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University of Texas at Austin

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The University of Texas at Austin (often referred to as The University of Texas, UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a doctoral/research university located in Austin, Texas. It is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located less than a mile from the Texas State Capitol in Austin. According to The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities (2001) by Howard and Matthew Greene, The University of Texas at Austin is one of America's "Public Ivy" institutions of higher education, defined by the authors as a public institution that "provides an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price." Founded in 1883, the university has had the fifth largest single-campus enrollment in the nation as of fall 2006 (and had the largest enrollment in the country from 1997–2003), with nearly 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and 16,500 faculty and staff. It currently holds the largest enrollment of all colleges in the state of Texas.

The university also operates various auxiliary facilities aside from the main campus, most notably the J. J. Pickle Research Campus. Texas is a major center for academic research, annually exceeding $380 million in funding. In addition, the university's athletic programs were recognized by Sports Illustrated, which dubbed UT "America's Best Sports College" in 2002.

History

The first mention of a public university in Texas can be traced to the 1827 constitution for the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Although an article promised to establish public education in the arts and sciences, no action was ever taken by the Mexican government. After Texas obtained its independence from Mexico in 1836, the Congress of Texas adopted the Constitution of the Republic, which included a provision to establish public education in republic, including two universities or colleges. On January 26, 1839, the Congress of Texas agreed to eventually set aside fifty leagues of land towards the effort; in addition, forty acres in the new capital of Austin were reserved and designated "College Hill."

In 1846, Texas was annexed into the United States. The state legislature passed the Act of 1858, which set aside $100,000 in United States bonds towards construction. In addition, the legislature designated land, previously reserved for the encouragement of railroad construction, toward the universities' fifty leagues. However, Texas's secession from the Union and the American Civil War prevented further action on these plans.

The passing of the Morrill Act in 1862 facilitated the creation of Texas A&M University, which was established in 1876 as the Agricultural & Mechanical College of Texas. The Texas Constitution of 1876 mandated that the state establish a university "at an early day," calling for the creation of a "university of the first class," The University of Texas. It revoked the endowment of the railroad lands of the Act of 1858 but appropriated one million acres (4000 km²) in West Texas. In 1883, another two million were granted, with income from the sale of land and grazing rights going to The University of Texas and Texas A&M.

In 1881, Austin was chosen as the site of the main university, and Galveston was designated the location of the medical department. On the original "College Hill," an official ceremony began construction on what is now referred to as the old Main Building in late 1882. The university opened its doors on September 15, 1883.

The old Victorian-Gothic Main Building served as the central point of the campus's forty acre site, and was used for nearly all purposes. However, by the 1930s, discussions rose about the need for new library space, and the Main Building was razed in 1934 over the objections of many students and faculty. The modern-day tower and Main Building were constructed in its place.

Constitutional restrictions against funding building construction hampered expansion. However, the funds generated by oil discovered on university-owned grounds in 1923 were put towards its general endowment fund. This extra revenue allowed the university to pay down its debt, and pass bond in 1931 and 1947, funding the necessary expansion after the enrollment spike following World War II. The university built 19 permanent structures between 1950 and 1965, when it was given the right of eminent domain. With this power, the university purchased additional properties surrounding the original forty acres.

Campus

Today, the university encompasses about 350 acres (1.4 km²) on its main campus adjacent to downtown Austin and about 850 acres (3.4 km²) overall, including the J.J. Pickle Research Campus in north Austin and other properties in Austin and throughout Texas.

One of the university's most visible features is the Beaux-Arts Main Building, including a tower designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Completed in 1937, the Main Building is located in the middle of campus. The tower usually appears illuminated in white light in the evening but is lit orange for various special occasions, including athletic victories and academic accomplishments, such as commencement. The tower is darkened for solemn occasions. At the top of the tower is a carillon of 56 bells, the largest in Texas. Songs are played on weekdays by resident carillonneur Tom Anderson, in addition to the usual pealing of Westminster Quarters every quarter hour between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

On August 1 1966, Charles Whitman, a former U.S. marine and architectural engineering major at the university, barricaded himself on the observation deck of the tower of the Main Building with a Remington 700 6 mm rifle and various other weapons. In the ensuing 96-minute stand-off, Whitman killed 14 people and wounded an additional 31 before himself being killed by police who stormed the observation tower. Later, the observation deck was closed until 1968 and closed again in 1975 following a series of suicide jumps. During the time of the shooting, the tower was open to the public. However, in 1998, after the installation of security and safety measures, the observation deck reopened to the public available by weekend tours.

The university is home to seven museums and 17 libraries, which hold over eight million volumes. The holdings of the university's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center include one of only 21 remaining complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible worldwide and the first permanent photograph: View from the Window at Le Gras taken by Nicéphore Niépce. On April 29, 2006, the Blanton Museum of Art opened. The 155,000 square foot (14,000 m²) museum hosts approximately 17,000 works from Europe, the United States, and Latin America.

The university also contains an extensive underground tunnel system that links many of the buildings. The tunnel system is closed to the public and is guarded by silent alarms. The tunnels are used for communications and utility service.

The university operates a 1.1 megawatt nuclear reactor at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus. The university's first reactor went critical, at Taylor Hall on the main campus, in August 1963 at 10 kW using fuel loaned from the U.S. Government. This reactor was upgraded to 250 kW in 1968. In the late 1980s, the university began work on the reactor for the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab at the Pickle Campus. This reactor went critical in 1992, despite local news reports on its safety.

The university continues to expand its facilities on campus. In February 2006, the Board of Regents voted to update and expand the football stadium. On March 2, 2006, the student body passed a referendum to build a new Student Activities Center next to Gregory Gym on the east side of campus, pending final approval by the Board of Regents. According to The Daily Texan, the project is estimated to cost $51 million and is set to open between fall 2010 and fall 2012. Funding will primarily come from students, raising tuition by a maximum of $65 per semester.

The university operates a public radio station, KUT, which provides local FM broadcasts as well as live streaming audio over the Internet. The university uses Capital Metro to provide bus transportation for students around the campus and throughout Austin.

Academic profile

Colleges and Schools

The university contains sixteen colleges and academic units, each listed with its founding date:

More than 100 undergraduate and 170 graduate degree plans are offered. In the 2003-2004 academic year, the university awarded a total of 13,065 degrees. Bachelor's degrees comprised 68.6% of this total, master's degrees 21.7%, doctoral degrees 5.2%, and other professional degrees 4.5%.

UT has numerous undergraduate honors programs, such as Dean's Scholars ,Turing Scholars, Business Honors, Plan II, and Liberal Arts Honors that attract students from around the state, the nation, and even the world.

Rankings

U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks Texas as the best public university in the state of Texas. In its 2008 rankings, Texas places forty-fourth among all national universities and twelfth among public universities in the U.S. U.S. News & World Report also lists UT Austin's School of Engineering among the top ten in six different fields, with an overall rank of eleven.

A 2005 report by USA Today ranked UT Austin "the number one source of new Fortune 1000 CEOs". A Bloomberg survey also ranked UT Austin's McCombs school fifth among all business schools and first among public business schools with the most number of alumni among the S&P 500 CEOs.

The "Top Research Universities" list in the 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index of The Chronicle of Higher Education lists UT Austin among the top ten in sixteen of the 104 individual disciplines that were evaluated as part of the study.

In a 2005 report on the innovativeness of universities worldwide conducted by the Research Center for Innovation and Development of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, The University of Texas at Austin ranked fourth among 200 institutions around the world, behind Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

In its first World University Ranking in 2004, The Times Higher Education Supplement listed Texas as the fifteenth-best university worldwide. The same study ranked the university twenty-sixth worldwide in 2005 and thirty-second in 2006. Additionally, Texas was ranked as the thirtieth-best university in the country and 39th-best in the world by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In 2007, The Washington Monthly, using a ranking system which stresses social factors the magazine considers important (such as how well it performs as an engine of social mobility, how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country) ranked UT Austin nineteenth among national American universities, higher than prestigious Ivy League universities such as Princeton and Harvard.

UT Austin does not have a medical school, but has associated programs with other campuses and allied health professional programs on campus. The UT Austin College of Pharmacy, for example, is ranked second in the United States.

Other overall rankings include:

  • Number one law school in the nation for Hispanics. (September 2004 edition of Hispanic Business magazine).
  • Number two nationally for the School of Architecture. According to DesignIntelligence, the undergraduate architecture program was ranked second in the nation for 2006 (best in the state of Texas). The graduate architecture program was ranked sixth, and the interior design program was also ranked sixth.
  • Ranked eighth among U.S. public universities and twenty-seventh overall in 2006 by Newsweek magazine's August 2006 list of the top 100 global universities.
  • McCombs School of Business ranked thirteenth in the country on BusinessWeek magazine's list of the top undergraduate business schools.
  • Rated seventh in the world in the amount of cited research by faculty members, according to The Times of London, November 5, 2004, edition.
  • In the most recent survey by the National Research Council, seven UT doctoral programs ranked in the top ten in the nation and twenty-two departments ranked in the top twenty-five. Among Texas schools, the university ranked first in thirty of the 37 fields in which it was evaluated.
  • McCombs School of Business ranked eighteenth by The Wall Street Journal's annual ranking of the best business schools.
  • The College of Fine Arts' School of Music is ranked among the top twenty graduate schools in the arts granting a Master of Music degree in the United States in U.S. News & World Report.
  • Designated as "one of the best overall bargains" by The Princeton Review in its "America's Best Value Colleges" 2007 edition.
  • Among top twenty "best buys" within public colleges and universities, according to the 2007 Fiske Guide to Colleges.
  • Ranked twenty-fourth in 2007 by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine's listing for the "100 Best Values in Public Colleges".
  • Ranked ninth worldwide in the 2007 Webometrics rankings.

Admission

As a state public university, UT is subject to Texas House Bill 588 (HB 588, popularly known as the top ten percent law). HB 588 states that a Texas resident graduating in the top 10% of their senior class from an accredited Texas high school will be guaranteed admission when they submit a complete application by the deadline. However, HB 588 guarantees admission into the university only; it does not guarantee acceptance into a particular major, nor does it guarantee any scholarship or other form of tuition assistance (except for those who are class valedictorian; a pre-existing law guarantees these students a full 'tuition only' scholarship for their first year of college).

Students outside of top ten percent will be reviewed holistically and compete for admission. Things that are taken into consideration are the high school they attend and the level (AP courses, honors) of the curriculum they are taking.

Their selectivity is deemed as "More selective" according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In fall 2006, a total of 27,315 applications were received and 13,305 were admitted. In fall 2007, 27,232 applications and 13,781 students were admitted.

Faculty and research

As of 2004, the university employed 2,271 faculty members. Approximately 51.1% were tenured, while an additional 17.8% were tenure track. The university's faculty includes winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology, and numerous other awards. Over 1,000 faculty positions are endowed by private funds. Since 1984, more than forty $1 million-endowed chairs have been created at The University of Texas to recruit distinguished faculty and facilitate research in the sciences and engineering.

The university exceeds $446 million in annual research funding, and its facilities house more than 90 research units. UT has earned more than 400 patents since its founding. In 2005, Texas secured $417 million in awards and grants, a new university record. In addition, Texas earned $5 million in licensing revenue and capped a six-year funding increase of 48%. The university has also reached out to establish partnerships with other facilities, including The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Johnson Space Center of NASA, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the International Center for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials.

In addition to research in traditional fields, scientists are pushing forward in several new, interdisciplinary areas, including nanotechnology and materials engineering for next-generation semiconductors. In addition, Texas is advancing high performance computing through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), which supports over 600 projects in the natural sciences, engineering, and business.

The university's library system ranks sixth among academic libraries in the nation with 7.5 million volumes. The main campus library is the Perry-Castañeda Library.

Endowment

The university receives income from an endowment known as the Permanent University Fund (PUF), with $11.6 billion (fourth-largest in the United States) in assets as of November 2005, of which 30 percent is dedicated to the university. Proceeds from lands appropriated in 1839 and 1876, as well as oil monies, comprise the majority of this fund. At one time, the PUF was the chief source of income for Texas's two university systems, The University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System; today, however, its revenues account for less than 10 percent of the universities' annual budgets. This has challenged the universities to increase sponsored research and private donations. Privately funded endowments contribute over $2 billion to the University's total endowment value.

Student life

The university enrolls 37,377 undergraduate, 11,533 graduate and 1,467 law students. The student population includes students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries, most notably, South Korea, followed by India, the People's Republic of China, Mexico and the Republic of China, are represented. The average SAT score for entering Fall 2004 freshmen was a 1230 out of 1600.

Housing

The campus is currently home to fourteen residence halls, the last of which opened for residence in Spring 2007. On-campus housing can hold more than 7,100 students. Jester Center is the largest residence hall with its capacity of 2,945. Academic enrollment exceeds the capacity of on-campus housing; as a result, most students must live in private residence halls, housing cooperatives, apartments, or with Greek organizations and other off-campus residences. The Division of Housing and Food Service, which already has the largest market share of 7,000 of the estimated 27,000 beds in the campus area, plans to expand to 9,000 beds in the near future.

Student organizations

The university recognizes more than 1,000 student organizations. In addition, it supports three official student governance organizations that represent student interests to faculty, administrators, and the Texas Legislature. Student Government represents student interests in general, the Senate of College Councils represents students in academic affairs and coordinates the college councils (a history of the Senate of College Councils has recently been written by former Senate Chair Kate Nanney), and the Graduate Student Assembly represents graduate student interests. The Texas Union Student Events Center serves as the hub for student activities on campus.

Greek organizations

The Office of the Dean of Students' Greek Life and Education section administers more than 50 Greek organizations, and about 9% of men and 12% of women in the undergraduate class choose to join one of these groups. Other registered student organizations also name themselves with Greek letters.

School spirit

  • School colors: The school's official colors are orange and white, with burnt orange — also known as Texas Orange — being the specific shade of orange used.
  • Alma mater: "The Eyes of Texas"; original words sung to the tune of "I've been working on the railroad.
  • Fight song and "Hook 'em, Horns!" At football games, students frequently sing "Texas Fight," the university's fight song, while displaying the Hook 'em Horns hand gesture. The University of Texas Longhorn Band is also known as the Showband of the Southwest.
  • Mascot: The school mascot is a Texas longhorn named Bevo.

Student media

Other student-run publications include:

Athletics

The University of Texas offers a wide variety of varsity and intramural sports programs. Due to the breadth of sports offered and the quality of the programs, Texas was selected as "America's Best Sports College" in a 2002 analysis performed by Sports Illustrated. Texas was also listed as the number one Collegiate Licensing Company client for the second consecutive year in regards to the amount of annual trademark royalties received from the sales of its fan merchandise. However this ranking is based only on clients of the Collegiate Licensing Company which does not handle licensing for approximately three dozen large schools such as Ohio State, Southern California, UCLA, Michigan State, and Texas A&M.

Varsity sports

The university's men's and women's athletics teams are nicknamed the Longhorns. A charter member of the Southwest Conference until its dissolution in 1996, Texas now competes in the Big 12 Conference (South Division) of the NCAA's Division I-FBS. Texas has won 47 total national championships, 39 of which are NCAA national championships.

The University of Texas has traditionally been considered a college football powerhouse. At the start of the 2007 season, the Longhorns were ranked third in the all-time list of both total wins and winning percentage. The team experienced its greatest success under coach Darrell Royal, winning three national championships in 1963, 1969, 1970, and winning a fourth title under head coach Mack Brown in 2005 after the 41-38 victory over previously undefeated Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl.

In recent years, the men's basketball team has gained prominence, advancing to the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen in 2002, the Final Four in 2003, the Sweet Sixteen in 2004, and the Elite Eight in 2006.

The university's baseball team is considered one of the best in the nation with more trips to the College World Series than any other school, with wins in 1949, 1950, 1970, 1983, 2002 and 2005.

Additionally, the university's highly successful men's and women's swimming and diving teams lay claim to sixteen NCAA Division I titles. In particular, the men's team is under the leadership of Eddie Reese, who served as the head men's coach at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, and the 2004 Games in Athens.

Rivalries

One of the university's notable rivals in many sports is Texas A&M University. The two schools have acknowledged the importance of this rivalry by creating the State Farm Lone Star Showdown series, which encompasses all sports where both schools field a varsity team. The football game played between the two schools is the third longest-running rivalry in the nation and is the longest-running rivalry for both schools. The game used to be played on Thanksgiving day but in recent years has been played on the day following Thanksgiving. Both schools traditionally hold a rally each year before the football game — Texas hosts the Hex Rally, and students at Texas A&M host the Aggie Bonfire (although it is no longer an officially sanctioned Texas A&M event because of the deaths of 12 students in 1999).

Some fans and observers, however, argue that the Longhorns' biggest rival in football is the University of Oklahoma. The football game between Texas and Oklahoma is known as the Red River Shootout and is held annually in Dallas, Texas, at the Cotton Bowl. In recent years, this rivalry has been particularly spirited, in part due to the fact that at least one school had been ranked in the top five nationally at the time of the game (from 2000-05).

Other schools, such as Arkansas and Texas Tech, also consider Texas among their rivals.

Facilities

Major sporting facilities and their main use include:

In addition, the university has numerous practice, training, and intramural facilities.

Notable people

The university has a base of more than 450,000 living alumni. With strong academic programs in the sciences, arts, media, business, law, engineering, and public policy, as well as a successful athletics program, The University of Texas has seen many now notable persons pass through its halls.

See also

References

External links



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