University of North Texas leaders are moving forward with plans to create a standalone journalism school, the university president said Saturday.

Creating the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism would give UNT’s journalism program its own dean and increase its national presence, university President Gretchen Bataille said during the annual Maybon Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest in Grapevine.

The change could take a year because Bataille must still seek approval from UNT’s Board of Regents and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The new school would not include the radio, television and film department, despite discussion last year of combining it with the journalism department.

Those departments are now part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

UNT Provost Wendy Wilkins said combining the departments would succeed only with the support of all of the faculty involved, but right now only the journalism faculty has the drive to create its own school.

“We have achieved a level in journalism that deserves a national visibility that a school would have,” Wilkins said.

Bataille said Sue Mayborn was “the muse” and the financial backing for UNT’s journalism department. Bataille said UNT was naming the new school after the Mayborns because of their continuing support of the school, not because of a new gift.

The Mayborn Foundation already supports several scholarships for graduate students in journalism at UNT.

“Sue and her late husband, Frank, are responsible for really, really, truly bringing UNT’s journalism program to state and national prominence,” Bataille said.