton, Texas, United States. It also has two health science campuses in Dallas and Houston. While TWU has been fully co-educational since 1994, it is the largest state-supported university primarily for women in the United States. The university is part of the Texas Woman's University System. It offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in 60 areas of study across six colleges. The university is classified among "R2: High Research Spending and Doctorate Production".
History
In the late 19th century, several Texas-based groups began advocating for the creation of a state-supported women's college focused on a practical education, including domestic skills young women would need as wives and mothers. In 1901, after the state Democratic Party adopted the idea as a platform in the upcoming election, the college's establishment was authorized by the Texas Legislature. Originally named the "Texas Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls of the State of Texas in the Arts and Sciences", it opened in Denton in 1902 with a class of 186 students and 14 faculty. The three women on its inaugural board of regents were the first women to sit on the governing board of a Texas university. The school was renamed the "Girls Industrial College" in 1903 and conferred its first degrees in 1904. In 1905, the name changed again to the "College of Industrial Arts" and the school expanded its programs to include liberal arts, fine arts, and sciences.Upon its founding, the school was primarily focused on educating rural and small town women seeking vocational training. Since many areas of the state lacked comprehensive high schools, the first two years of CIA's curriculum were preparatory; students enrolling with a high school diploma were automatically admitted as juniors. With its home extension program and summer school, the school was the first in Texas to offer instruction in home economics, supplying an overwhelming majority of the state's high school teachers in home economics in the early 20th century. In 1914, CIA implemented its first four-year college curriculum, and the first bachelor's degrees were conferred in 1915. By 1929, the college had expanded its programs sufficiently to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, the American Association of University Women, and the Association of American Universities, and it began offering its first master's degrees in 1930. In 1934, the school underwent another name change to the "Texas State College for Women " to reflect its growing reputation as a premiere institution of higher education for women in the state.
Despite the social and cultural limitations for professional women at the time, the college pioneered several academic programs to meet the needs of Texas’s growing postwar economy and built a national reputation for its programs and research in textiles, food, and nutrition, awarding its first doctoral degrees in 1953. In 1950, it developed the first nationally accredited nursing program in the state, opening at the original Parkland Hospital in downtown Dallas in 1954, and joining the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies in the 1960s, receiving a series of research grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study the health effects on humans of space flights. In 1956, it established Texas’s first building dedicated solely to the instruction of library sciences. Finally, in 1957, the school changed its name to "Texas Woman's University" and expanded its health sciences programs to a campus in Houston in 1960.
The college also enjoyed a close relationship with Texas A&M University in College Station in the early and mid-20th century. As the only gender segregated public colleges in Texas at the time, the schools generated considerable media attention for their institutional-supported fraternizing at major sporting and social events; for several decades, a "Tessie" was named the "Aggie Sweetheart" at A&M's football rivalry matchup. The practice fizzled in the 1970s when each school began admitting both male and female students, although the schools do still collaborate in several academic and service programs.
Like most non-HBCU institutions in Texas, the school originally admitted only white students. It integrated in 1961, admitting its first African-American student, Alsenia Dowells, to study nursing; while Dowells only attended for one year, six more black women enrolled the next year. The university now has a 20% black student population and is also designated as a Hispanic-serving institution and a member of Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, with more than 25% of its full-time student population identifying as Hispanic or Latina. After nearly six decades as a school for women, TWU began admitting men into its health sciences graduate school in 1972 in response to pending litigation at other universities regarding the Equal Protection Clause. In 1994, in anticipation of changing protocols of single-gender institutions across the United States, the school opened all of its programs to qualified men.
Despite being a co-educational university since 1972, TWU's student body remains approximately 90% women, and it continues to place a heavy emphasis on meeting the educational needs of women. It remains unique among Texas higher education institutions by requiring all undergraduates, regardless of their proposed major or degree, to take three credit hours of multicultural women's studies.
Campuses
Main campus
The university's flagship Denton campus consists of 270 acres in Denton, Texas, about 40 miles northwest of Dallas. Upon the university's founding, the Old Main Building was constructed in 1902 and housed all of the school's academic programs and students. The first dormitory opened in 1907, and a second classroom building was constructed in 1911.During the Great Depression, college president L. H. Hubbard used funds available through the federal Works Projects Administration and Public Works Administration to expand the campus infrastructure, which doubled instructional space, improved local roads and sidewalks, and established regional landmarks such as the Little Chapel in the Woods. In 1938, the campus was gifted the Pioneer Woman statue by the state legislature, commissioned to Leo Friedlander to commemorate the Texas Centennial. A second period of expansion in the 1960s and 1970s established several of the university's current campus footprint with more than twenty instructional and administrative buildings. The first system Chancellor, Ann Stuart, was named in 1999 and grew enrollment by 85% and constructed new facilities for the growing kinesiology programs.
Carine M. Feyten was inaugurated as the second Chancellor and the 11th President of Texas Woman's University on November 10, 2014. The inaugural theme, “Moving Beyond the Inflection Point: Pioneers for a New Era,” expresses the optimism and determination of the university to reach even greater heights of achievement. Feyten has presided over a third period of significant student growth. Because of the corresponding need for significant facilities expansion, the University had to close down land it previously allowed the community to utilize as a public golf course. Another change was moving the student center from Brackenridge Hall into Hubbard Hall, which had originally been built as the central campus dining facility by then President L.H. Hubbard to honor his wife, Bertha Altizer Hubbard.
The Denton campus also houses five residence halls, all of which are co-educational, including Guinn Hall, the tallest building in Denton.