“Enjoy your time. It will be the best time of your life.”
This was Samuel Okan’s message to future University of Texas at Arlington students. Okan, a graduate student studying social work, wrote it on a card that would be included in a time capsule that will be opened in a decade.
Okan was just one of several hundred students, faculty, staff, administrators and community members who attended the university’s Birthday Bash marking 130 years, UTA spokesperson Jeff Caplan said of the crowd’s size.
“We’re celebrating our progress, and the ways that UTA has transformed while staying true to the spirit that has been here from the start,” UTA President Jennifer Cowley told attendees. “This university, it’s about 130 years of students chasing big dreams, and of faculty and staff shaping lives and knowledge, of Mavericks rising to meet challenges of our times.”
University of Texas at Arlington President Jennifer Cowley speaks to attendees at the Birthday Bash at Brazos Park on campus Sept. 5, 2025. (McKinnon Rice | Fort Worth Report)
University of Texas at Arlington President Jennifer Cowley speaks to attendees at the Birthday Bash at Brazos Park on campus Sept. 5, 2025. (McKinnon Rice | Fort Worth Report)
UTA began in 1885 as a private school called Arlington College. It changed names seven times over the years, with spans as a military academy and an agricultural college. The school joined the University of Texas System in 1967.
The university had nearly 42,000 students in 2024 and was the second-largest in the UT System, according to state data. This fall’s enrollment is not yet available, but the 2025-26 first-year class is expected to be the largest in the school’s history.
In 2015, UTA earned the coveted R1 research designation from the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education, which marks the highest level of research activity.
In April, the university held a ground breaking for UTA West, an expansion on 51 acres near Aledo. The first building of the new campus is expected to be complete in 2028.
“This is a university of progress, 130 years of progress, of history, and we’re always building forward — faster, smarter and with heart,” Cowley said.
In addition to writing notes for the time capsule, students sat at picnic tables at the campus’ Brazos Park — adorned with blue, orange and white balloons — as they ate cupcakes and listened to music played over loudspeakers.
After singing happy birthday, attendees shot off cannons filled with confetti in the school’s colors.
Cowley had her own time-capsule message for future students “to believe in themselves and what they’re capable of, and to dream big,” she said. “And that they can make their dreams come true.”
McKinnon Rice the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
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