Texas Christian University

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Texas Christian University
Motto Disciplina est Facultas
Knowledge is Power
Tagline Learning to Change the World
Established 1873
Type Private
Endowment ~$1.2 billion (USD) (TCU & Brite Divinity School)
Chancellor Dr. Victor J. Boschini, Jr.
Faculty 477 (full-time)
Students 8,865
Undergraduates 7,267
Postgraduates 1,598
Location Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Campus Urban, 325 acres
Mascot Horned Frog
Affiliations Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Website http://www.tcu.edu

Texas Christian University, a private, coeducational university located in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU is affiliated with, but not governed by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Its mascot is the "horned frog" and its school colors are purple and white. The university is currently engaged in a $255 million construction plan consisting of four new residence halls, indoor football practice facility, indoor golf facility, indoor baseball facility, Amon Carter Stadium renovations, a new university union, and full renovation and addition to the School of Education. Work is to be completed the summer of 2008 for the four new residence halls and the new University Union.

Contents

[edit] Mission, vision, and values

[edit] Mission

To educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community.

[edit] Vision

To be a prominent private university recognized for our global perspective, our diverse and supportive learning community, our commitment to research and creative discovery, and our emphasis on leadership development.

[edit] Core values

TCU values academic achievement, personal freedom and integrity, the dignity and respect of the individual, and a heritage of inclusiveness, tolerance, and service.

[edit] History

East Texas brothers Addison and Randolph Clark, together with their father Joseph A. Clark, founded what was then called the AddRan Male & Female College in 1873 after the brothers had returned from service in the American Civil War. AddRan, a contraction of the brothers' names, had been the name of Addison Clark's first child, a boy who died of diphtheria in 1872 at the age of three and is buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery in Fort Worth. The name is now preserved in TCU's college of humanities and social sciences.

The Clarks were scholar-preacher/teachers who were products of the Campbellite movement, one of the streams of the Restoration movement in the nineteenth-century American church. The Campbellites were the spiritual ancestors of the modern Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, and the non-instrumental Churches of Christ. Campbellites were also major proponents of education, and the Clarks operated a preparatory school, the Male & Female Seminary of Fort Worth, from 1869 to 1874. But they also envisioned an institution of higher learning for both men and women that would be Christian in character, but nonsectarian in spirit.

They planned to establish their college in Fort Worth on five city blocks purchased for that purpose in 1869. However, from 1867-1872, the character of Fort Worth changed substantially due to the commercial influence of the Chisholm Trail, the principal route for moving Texas cattle to the Kansas railheads. A huge influx of cattle, men, and money transformed the sleepy frontier village into a booming, brawling cow-town. Randolph Clark described Fort Worth in those days as follows:

"The longhorns roamed over the hills and valleys by the thousands. ...Ft. Worth was a supply station; here the 'grub-wagon' was replenished for the long drive to the Red River and through the Indian Territory to Kansas. Here the buyers from the North met the cattlemen from the range. Prospectors and adventurers, the genuine cowboys in charge of the herds and the noisy imitation, the tough vagabond and the professional gambler... seemed ever present. Money circulated freely. There was no law against carrying deadly weapons. Business was transacted in the open, and each man carried his burglar insurance. ...The quiet prairie town was deluged with a flood of humanity. Boys, young men, and family men were caught up in this whirlpool of licentiousness and greed. It came to be a saying that one trip over the trail with a herd to Kansas would ruin the ordinary boy, and that the boy who was strong enough to stand two trips was forever safe, but he would show the scars." (Randolph Clark, Reminiscences Biographical and Historical, 1919.)

The area around the property purchased by the Clarks for their college soon became the town's vice district, an unrelieved stretch of saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and bordellos catering to the bawdy appetites of cowboys and gamblers. It soon acquired a nickname that stuck: "Hell's Half Acre."

The Clarks feared their students would be "dazzled by this glitter of vice and caught like insects around a street lamp." They began to look for an alternative site to establish their college, and they found it at Thorp Spring, a frontier stagecoach stop 40 miles to the southwest, near the fringe of Comanche and Kiowa territory. It was perhaps a marker of their Campbellite sensibilities that the Clarks feared the Indians less than they feared the corrupting influence of "the Acre."

AddRan College (TCU) was one of the first coeducational institutions of higher education west of the Mississippi River, a progressive step at a time when only 15% of the national college enrollment was female and almost exclusive enrolled at women's colleges. AddRan's inaugural enrollment was 13 students, though this number rose to 123 by the end of the first term. Shortly thereafter, annual enrollment ranged from 200 to 400. The college formed a partnership with what would become the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1889 and was renamed AddRan Christian University. The church does not own or operate TCU; the partnership is based on a common heritage and shared values.

The need for a larger population and transportation base prompted the university to relocate to Waco from 1895 to 1910. A featured speaker at the Waco welcoming ceremony was the president of crosstown rival, Baylor University. The institution was renamed Texas Christian University in 1902, though almost immediately it was dubbed with the unofficial moniker by which it is popularly known today: TCU.

In 1910, a fire of unknown origin destroyed the university's main administration building. A group of enterprising Fort Worth businessmen offered the university $200,000 in rebuilding money and a 50-acre campus as an inducement to relocate to their city. This move brought TCU back to the historic source of its institutional roots. It also completed TCU's nearly 40-year transition from a frontier college to an urban university.

[edit] Colleges and Schools

  • AddRan College of Humanities & Social Sciences
  • Brite Divinity School
  • M.J. Neeley School of Business
  • College of Communication
  • School of Education
  • College of Fine Arts
  • Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences
  • Schieffer School of Journalism
  • College of Science & Engineering

[edit] Administration

  • Chancellor: Dr. Victor J. Boschini, Jr.
  • Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs: Dr. Nowell Donovan
  • Dean of Admission: Raymond A. Brown
  • Vice Chancellor for Finance & Administration: Brian G. Gutierrez
  • Vice Chancellor for Marketing & Communication: Larry D. Lauer
  • Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs: Donald B. Mills
  • Vice Chancellor for University Advancement: Donald J. Whelan, Jr.

[edit] Greek life

Fraternities

Sororities

[edit] Endowment

As of 2005, TCU's combined endowment stood at $1.19 USD billion (48th largest in the United States).

[edit] Athletics

Horned Frogs logo
Main article: TCU Horned Frogs

TCU competes in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sports as a member of the Mountain West Conference in Division I (I-A in football). TCU was a long-time member of the former Southwest Conference (which also included Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, Southern Methodist University, Houston, Arkansas, and Rice) until that conference was disbanded after the 1995 season with the formation of the Big 12 Conference. TCU then moved to the Western Athletic Conference, shifted to Conference USA in 2001, and moved again in 2005 to the Mountain West Conference.

[edit] Football

Main article: TCU Horned Frogs football
  • TCU won the national championship in 1935[1] and 1938[2]
  • They won the Mountain West Conference championship in their inaugural season, 2005.
  • In 2006, TCU finished ranked 2nd in the MWC football standings and defeated Northern Illinois University 37-7 in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego on December 19,2006.

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] University statistics

  • Annual Cost (Estimate): $31,550 (includes housing, books and fees)
  • Student Organizations: Over 200
  • Residence Halls: 16 (with four more in construction and several in planning)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Complete List of Williamson National Champions from CFB Database
  2. ^ NCAA Division I-A national football championship

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Mountain West Conference
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