Editors’ Note: This feature appears as it was published in the spring 2017 edition of UT Dallas Magazine. Titles or faculty members listed may have changed since that time.
Left: The transmission tower being constructed in 1967. Right: An aerial view of the tower in 2016.
Since 1967, a 250-foot-tall transmission tower has been a fixture on the north end of campus.
The tower was originally built to broadcast The Association for Graduate Education and Research (TAGER) network, a closed-circuit television education system.Created to deliver courses via telecast, TAGER was the brainchild of University co-founder Cecil H. Green.
“We’d tie together, by means of this closed-circuit television system, all the existing colleges and universities, and even the medical schools. And then put classrooms, also, in technical industrial plants,” Green said in a 1994 interview with the American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics. “In order to make a successful industrial enterprise here, we had to get it completely involved in education. Which has paid off, of course.”Fifty years later, the structure remains a familiar landmark on campus, functioning as a transmission tower for several companies.
Founders Building, TAGER tower and a jogging track comprised the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (which became UTD) in the late 1960s.
