The University of North Texas was founded in September 1890 in a rented space above a hardware store as the Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute to produce educators for the industrial revolution coming at the turn of the 20th century.
Now, 130 years later, the Denton-based university system is preparing to build a new campus in the Collin County city of Frisco that is aimed at educating a workforce for the “fourth industrial revolution,” a time of technological advances and social growth that needs the resources of UNT, a prestigious Carnegie R-1 research university.
Ground will be broken soon on the UNT at Frisco campus, a $100 million investment that will start with roughly 3,500 students in classes in 2023 and reach a potential of 25,000 students in 25 to 30 years. UNT said it’s working on the plans, which will be reviewed by the Board of Regents in November.
The new campus will focus on achieving the city of Frisco’s goals of having a university that can help it attract new corporations and businesses to the city.
“You’re getting a group of folks who have envisioned that we want to bring high-value jobs to our city,” said Wesley Randall, Ph.D., dean of UNT at Frisco. “What they realized is the one thing they were missing is a four-year university in Frisco. And if you look deeper into what they’re doing, they also realized they needed to have an educational partner that could be there with them to educate workforce at the undergraduate and the graduate level.”
You can read the rest of the article in the Fall 2020 edition of the DFW Real Estate Review, produced in partnership between The Real Estate Council, the Dallas Regional Chamber, and D Magazine.