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NEWS
| October 7, 2003
The
Man Behind the Campus
At 81, a long-time UTA president
teaches here and has no plans to retire.
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| The Shorthorn: Awais Ikram |
| Wendell Nedderman, a former UTA president
and civil engineering professor emeritus, is the only
professor on campus whose office is in a building bearing
his name. |
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By Danny
Woodward
The Shorthorn staff
Wendell Nedderman is 81 years old now, but every morning he drives
to the campus he built.
He’s an engineering professor now, long retired from his administrative
responsibilities, but he’s the only man on campus whose office
is in a building that bears his name.
His career has come full circle, from professorship to professorship,
with stops in nearly every administrative post in between. Though
he perhaps did more than any other UTA president, he is known not
for what he added to the university but what he took away.
Dr. Nedderman was university president from 1972 to 1992. He’s
now a civil engineering professor emeritus, teaching a course on
mechanics and materials that meets twice weekly.
Popularly known now as the president who killed football, Nedderman
also created the UTA Ambassadors and constituency councils. The
Formula SAE racing team formed during his tenure, and The Shorthorn
became a daily publication. Student enrollment nearly doubled in
those years.
Nedderman was the president who made UTA a doctoral degree-granting
institution, opening the door for research funding and national
recognition. He helped expand the student population, campus size
and degree programs.
“He was absolutely essential for the university,” said
Gerald Saxon, the Libraries associate director and a UTA historian.
“His tenure — and the length of his tenure — is
extremely important.”
Nedderman left the university much different than he inherited it.
A speck of a place when he arrived as engineering dean, the campus
now sprawls at over 400 acres.
Much of the growth is because of him.
Arlington State College became a four-year school in 1959, and Nedderman
abandoned his professorship at Texas A&M to become dean of the
what was then small school of engineering here.
But he almost never made it.
“There wasn’t really much here,” he recalled of
the campus in 1959. “It took me about three sleepless nights
in College Station to decide to come here.”
Buildings began springing up by the early ’60s, and the heaviest
period of growth came during Nedderman’s presidency.
“I’ve always called UT-Arlington a positive-slope institution
for whatever you want to plot,” he said. “Growth, whatever
— the slope is always up. It’s better every year. We’re
always building on our accomplishments with other accomplishments.
The times were such, and the funds were available, and the need
was obvious. Everything kind of came together.”
Even as the world around UTA began falling apart.
Nedderman rose through the ranks during the Vietnam War, becoming
president two years after protesters were shot at Kent State University.
But Nedderman said UTA seemed insulated.
“Compared to other institutions, we were a fairly peaceful
campus,” he said. “I think ... UTA was a little unique.
Part of the reason, I don’t know, was maybe that we had more
mature students.”
Or maybe Nedderman kept things cool.
“He’s a great, great guy,” said Charles McDowell,
a foreign languages professor and dean of students under Nedderman.
“It was probably his personality. At this area of the U.S.,
we weren’t so radical. But if we had a president that would
have been that way, we would have been easily converted.”
There were flaps over the mascot. Before the athletic teams were
Mavericks, they were Rebels and the Confederate flag was a campus
mainstay.
Nedderman changed that.
And in 1985, he made another dramatic change to the athletic program.
For 13 years, he tried to make football a viable program. He approved
construction of Maverick Stadium, which opened in 1980, to help
boost interest, but fans didn’t respond.
“In the meantime, our football program was bleeding all our
other sports dry. We weren’t very good at anything,”
Nedderman said. “And if no one wants it, why have it when
it’s damaging everything?”
Still, Nedderman said the decision to drop football was difficult,
but ultimately, not his. The UT System Board of Regents approved
dropping the sport and sinking revenue into the remaining 14.
Since then, UTA has grown into one of the Southland Conference’s
most successful all-around athletic programs.
“This has turned out to be vindicated,” Nedderman said.
“There are many things I would have done differently during
my presidency, but I’ve never regretted this move. If, some
day, it turns out a program can come about that’s viable,
I say bravo. But I’m not sure when that will be.”
If that day comes, Nedderman may still be around. He has no plans
to retire.
“I love teaching,” he said. “It keeps me in close
contact with the institution that I love. ... As long as Newton’s
laws don’t change, I’ll be fine.”
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