U.S. News rankings

Two UNT programs are included in the new graduate program rankings released by U.S. News and World Report this year. UNT's master of public administration degree program is ranked first in Texas and 10th in the nation in the city management and urban policy specialty area. The new ranking is up from 2001, when UNT's program tied for 12th. UNT's counseling graduate program is ranked first in Texas and 18th nationally in the education specialties area. The program is ranked in the top 20 nationally for the seventh consecutive year.

The two newest UNT rankings join other top-tier rankings for UNT programs, including library science, health librarianship, information systems, master of fine arts, master of music, jazz studies, graduate conducting, composition and art education.

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		Richard Ardoin-Paul Voertman Concert Organ

Concert organ

A new $1.5 million Voertman-Ardoin Memorial Fund created by Denton philanthropist Paul Voertman will support the installation of a new concert organ for the UNT College of Music. Construction of the Richard Ardoin-Paul Voertman Concert Organ was recently approved by the UNT System Board of Regents. Installation in Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center is scheduled for completion in 2008.

The college selected internationally renowned Wolff and Associates, located in Laval, Quebec, to build the organ, which will be positioned behind the choral terrace in Winspear Hall. The organ's case will feature the geometric shapes and angles of the hall.

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First Welch Chair

Weston Borden will join UNT in November as its first Welch Chair in Chemistry. The Robert A. Welch Foundation provided $1 million while various contributors offered $1 million in matching funds to establish a $2 million endowment for the chair. Borden is currently a professor of chemistry at the University of Washington. He is slated to begin his service to UNT on Nov. 1 when his research group will move into laboratory facilities in UNT's new 105,000-square-foot Chemistry Building at the corner of Hickory Street and Avenue C.

Borden is recognized as an international leader in the field of computational organic chemistry, a branch of chemistry in which computers are used to explain and predict the properties of molecules and the rates of their reactions. He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University and served as an instructor and assistant professor at Harvard from 1968 to 1973, when he joined the faculty at the University of Washington.

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Recent deaths

Irma J. Caton

		Irma J. Caton

Irma J. Caton, 79, Professor Emeritus of kinesiology, health promotion and recreation who taught at North Texas from 1962 to 1990, died June 7 in Denton. She earned her bachelor's degree from East Tennessee State College and received her master's and doctorate from the University of Tennessee.

At North Texas she chaired the women's division of health, physical education and recreation from 1965 to 1975 and was chair of physical education from 1975 to 1985, when she returned to teaching. She had served as president of the Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance; the Southern Association of Physical Education of College Women; and the Southland Conference athletic conference.

At North Texas she received the Distinguished Teaching Award and was named an Honor Professor by students. A scholarship in the Department of Kinesiology, Health Promotion and Recreation was endowed in her name in 1989.

Howard Swindle

		Howard Swindle

Howard Swindle ('68), 58, an investigative journalist who earned three Pulitzer Prizes for the Dallas Morning News and served as the first guest lecturer for UNT's Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism in 2000-01, died June 9.

Swindle was editor of North Texas' student newspaper, the Campus Chat, in 1968 before being named Outstanding Journalism Graduate. After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he worked for the Fort Worth Press and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which led to a position with the Dallas Times Herald.

In 1979 he joined the Dallas Morning News, where he worked as a reporter, assistant metropolitan editor and assistant managing editor for projects before becoming a writer-at-large. In 1986, the News won its first Pulitzer Prize for a project that Swindle edited. Projects led by Swindle would later win two other Pulitzers for the paper.

Swindle was the author of several books, including Once a Hero; Doin' Dirty; America's Condemned: Death Row Inmates in Their Own Words; Trespasses: Portrait of a Serial Rapist; and Deliberate Indifference: A Study of Racial Injustice and Murder. Universal Pictures' Eye See You, released in 2002, was based on his novel Jitter Joint.

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