30 Years with the Texas A&M University System

What Comes With Age

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hen embarking on a new partnership in life, many people will look for vision, opportunities and growth that lead to remarkable results. When West Texas State University and The Texas A&M University System embarked on a path together 30 years ago, it was the beginning of collaborative excellence. That distinction continues today with the A&M System— West Texas A&M University camaraderie.

WT has been the source of higher education in the Texas Panhandle for more than 100 years.

Over the past three decades, that statement has continued to stand true. Under the leadership of Chancellor John Sharp and The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, WT has evolved and grown in ways that respond to the regional needs of the Panhandle and the world.

When the A&M System and WTSU partnered, the two were looking to grow together. Five steps to adopt growth include embracing failure, becoming a lifelong learner, seeking challenge, going beyond limits and asking for feedback, according to a Forbes article, “Why a Growth Mindset Is Essential For Career Success.” Those steps were prevalent in the success of the merger that has lasted three decades. A plan for success was adopted, and, today, WT continues to grow through the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.

As detailed in WT 125, the University will continue to serve people first. Leading with the mission at the forefront and fostering genuine relationships, WT will become a first-of-its-kind regional research university. The Panhandle is a unique place, home to hardworking people. WT values hard work and aims to share the pioneering spirit that is ubiquitous in the Panhandle with the world.

As WT continues to grow with the A&M System, the University’s 50/50 Plan will be a target that we aspire to reach.

In three parts, WT’s vision to grow enrollment follows: • 50 percent of our enrollment on campus, 50 percent online, but the number of on-campus students will not decrease. The academic prowess of all will increase.

• 50 percent undergraduate students, 50 percent graduate students • 50 percent from the top 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle, 50 percent from across the region, state, nation and world WT is nothing without the excellent faculty, dedicated staff and promising students that comprise Buff Nation. As more students commit to being Buffaloes, the University is ready and able to make a difference in the lives of those Buffs. Each semester, when a herd of Buffalo students graduate, they are equipped with the skills necessary to continue growing their lives both personally and professionally.

Growth would not be possible without the support from Chancellor Sharp and The Texas A&M System Board of Regents, as well as the dedication and support from friends of the University, WT alumni and donors. To all who put your trust in WT, thank you. The past 30 years have been remarkable in ways that were merely a dream back in 1990.

As the University continues to grow, WT will remain focused, fearless and ready. The University’s commitment to the region will continue to be incomparable to any other. The years 2035 and 2050 will be significant to WT. In 2035, WT will celebrate the 125th anniversary of the University. Thirty years from now, in 2050, the University’s 60-year partnership with the A&M System will be momentous.

G OVERNOR G REG ABBOTT

Greetings: As Governor of Texas, I am proud to congratulate West Texas A&M University (WT) and The Texas A&M University System on their storied 30-year partnership.

Texas is home to some of our great nation’s premier institutions of higher education, which prepare our next generation of leaders for excellence and success. The relationship between The Texas A&M University System and West Texas A&M University serves and benefits Texans in all corners of the Lone Star State, and this partnership demonstrates how a state university system, and institution of higher education, can make a positive impact.

West Texas A&M University serves as a regional research university with pioneering programs featuring a wide array of specialties. For example, the Rural Nursing Education Collaborative (RNEC) will address health care and workforce issues in the Panhandle and other rural areas of the state through local clinics and hospitals, the innovative “Grow Your Own” program, and collaborative work between WT, Amarillo College, Frank Phillips College, and five rural hospitals. Likewise, WT is home to one of the premier family nurse practitioner programs in the country, focusing on diverse and rural populations, whose students’ skills are much needed during the difficulties associated with the ongoing pandemic.

Additionally, ensuring quality care of healthy livestock and food security are benefits of the Veterinary Education Research and Outreach (VERO) 2+2 program, which allows students to study for two years at WT, focusing on the large food animal needs of the beef and dairy capital of Texas.

These forward-thinking and unique programs are precisely the services that a premier university and university system provide, and exemplify why Texas remains the envy of the nation and the world for our first-rate research institutions. Unsurprisingly, WT has been recognized by the Colleges of Distinction and included in their list of the best colleges of distinction for the 2020-21 academic year, based on the university’s commitments to student engagement, teaching excellence, community collaboration, and successful outcomes. It is my pleasure to recognize and celebrate West Texas A&M University’s 30th anniversary of being part of The Texas A&M University System.

I join my fellow Texans in wishing the best for the future of your great partnership.

Sincerely,

Greg Abbott Governor

“There was something about this new school that led people to patronize it. It was their own. It belonged to the Panhandle and the Plains. It was built expressly to meet the needs of the people of West Texas and the Plains and hundreds, yes, thousands, have patronized it because they felt at home in their own school in their own country.”

Phoebe K. Warner, 1920 “Always WT”

ALWAYS WT

Texas Panhandle’s stubborn sense of hard work and contagious optimism pulse through university

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emember those maps of Texas where the Panhandle was cast aside like Gilligan’s Island? It was like mapmakers gave up, cut the state off from about Lubbock north, and threw the oh-by-the-way Panhandle and part of the South Plains on an adjoining page.

Forgotten, but not gone.

Russell Lowery-Hart remembers them. He couldn’t help but think about those maps 30 years ago when the West Texas State University student body president and about 30 students lined the walls of a meeting of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in Austin in 1990.

The university was at a crossroads. Its future would be decided by the board. At stake was approval of WT into a merger into the Texas A&M University System.

“That was a real rallying point for us. Those maps were kind of symbolic that we were disregarded and unseen by the rest of the state,” said Lowery-Hart, now the president of Amarillo College. “That merger made us feel important, like someone cared for us, too.”

For the previous 80 years, the people of the Panhandle had more or less willed the school into existence and then carried it forth decade by decade. Who else was going to do it other than a fiercely independent eternally optimistic and relentless stubborn segment of Texas isolated by miles and importance by the larger populations downstate?

When a bill passed the legislature in 1909 to establish a State Normal College in West Texas — and West Texas in those days was anything west of Fort Worth — 28 towns competed for the college. And Canyon, 26th in population at 1,400, won out.

According to WT history professor Dr. Marty Kuhlman’s seminal book, “Always WT,” written on the school’s centennial in 2010, the state’s locating committee selected Canyon because of “its varied scenery, its ample and pure water supply, the healthfulness of the location, its delightful climate, and the sturdy uprightness of the people.”

That sounded good and all, and it may have even been a factor. But none of that would have mattered had not 148 men and women in Canyon donated $100, 100 — that’s $2.7 million in today’s dollars — and 40 acres of land as an enticement. They raised $100, 100 since there was a rumor that big brother Amarillo was raising $100,000.

A Normal college was to educate teachers since few required formal training 110 years ago. The West Texas State Normal College was the only such institution within hundreds of miles for such a mission.

It could have been short-lived. On March 24, 1914, a workman’s torch exploded, setting fire to the roof of

By Jon Mark Beilue Old Main, the heart of the college. It was a total loss. It seemed like a crippling blow. Maybe it should have been, but its flames never touched those who placed their faith in this little school on the prairie.

“If West Texas State is nothing more than brick and mortar, it ought to die,” school president R.B. Cousins famously said, “but the Normal has shown that its life was and is in the hearts of those present and in the heart of the people of Texas.”

In the Senior Yell in the 1914 Le Mirage, the college’s yearbook, were these words: “Loyalty to the teachers, Loyalty to the school, Loyalty that fire can’t burn, Nor blizzards cool.”

Old Main was rededicated on April 21, 1916.

That, in many ways, has been the enduring spirit that has surrounded WT into its second century. The name, the mission, the leadership may change, but this stubborn sense of hard work and contagious optimism that settled this area in the 1880s also pulsed through the only four-year university in the Panhandle.

Few schools have undergone more name changes, but a name change always meant growth. West Texas State Teachers College became the second name in 1923, and enrollment quadrupled to more than 2,000 by 1949.

By then, the school’s degrees and disciplines had expanded far beyond teacher education, and a name needed to reflect the broader education. Thus, it became West Texas State College for the next 14 years, a time when enrollment doubled to more than 4,000.

By 1963, WT administrators convinced the state legislature the school was deserving of university status to West Texas State University. That was conferred on April 4, 1963. Gov. Preston Smith spoke at a luncheon, and a nine-hour celebration included two dances, a carnival and a picnic.

Then came the mid- to late-1980s and it was like the air hissing out of a balloon. It was the bleakest time in school history.

WT president Dr. Ed Roach, with his autocratic management style, had alienated faculty on his mission to downsize the university from seven colleges to four in a quest to do fewer things better. The colleges of agriculture and nursing were deemphasized. The faculty ultimately issued a vote of “no confidence” in Roach.

T. Boone Pickens, chairman of the WT board of regents, was a target of criticism as well. Roach was seen as his hand-picked president to do his bidding.

There were other issues, too. Unrest drifted down to students. Alumni were unhappy.

Enrollment had fallen. Donations had fallen. Morale

had fallen. If WT had a brand at that time, it was an arrow pointing straight down.

It was in that toxic atmosphere that WT sought strength in numbers. It was a period in higher education when the smaller independent university was at risk. The biggest risk was going it alone in seeking state funding, a small voice being overwhelmed by larger university systems and the schools under their umbrellas.

Students were active on campus pushing for the merger with A&M. They garnered nearly 3,000 petition signatures — almost half the student body. And the presence of 30 sincere and committed students at a decisive meeting of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in Austin was enough to take the politics out and put people in.

The merger with Texas A&M, until the last few years, was mainly invisible to the public. It hasn’t hurt that WT president Dr. Walter Wendler graduated from A&M and is a former chancellor of planning and system integration for the A&M system. WT is in good stead in the Aggie system.

Now, A&M has set up a cooperative program at WT in veterinary science. A&M is building the Charles W. Graham Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and the Veterinary Education, Research and Outreach complex on the Canyon campus.

But the Buffs are doing fine on their own, too.

There have been $200 million in capital improvements on campus in recent years. The WT 125 plan, unveiled in 2019, means to establish WT as a regional research university on issues affecting the Texas Panhandle foremost.

What’s in a name? The school has had five of them, but one part has never changed — West Texas. While there was broad support for the merger 30 years ago, alumni and students were adamant that A&M should not erase those two words.

East Texas State had become A&M-Commerce. Texas A&I had become A&M-Kingsville. To take away West Texas would be to take away that which had stitched the university together since 1910. It would remove not just the often-overlooked region, but a tradition of a pioneering spirit that landed the school in the first place.

It remained. West Texas A&M University.

Earlier this month, there was a record enrollment of 10,169 online and classroom students. It was a 1% increase from 2019 and the largest in history.

Remarkably, this was in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic when universities were bracing for the worst.

The Buffalo spirit lives on.

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.

WEST TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY TIMELINE Doors open under the leadership of the first president, R.B. Cousins

New, fireproof four-story Administration Building dedicated

1910

1916

1909 Bill signed for the establishment of a normal college west of the 98th meridian

Cousins Hall, the school’s first dormitory, completed

1920

1923

1914

1918-1948

1921

Administration Building burns to the ground

Dr. J.A. Hill, second president

Adopts the buffalo as official mascot

New fine arts complex completed

J. Patrick O’Brien, 10th president

First doctoral program, a Ph.D. in agriculture, is established

2006

2006-2015

2003

2006

2005

1932 Becomes first teachers college in Texas to offer graduate instruction

Russell C. Long, ninth president

1995-2005

2002

New event center opens

Conference championships in volleyball, football and women’s basketball

Conference championships in football, men’s basketball and volleyball

2007

Renamed West Texas State Teachers College

1993 Name changed to West Texas A&M University

Conference championships in volleyball, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s basketball and football

Hayward Sprit Tower dedicated; Amarillo Center and Buff Hall open

VERO partnership formed between the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and WTAMU to bring veterinary education, research and outreach to the Texas Panhandle

Conference championships in volleyball, men’s soccer and women’s soccer

2009

2009

2008

2007 Stanley Schaeffer Agriculture Education Learning Lab completed, Pedestrian Mall dedicated and Buffalo Courts receives official state marker

2008 Conference championships in volleyball, women’s soccer and women’s basketball

2009

2010

University records largest freshman class in WT history

Buffalo Sports Park opens, offering softball, baseball, soccer and track and field

PanhandlePlains Historical Museum opens

The basketball team, dubbed “The Tallest Team in the World,” plays at Madison Square Garden

The J.A. Hill Chapel dedicated

Renamed West Texas State University

1933

1942

1950

1964

1935

1948-1972

Buffalo Courts formally open

1949

Renamed James P. West Texas Cornette, third president State College

1958

1970

National sorority chapters installed

Enrollment reaches all-time high of 7,905.

1971 Nance Ranch donated to the University

Barry Thompson, eighth president

Old Main renovated

Gail Shannon, sixth president

The marching band marches 20 miles, earns spot in Guinness Book of World Records

1991-1994

1988

1982-1984

1974

1989 Board of Regents votes to affiliate with The Texas A&M University System

1984-1990

1977-1982

Ed D. Roach, seventh president

Max Sherman, fifth president

Dr. Walter V. Wendler, 11th president

2016-current

2013 Groundbreaking held for large-scale wind turbine testing facility at WTAMU’s Nance Ranch

2017 The largest gift in University history— $1 million a year in perpetuity— is given by Paul Engler and the Paul and Virginia Engler Foundation, establishing Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences and the Paul and Virginia Engler College of Business

1972-1977 Lloyd Watkins, fourth president

Harrington Academic Hall WTAMU Amarillo Center opens in downtown Amarillo

“WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World” Generational Plan is released

2019

2019

2019 Buffalo Stadium, an on-campus and stateof-the-art football stadium, opens

2020

2+2 veterinary program announced through WT and Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences

WEST TEXAS BEFORE THE MERGE

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here were only 152 students then, scattered about town in local churches, vacant buildings — even in the county courthouse.

But there was a spirit there, already burning — one that continues to burn 110 years and five name changes later.

From West Texas State Normal College in 1910 to West Texas A&M University today, what has remained consistent — what has been, as an unofficial school motto boasts, “Always WT” — is a dedication to student excellence and to making an impact on the Texas Panhandle.

WT opened Sept. 20, 1910, as West Texas State Normal College in what was then known as Canyon City, which was chosen after a fierce battle across the region to be the home of the state’s newest institution of higher education. A bid of $100,100 in cash and a 40-acre plot of land beat out all other bidders, though when classes began, no classrooms were actually ready — hence, students scattering around the small Panhandle town.

Less than four years later, on March 24, 1914, disaster struck: The University’s main permanent structure, the Administration Building, burned to the ground when workmen accidentally sparked a fire in the attic.

“Rescuers saved hundreds of library books by throwing them out of windows,” wrote

By Chip Chandler, Senior Communications Specialist

Dr. Marty Kuhlman in his 2010 history book “Always WT.” “Seeing the books flying out the windows, Tennessee Malone, the librarian, instinctively cried out, ‘Please, please, boys. Don’t treat my books like that.’”

Again, classes had to be scattered around canyon, but President R.B. Cousins assured Canyon residents, students and faculty that the fire was a “temporary inconvenience.”

“If West Texas State is nothing more than brick and mortar, it ought to die,” Cousins famously said, “but the Normal has shown that its life was and is in the hearts of those present and in the hearts of the people of Texas.”

The school continued to grow, and in 1922, the Legislature made it the first Normal College authorized to issue bachelor’s degrees. Campus offerings continued to broaden, and in 1924, WT accepted an offer to join the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

In 1923, the Texas Legislature officially changed the school’s name to West Texas State Teachers College.

Educating educators was still a primary mission, and in 1932, WT became the first teachers college in Texas to offer graduate degrees, though the financial crunch caused by the Great Depression led to that program being discontinued in 1931. The hard times reflected in the school’s enrollment figures, which dipped to a low of 505 in 1943-44.

But explosive growth was on the way: Enrollment soared in the postwar period. The name changed again in 1949 to West Texas State College in recognition of the school’s broadening reach in education. New buildings were popping up around campus — among them a library, a fine arts building, two dormitories and a chapel.

The name changed again in 1963, switching “College” to “University,” but transformations weren’t limited to that. WT now housed a College of Arts and Sciences, a Graduate School, a School of Agriculture, a Department of Nursing and more, and enrollment had grown to nearly 8,000 by 1970.

That growth might have come too quickly, though: The 1970s saw a drop in enrollment and universitywide streamlining of departments and administration.

Following a few years of stability, the University’s woes continued in the late 1980s. A sharp downturn in the Texas economy and sagging enrollments led to a 22-year low in the student population in 1987, and financial woes and faculty concerns eventually led to major changes in leadership.

But by this time, a major change was on the horizon — a partnership with one of the state’s premiere institutions of higher education.

‘BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH’

How a legislator, a senator, an attorney, an oil man, and a student body made the difference in the A&M merger

By Chip Chandler, Senior Communications Specialist

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chat on a plane ride to Austin. A lunch with an old friend.

From these casual meetings came one of the most consequential decisions in the history of West Texas A&M University.

“As we walked in that day, we did not have the votes. We were one vote short … Of all the people who testified, it was the students that made the difference. They testified from the heart, telling how important it was to them.”

The merger passes. Now what?

In a special session during the fall of 1989, the Texas Legislature passed a bill, co-sponsored by Smithee and Bivins, to approve bringing WT into the A&M System. It almost didn’t happen, though.

“The governor (Gov. Bill Clements) called Boone Merger talks begin and said there was just no room to put the A&M State Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo), a merger on the (legislative) calendar,” Scott recalled.

1973 WT alum, remembers sitting next to Dr. Hans “Boone said, well, Governor, it would be a special Mark, then the chancellor of the University of favor to me if you could do that … About two Texas System, on a Southwest Airlines flight from minutes later, he called back and said, ‘Boone, it’s Dallas to Austin. Mark was quite familiar with the on the calendar.’”

Texas Panhandle — had, in fact, honeymooned There was one more major hurdle, though: The with his wife in the area, Smithee said — and told bill sponsored by Smithee and Bivins required Smithee that UT would be happy to bring WT into the approval of the Texas Higher Education its system.

Coordinating Board before the merger would get its Eddie Scott, an Amarillo attorney who served final approval. on the WT Board of Regents from 1987 to 1990, “We thought that would be something that recalls that Teel Bivins, a longtime friend who would assure people, but the board resented that,” was then serving as a state senator, said he Smithee said. “They said we were trying to get was thinking about legislation that would help them to rubberstamp our position. We began to independent universities merge with larger systems. realize we didn’t have the votes on that board to These discussions were nothing new, really. approve it.”

According to “Always WT,” Dr. Marty Kuhlman’s centennial accounting of the University’s history, Unlikely saviors merger talks first started popping up in the 1970s.

Enter WT students.

Faculty members were polled in 1976, with A&M “The administration at the time did not want and UT both suggested as possibilities. In 1980, a students to go down (to the THECB meeting),” student-led, but ill-fated movement suggested a recalled Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, now president merger with Amarillo College. of Amarillo College but then WT’s student body But by the end of the decade, the time had finally president. “Through someone else’s foresight, the come, and the momentum to ally WT with a larger (Amarillo Chamber of Commerce) took a flight of university system with a broad, statewide reach Amarillo citizens down there, and they called me was impossible to deny. and asked if any students wanted to go.”

“We were in a position at that time where the Students and community leaders packed the small, independent college was really becoming meeting room. a dinosaur in Texas,” Smithee said. “They didn’t “We didn’t sit,” Lowery-Hart said. “We just stood have the resources to compete for appropriations against the wall all the way around the room. I in the Legislature because these other systems had remember clearly one of the commissioners full-time lobbyists. As a legislator, I was seeing how talking about the political pressure, that they’d hard it was for independent schools to compete.” never experienced anything like it, but he said The University of Texas System was floated as the students being there reminded him why it a possibility, as was Texas Tech University, at least was important.” briefly, though it had not yet formally become a The students presented the board with a prouniversity system. merger petition signed by 2,866 students.

“But as this went on, it became apparent that “We didn’t have the votes,” Smithee said. “As WT and A&M just had a lot in common,” Smithee we walked in that day, we did not have the votes. said. “And with their resources and programs and We were one vote short … Of all the people access, for the long-term future of WT, it would be who testified, it was the students that made the so much better to be a part of a system like that.” difference. They testified from the heart, telling how Scott led the committee that studied a merger’s important it was to them.” implications. Among those in favor of it: Fellow “That turned at least a couple of votes, and we regent T. Boone Pickens, the prominent oil man. snuck out of there by the skin of our teeth.”

“We had multiple meetings with faculty, staff, The final vote was 10 to 7 in favor of the merger. donors, local people, anybody interested in it,” On Sept. 1, 1990, West Texas State officially joined Scott said. “Some liked the idea. A few didn’t, and The Texas A&M University System. we talked through that.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME? Retaining ‘West Texas’ after the A&M merger

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hen the then-West Texas State University merged with The Texas A&M University System, the fight was only beginning — and would be waged closer to home.

Ultimately, the fiercest battle over the merger was waged in front of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, but over the next three years, debate would rage even more loudly in Canyon.

At issue: What to call the now-merged university.

A name change wasn’t automatic. Other schools, like Tarleton State University, didn’t change their name when they joined the A&M System.

“Texas A&M University at West Texas” or “Texas A&M University at Canyon” both were floated as options, State Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo) said.

“Students felt the merger should happen. The issue wasn’t the merger. But the name mattered,” recalled Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, who served as student body president during the merger.

The student senate made its wishes known with a vote that asked that “West Texas” remain part of whatever name was ultimately chosen.

“We were just really committed to keeping the history of ‘West Texas’,” Lowery-Hart said. “In all of the name changes before this, it still remained ‘West Texas’.”

At least one TAMU System Regent got a timely

By Chip Chandler, Senior Communications Specialist

reminder of how important “West Texas” was to the school community.

Stanley Schaeffer, a prominent WT alum and area business leader, said his late wife Geneva, also a proud WT alum, was discussing the pending name change with her friend Mary West Traylor over lunch one day in Fort Worth.

West Traylor’s mother, Mary Nan West, was a prominent rancher and the first woman to serve as president of the TAMU System Board of Regents, which was then debating what to name WT after the merger.

“Mary told Geneva that her mother said no one really cares about the name,” Stanley Schaeffer said. “Geneva very heatedly said, ‘Yes, they do care. They want to retain ‘WT’ as the main part of the name.

“Well, Mary picked up her phone and called her mother: ‘Mother, they do care what the name is,’” Schaeffer recalled his wife saying.

The largest sticking point, then, was over whether or how to add “A&M” to the school’s name.

“We wanted the opportunity that joining the system might create, but we didn’t want to lose what we were in the process,” Lowery-Hart said. “We were proud to be Buffs.”

A 1992 poll of faculty members rejected any name change, according to “Always WT,” Dr. Marty Kuhlman’s

centennial accounting of the University’s history. A similar survey conducted of a sampling of students found the matter to be a statistical dead heat: 49.6 in favor of remaining WTSU, 49.4 in favor of adding A&M to the name. Alumni, too, asked to stay WTSU. But adding the patina of statewide respect accorded by the merger — a major argument in its favor — seemed to many to indicate that a name change of some sort was required.

“Once we affiliate ourselves with a university like Texas A&M that carries the prestige, I think people will get to know us a little bit more,” student senator Richard Perez told student newspaper The Prairie in 1992. “We can build our university carrying this name.”

“There is no question that it’s right,” then-University President Barry Thompson said later in 1992. “A&M is now the sixth largest research university in the world.

It’s recognized as one of the premier universities, [and] we’re part of it.”

The System Board of Regents ultimately agreed.

“The day after Geneva talked with Mary West Traylor, the regents voted on it,” Schaeffer said. “I’d like to think Geneva really had something to do with retaining the name. Maybe not, but I’d like to think so.”

The name officially was changed June 1, 1993.

YEARS OF TRANSFORMATION

Growth in sports, the arts, technology and degree programs possible because of A&M merger

By Chip Chandler, Senior Communications Specialist

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hirty years ago, West Texas A&M University’s graduating seniors accepted their diplomas on a stage more than 20 miles away from campus. Football players battled on a gridiron about two miles from campus.

Of all of the changes WT has undergone since merging with The Texas A&M University System in 1990, the addition of an on-campus football field and a major event center are among the most significant.

So, too, is the multimillion-dollar new Agricultural Sciences Complex, which houses the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences along with the new Center for Advancing Food Animal Production in the Panhandle, the Happy State Bank Academic and Research Building and the Charles W. Graham Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab and the Veterinary Education, Research and Outreach complexes.

These changes are some of the most visible ways the WT campus has transformed in the past 30 years.

“As a freshman, I recruited students to our campus by giving tours of WT through the Admissions Office,” recalled Ronnie Hall, a 1995 graduate who now works as WT’s alumni director. “While giving tours, I would always point out how beautiful our campus was — the large trees and the amazing views of Old Main.

“Through the years, there have been many days that the dirt blew everywhere from the construction sites, but everyone would agree that the results have been worth it,” Hall said. “With the addition of more trees and beautiful landscaping, and the addition of more structures, our beautiful campus has become even more stunning.”

Buffalo Stadium, the first on-campus football stadium since 1958, is a state-of-the-art facility that features concourse-level seats, elevated club seating areas and an estimated total capacity of 12,000, including overflow and standing-room-only areas.

The First United Bank Center has seating for 5,000 and a large video screen, making it the perfect location for commencement exercises and a host of other public events — both for WT and for outside users.

Other major additions to the campus include new residence halls Buff Hall, Centennial Hall and Jarrett Hall; the Charles K. and Barbara Kerr Vaughn Pedestrian Mall and Hayward Spirit Tower; and the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex, which features state-of-the-art radio and television studios, a 304-seat Branding Iron Theatre, the Happy State Bank Studio black box theatre, an acting studio, recital hall, music studios and choir rehearsal rooms.

WT’s footprint in neighboring Amarillo has grown, too, with the opening of the Harrington Academic Hall WTAMU Amarillo Center in downtown Amarillo. It offers select upper-level and graduate classes in a location favorable to the communities and employers of Amarillo.

The University also has established, in the past three decades, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, the School of Music, the College of Engineering, and the Center for Learning Disabilities, as well as new programs in agricultural media and in civil and environmental engineering, master’s degree programs in education and social work, and doctoral degree programs in agriculture and educational leadership.

FIVE OF A KIND Five generations, five WT graduates, five different names

By Jon Mark Beilue

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mma Bettis could not have had even the slightest notion the unique legacy she started when she enrolled at this new college in Canyon more than 100 years ago. She wanted to be a teacher, and a degree from fledgling West Texas State Normal College seemed the best way to do just that.

About 25 years later, Fannie Griffiths, her daughter, would do the same thing with a slightly different twist.

She would earn her degree from the same school, different name – West Texas State Teachers College in 1942.

“My grandmother and mother were determined to get out there and make something of themselves,” said Carol Dunham, Fannie’s daughter. “I never met my grandmother, so most of what I picked up was hearsay.

She was big on voting rights for women, and didn’t necessarily believe a woman’s place was always in the home.”

And so it would go for almost a century – greatgreat grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother, father and son. That’s five family generations with five degrees from the Canyon university.

But it gets better. West Texas A&M University has had five official names in its 110-year history, and the current Dunham lineage has had one graduate under each different name. There’s likely not another family that can claim that unusual link.

“I really didn’t know about the lineage until I graduated and my grandmother talked about it,” said Austin Dunham, a 2012 graduate and the youngest of the link. “I always knew WT was where I wanted to go.”

If you’re scoring at home, it goes something like this: • Emma Bettis, believed to be approximately 1916, education degree, West Texas State Normal College (1910-1923) • Fannie Bettis Griffiths, daughter, 1942, education degree, West Texas State Teachers College (1923-1949) • Carol Griffiths, granddaughter, 1961, art and English degrees, West Texas State College (1949-1963). Richard Dunham, Pampa High School sweetheart and future husband, degree in education with a social studies emphasis, 1960 • Rick Dunham, great-grandson, 1986, degree in biology and chemistry, West Texas State University (1963-1990) • Austin Dunham, great-great grandson, 2012, degree in general studies with emphasis in sports and exercise education, West Texas A&M University (1990-present) “Each person, it seems, went to WT for different reasons,” said Dr. Rick Dunham, a dentist in Dalhart.

“I can’t speak for my grandmother and greatgrandmother, but I’m sure they would say what we all

think now and that WT was just a good fit for us.”

Emma Bettis and Fannie Griffiths were somewhat educational pioneers. Particularly for Bettis, higher education in the formative years of the 20th century was for predominantly males. Teaching and nursing were the two major fields of study for women.

West Texas State Normal College was only five years old when Bettis arrived. Old Main burned in 1914, but that didn’t dissuade her. Bettis taught in Arkansas and in the mining town of Silver Plume, Colorado. Her husband was the school superintendent. To make ends meet, he worked in the mines in the summer, and was killed in a mining accident.

Fannie, one of Bettis’ two daughters, married in the 1930s to a farmer who had land just across the Texas state line in New Mexico. It was about 70 years too soon for online classes, so Fannie took 2-year-old Carol with her to Canyon as she went to the teachers college there.

Her husband would come to Canyon on the weekends to see them. Fannie Griffiths would eventually teach second grade in Olton and Shamrock.

Carol, her daughter, graduated from Pampa High School in 1957. She initially wanted to go to college elsewhere.

“It never occurred to me not to go to college,” she said, “and at one point, I thought I was going to Baylor.

My mother was one of those go-getters and she wanted me to go to Baylor. She thought it would be a wonderful school to go to, but I couldn’t afford it even then. I’m glad I didn’t because I loved WT.” It didn’t hurt that Richard Dunham, her boyfriend, had left Pampa for WT the year before. Carol took mild exception to Richard’s story that she just followed him there, but there might have been a measure of truth in that.

“When he went to WT, we weren’t dating much,” she said, “because he wanted to be free to date in college and he wanted me to be free to date my senior year in high school. That didn’t last long. Once he came home to visit, we ended up, as you say in those days, ‘going steady.’”

Dunham chose WT because of its 75-mile proximity, and because he’d been on campus a few times during his high school days. He thought he would teach and coach, but he was also in ROTC. That would lead to a 21-year military career before retirement in 1982 with the rank of Major.

He was in Korea and Vietnam, and seven stops stateside, including Alaska, Hawaii and the Pentagon.

He received eight commendation medals, including the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star.

Following retirement, he returned to his hometown.

He coached and taught at Pampa Junior High, then

was junior high athletic director. When Dennis Cavalier, Pampa football coach and athletic director, suddenly died in 2003, Dunham filled in for a time as athletic director. Meanwhile, Carol taught sixth-grade English and art.

If the WT chain looked like it would break, it was with their son, Rick. With Richard’s last military stop at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, Rick graduated from Lawton Eisenhower High School in 1982. He wanted to pursue a medical or dental field of study and with a girlfriend at the University of Oklahoma, Norman was believed to be his destination.

But a high school counselor, a WT alumnus, gave the university Rick’s name. He soon received a letter from WT about the Don and Sybil Harrington scholarship that waived out-of-state tuition.

“My dad said, ‘Don’t fill out that application because you’ll be taking scholarship money from someone who’s actually going to WT,’” Dunham said. “I wasn’t obedient because I sent it in. I’d never been to WT, but I knew my parents both graduated from there.”

Dunham also found out about the acceptance rate into health care professional programs after graduation. At Oklahoma, it was only 17%. At WT, it was above 85%. The reason, he was told later, is a group of professors would together recommend only the top students to medical or dental schools, and their recommendation reputation was stellar.

“So the acceptance rate was intriguing, and when spring break came around, I told my parents that I’d like to see the school,” Dunham said.

Though the campus was mostly empty, he got a good feel of what the future would hold should he decide to head to Canyon.

“We finish the tour, and my dad is retired military, so he’s pretty disciplined,” he said. “He doesn’t say much to me on the drive home, but we get to around Altus (Oklahoma), and he said, ‘So what do you think?’ I told him I think I want to go to WT. I thought he was literally going to drive off the road. Two weeks before, it was not even a consideration.”

For Dunham, who said he didn’t need the big university experience, WT fit like a well-worn work glove. Small classes meant easier comprehension.

While working as a counselor his sophomore year at Buffalo Branding, a freshman orientation, he would meet his future wife, Debbi.

Dunham was accepted to three dental schools and chose the UT Health San Antonio School of Dentistry, graduating in 1990.

“I’m in dental school with kids from UT, A&M, some private schools,” Dunham said. “Dentistry is kind of interesting. You have to know a lot of science and be book smart, but you also need hand skills because

it can be hard to get your hand to do what your mind wants to do.

“I’d be in science labs and study a little bit and say, ‘OK, I’m going to work on the dental lab part.’

Classmates would ask me how I know this stuff. I said, ‘Well, I learned it in a college.’ It got to be a joke among my classmates, ‘You don’t have to study too hard for this test because, that’s right, you went to WT.’” After a year of a hospital residency, Dunham was an associate with another dentist in Pampa before purchasing a practice in Dalhart. He’s been there since 1994. Three daughters have gone to Texas A&M, WT’s mothership for the past 30 years, but Austin, the oldest, kept the Buff streak going,

Unlike his dad, he was quite familiar with WT growing up. He had been to football and basketball games, been to sports camps. When he graduated from Dalhart in 2008, he turned down an offer to be a student assistant in the basketball program at Oklahoma Baptist for WT. But he did become a student assistant with the Buff basketball program in 2010-2012. He also immersed himself in intramural sports, even working in the intramural sports program his senior year.

“I wasn’t the guy that went to Midnight Rodeo.

I found a group of guys and we were all about intramurals,” he said. “We’d go to the gym every night until they turned out the lights. Everyone else could

party and hurt their grades. We stayed in the gym and it may have hurt my grades – same effect.”

Still, Dunham graduated in 2012, and is beginning his fifth year as a teacher and coach at Motley County, a consolidated six-man football school in Matador, 130 miles southeast of Amarillo. He is head boys basketball and golf coach and assistant football coach.

Austin and wife Jessica have two daughters – Landree and Emoree. Could there be a sixth generation at WT? Possibly. But will that match a sixth name change? West Texas A&M and Texas A&M would say that’s not too likely.

JOINING THE A&M NETWORK How the merger benefited West Texas State University

By Chip Chandler, Senior Communications Specialist

P

rior to the 1990s, higher education in Texas was a strikingly different playing field than today.

Universities were more likely to be independent institutions, not tied to a statewide system of schools.

But with so many schools battling for limited statewide resources, schools like the then-West Texas State University found it smarter to join a team.

“The problem was, they didn’t have the resources to compete for appropriations in the Legislature because these other systems had full-time lobbyists,” State Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo) said. “As a legislator, I was seeing how hard it was for independent schools to compete.”

The problem was apparent on WT’s campus, too.

Dr. James Hallmark, now the vice chancellor for academic affairs for The Texas A&M University System, first arrived at WT as a faculty member in 1991. He recalled that the University — which had just merged months before with the A&M System — was “very resource poor.”

“WT, when it was on its own, had to rely entirely on its local representatives, but by being part of the A&M System, the school is able to rely on a larger network

of representatives across the state house and senate,” Hallmark said.

Being a part of a larger system particularly helps in the sense of economy of scale, said Randy Rikel, WT’s vice president for business and finance.

“It’s cheaper if two people are enjoying the same thing and paying the same amount as one person,” Rikel explained.

As part of a broader system, WT can share many functions — human resources, payroll software, debt financing, treasury services.

“If we were still a standalone institution, we’d either have to hire those people to do those services full time or have them on retainer,” Rikel said.

The benefits of being part of a university system extend beyond that, as well.

Take, for instance, the 2 + 2 program. That allows A&M Veterinary students to begin their first two years of medical training at WT for increased exposure to large animal needs in rural communities. It’s part of extensive growth in the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, which also includes the Center for Advancing Food Animal Production in

the Panhandle, made possible by a recent $4 million legislative allocation.

PECANS also includes Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Education, Research and Outreach program, made possible by a $20 million investment from the Permanent University Fund and a commitment of $5 million from the System by Chancellor John Sharp. There’s also a $24 million Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab joining the complex.

“VERO is 100% A&M. The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab is an A&M agency. If we were not part of the System, they would not be on our campus,” Rikel said.

But WT is still allowed a degree of independence that other university systems don’t necessarily offer its regional institutions.

“WT can still celebrate and cherish the traditions it has built over 110 years,” Hallmark said. “Our institutions have a lot more autonomy than other schools do. They’re still part of a network, but they still have the ability to make decisions that make sense for their students and for the people of the Panhandle.”