Twelve students joined Texas Christian University, in the fall semester of 1991, to make the first class of the new Intensive English Program. Twenty-four TCU students, in the fall semester of 2020, made up the final class of the University's IEP. Thousands of students in the intervening semesters and summers were TCU students in the IEP. They are multilinguals, both Americans and also citizens of nations beyond the US border. TCU's IEP was unique in that it focused on access for students.
There was student access financial and technological and also both financial and technological at the same time.
For students there was much financial aid. For three years, the University gave away the IEP tuition to all who completed the undergraduate degree at TCU. For eight years, the Program gave a full ride annual IEP scholarship to a dozen Rwandan survivors of the genocide rebuilding their nation. From its inception, the IEP gave away ESL classes to TCU employees, undocumented individuals, asylum seekers, and refugees.
For students there was much technology to connect and to improve studies. In 1998, the IEP at TCU was the first university owned program to go fully online. In 2016, years before the 2020 pandemic, the IEP began using Zoom teleclassrooming.
For students there was the highest quality academics with technology at absolutely no cost. During the pandemic, the IEP at TCU gave away teaching (tuition), textbooks (electronic), and tests (internationally-recognized standards) to students in more than a dozen countries on 6 different continents at once.