University of North Texas - Notable Alumni, Faculty & Staff

Notable Alumni, Faculty & Staff

As of 2005, the University of North Texas had approximately 326,000 living alumni, of which, over 208,000 alums reside in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.

Alumni in music

A significant number of notable alumni have succeeded in music, including Roy Orbison, Tom "Bones" Malone and "Blue Lou" Marini (both members of The Blues Brothers Band and the Saturday Night Live Band), Lecrae Moore ('02) Reach Records, Grammy Award-winners Don Henley, Norah Jones, Pat Boone and Duain Wolfe, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Jazz saxophonist Billy Harper received his bachelor's degree in music in 1965. KDGE disc-jockey Josh Venable attended the university. Eugene Corporon, conductor of the College of Music's Wind Symphony, is a prolific recording artist as conductor. Steve Turre, a jazz trombonist and member of the Juilliard faculty, is among the most prolific living studio musicians in the world and is in his twenty-ninth year as trombonist with the Saturday Night Live Band. The rock musician Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday), famous for his appearance in Rocky Horror Picture Show, produced an album trilogy, Bat Out of Hell, the first of which has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide. After thirty-five years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and has stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums of all time.

Alumni from intercollegiate athletics & in pro sports

Golf

The era of collegiate prominence in Texas golf began with North Texas winning four consecutive NCAA Division I Championships from 1949 to 1952. Intercollegiate golf had until then been dominated by the Ivy League, which — since 1897 when intercollegiate golf began — had won 36 national titles. North Texas students Don January, who later won the PGA Championship, and 1951 U.S. Amateur champion Billy Maxwell, were members of the team. Fred Cobb (1899–1954), the coach, launched the team in 1945. Sixty years since winning its fourth consecutive Championship, only one other team in the nation — the Houston Cougars — has surpassed four consecutive titles. In the 115-year history of intercollegiate golf, North Texas is one of only nine with more than one national title.

Football

On September 1, 1956, Abner Haynes and his high school classmate Leon A. King (born 1938), became the first African American students to participate on the North Texas football team. In the larger picture, Haynes and King were the first to break the color barrier for intercollegiate sports in Texas — seven years before anyone was authorized to break it at a Southwest Conference school. Haynes quickly became an offensive and defensive star on the team. Despite his athletic leadership and fan popularity, Haynes experienced painful encounters with Jim Crow — including not being allowed to live on campus. Perhaps the worst was when Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Chattanooga discontinued scheduling North Texas after 1956, citing state laws. Haynes went on to play with the Dallas Texans (1960–1963), earning the American Football League MVP in 1961, and continued playing when the team became the Kansas City Chiefs (1963–1964). Then he played for the Denver Broncos (1965–1966), the Miami Dolphins (1967), and the New York Jets. Haynes is in the Halls of Fame of North Texas (1986), Kansas City Chiefs (1991), and Texas Sports (2007). Haynes, who now lives in Denton, is one of a few athletes who was able to play high school, college, and professional football in North Texas.

Mean Joe Greene, in 1968, was selected as a College Football Consensus All American, the only alumnus in the 99-year history of football at North Texas to win the honor. He went on to the Pittsburgh Steelers where he anchored the Steele Curtain defense that led Pittsburgh to four Super Bowl titles. In 1976, North Texas inducted Greene as a Distinguished Alumnus, an honor bestowed only to twenty-nine others during the then ten-year history of the award. On August 1, 1983, Governor Mark White appointed Greene to the Board of Regents of North Texas, making him the first African American to serve as a regent of any Texas state university. In 1987, Greene was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the only alumnus ever to become a member. In 1988, he was named to the North Texas Hall of Fame.

Theatrical athletics

WWF wrestlers David and Kevin Von Erich, and Stone Cold Steve Austin were student athletes at North Texas. David, recruited in 1976 by Hayden Fry to play football, flourished as a 6-6, 220-pound forward on the basketball team under Bill Blakely. Kevin was a running back under Hayden Fry in 1976 until a knee injury. Austin, who drew inspiration to become a wrestler from the Von Erichs, played football for North Texas in the mid-1980s.

Alumni in politics & public service

Alumni in public service include Michael C. Burgess, congressman for the 26th Texas district; Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi ambassador to the United States and former adviser to the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia; Ray Roberts, former U.S. Congressman and namesake of Lake Ray Roberts; Dick Armey, former U.S. Congressman and House Majority Leader; Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner who, while in office, was a pioneering supporter of organic farmers and ranchers; and Robert L. Bobbitt, who served as Texas Speaker of the House, Texas Attorney General, and Chairman of the Texas Highway Department. Chester A. Newland, PhD (born 1930), who earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with high honors from UNT in 1954 and also became head of the UNT Political Science Department in 1963, was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to become the inaugural Director of the LBJ Library in 1968. He also served as Director of the Federal Executive Institute from 1973 to 1976, and again from 1980 to 1981. In 1954, Newland was the founding president of North Texas chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, a national political science honorary organization. Jim Hightower was a student of Political Science at North Texas while Newland served as director.

Alumni in broadcast media & entertainment

Phil McGraw, who earned a PhD in clinical psychology from North Texas in 1979, is in his eleventh year as host of Dr. Phil, an internationally syndicated CBS TV show. Bill Moyers studied journalism at North Texas in the 1950s.

Alumni in science & research

James Pawelczyk (UNT PhD—Biology '89) was a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1998. The crew served as subjects and operators for experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. His research interests include neural control of the circulation, particularly skeletal muscle blood flow, as it is affected by exercise or spaceflight. Pawelczyk is currently a physiologist at the Noll Physiological Research Center at Pennsylvania State University.

Alumni in higher education

Lorene Lane Rogers, PhD, who earned a bachelors degree in English from North Texas, served as president of The University of Texas at Austin from 1974 to 1979, the first female in the country to head a major university and the only female in that role in UT's one hundred and twenty-nine-year history. As UT's fifteenth president, she broke a seventy-nine-year jinx by becoming the first not to be fired. She met her husband, Burl Gordon Rogers (UNT BS—chemistry '35), while attending North Texas and married him in 1935. Burl went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from UT in 1940, whereupon, in 1941, they moved to Westfield, New Jersey, for his new job at General Aniline Works in Linden. But on June 19 of that year, Burl died from burns after a mixture of chemicals flared in a laboratory at work a week earlier. In honor of Burl, Lorene gave money to UT for a scholarship in 1996, and in turn, the UT Board of Regents established the Burl Gordon Rogers Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Chemistry.

Bill Allen Nugent (UNT PhD—Musicology '70), in 1982, became the first chancellor of the University of Arkansas in its 110-year history. Robert Blocker, DMA (UNT MM—piano '70, DMA—piano '72 ), who has served as dean of several renowned institutions — including the UNT College of Music — has, for the last seventeen years, been the Dean at the Yale School of Music. Bill Thomson, PhD (UNT BM—composition '48, MM—composition '49), served as Dean of the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, from 1980 to 1992. Bill Lee, PhD (UNT BM '49, MM '50), as Dean from 1964 to 1982, built the University of Miami School of Music into an international powerhouse across several music genres, including jazz.