North Texas Daily

Joshua Knopp / Staff Writer

Alfred Hurley, UNT’s 12th president and first full-time chancellor, died Saturday of Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 84.

Hurley first came to UNT as a vice president for administrative affairs in 1980. Two years later, he became president and chancellor. He would remain in both positions for 18 years and was chancellor for two more years after that. His tenures in both positions are the longest in UNT’s history.

“The UNT family has experienced a profound loss,” said current president Lane Rawlins in a press release. “I know from many who worked with Dr. Hurley and from my own interactions with him that he believed passionately in UNT and cared deeply for its people. A former regent once said of him, ‘Al lives and breathes the university.’”

Hurley will be remembered for overseeing the name change to UNT from North Texas State University in 1988 and establishing the TAMS program for high-achieving high school students in 1987.

During Hurley’s administration, many of UNT’s colleges advanced academically. The College of Public Affairs and Community Service launched it’s disaster management degree program, a national first, in 1983. The College of Businesses accounting program and many programs in the Mayborn School of Journalism were accredited during this time period — Mayborn’s news-editorial sequence had been accredited since 1969, but all other parts of the college was accredited by 1986.

Also, the honor’s program was reconstituted in 1994, and UNT was officially recognized as a college system by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in 1999.