University of Texas at Austin

• 1. Founding And Early History

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  On the 15th of September 1883, the University of Texas officially opened its doors to students on College Hill in Austin. The idea for a public university had been mentioned as early as 1827 in the constitution of Coahuila y Tejas, but no action was taken until after Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836. The Seventh Texas Legislature passed O.B. 102 on the 11th of February 1858, allocating $100,000 in United States bonds for the institution. Civil War delays reduced available funds to just $16,000 by 1865. Despite these financial struggles, the Texas Constitution of 1876 reaffirmed the mandate to establish the university through popular vote. On the 30th of March 1881, the legislature organized the structure and called for a vote to determine the location. Austin received 30,913 votes while Galveston was designated for the medical department. On the 17th of November 1882, the cornerstone of the Old Main Building was laid at the original site. University President Ashbel Smith expressed optimism about Texas's untapped resources during this foundational period.

• 2. Campus Expansion And Architecture

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  The modern-day tower and Main Building were constructed in 1937 to replace the Victorian-Gothic style Old Main Building that had been razed in 1934. Paul Philippe Cret designed the Beaux-Arts Main Building including its 307-foot tower which displays different colors of lighting on special occasions. The tower usually appears illuminated in white light in the evening but is lit burnt orange for various special occasions like athletic victories and academic accomplishments. At the top of the tower is a carillon of 56 bells, the largest in Texas. Songs are played on weekdays by student carillonneurs, in addition to the usual pealing of Westminster Quarters every quarter-hour between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. The university has an extensive tunnel system that links the buildings on campus measuring approximately six miles in length. Constructed under the supervision of UT engineering professor Carl J. Eckhardt Jr., the tunnels have grown along with the campus. They measure approximately six miles in length and are used for communications and utility service. Since the late 1940s, the university has generated its own electricity through a natural gas cogeneration plant with a capacity of 123 MW.

• 3. Social Movements And Civil Rights

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  In the fall of 1956, the first Black students entered the university's undergraduate class after Houston area teen Marion Ford had been accepted as one of the first Black attendees following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Marion Ford announced his desire to try-out for the football team which triggered what became known as the Ford Crisis. All Black admissions at the time were rescinded until policy could be drawn up. Black students were permitted to live in campus dorms but were barred from campus cafeterias. The University of Texas integrated its facilities and desegregated its dormitories in 1965. Cary D. Wintz documented this struggle in Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History published by the University of North Texas Press in 2008. In July 2020, UT Interim President Jay Hartzell released a statement announcing changes including renaming the Robert L. Moore Building as the Physics, Math and Astronomy Building. The university also honored Heman M. Sweatt by placing a statue near T.S. Painter Hall and commissioned a new monument on the East Mall to honor the Precursors, the first Black undergraduates.

• 4. Tragedies And Security Incidents

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  On the 1st of August 1966, Texas student Charles Whitman barricaded the observation deck in the tower of the Main Building armed with multiple firearms. He killed 14 people on campus, 11 from the observation deck and below the clocks on the tower, and three more in the tower, while wounding two others inside the observation deck. The massacre ended when Whitman was shot and killed by police after they breached the tower. After the Whitman event, the observation deck was closed until 1968 and then closed again in 1975 following a series of suicide jumps during the 1970s. In 1999, after installation of security fencing and other safety precautions, the tower observation deck reopened to the public indefinitely for weekend tours. There is a turtle pond park near the tower dedicated to those affected by the tragedy. On Tuesday, the 28th of September 2010, a shooting occurred at the Perry-Castañeda Library where student Colton Tooley fired shots on his walk from Guadalupe Street to the library's front entrance. The student ascended to the sixth floor before killing himself. No one else was injured except for one sprained ankle suffered by a student fleeing the scene.

• 5. Research Excellence And Innovation

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  For the 2023 fiscal year, research expenditures totaled $1.06 billion making UT Austin a major center for academic research. The university joined the Association of American Universities in 1929 and houses seven museums and seventeen libraries including the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and the Blanton Museum of Art. The university operates various auxiliary research facilities such as the J.J. Pickle Research Campus and McDonald Observatory. For the 2014-2015 cycle, the university was awarded over $580 million in sponsored projects and has earned more than 300 patents since 2003. In 2009, the university created nine new start-up companies to commercialize technology developed at the university and has created 46 start-ups in the past seven years. License agreements generated $10.9 million in revenue for the university in 2009. In January 2020, the University of Texas Austin's Texas Innovation Center was established to provide support for startups. Energy is a major research thrust with federally funded projects on biofuels, battery and solar cell technology, and geological carbon dioxide storage.

• 6. Athletic Dominance And Traditions

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  The Longhorns have won four NCAA Division I National Football Championships, six NCAA Division I National Baseball Championships, and sixteen NCAA Division I National Men's Swimming and Diving Championships. The football team experienced its greatest success under coach Darrell Royal winning three national championships in 1963, 1969, and 1970. It won a fourth title under head coach Mack Brown in 2005 after a 41-38 victory over previously undefeated Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl. At athletic events, students frequently sing Texas Fight, the university's fight song while displaying the Hook 'em Horns hand gesture which mimics the horns of the school's mascot Bevo the Texas Longhorn. The University of Texas is also represented by the Texas Cowboys who maintain Smokey, the university's replica 1,200-pound Civil War artillery cannon. On the 12th of June 2020, UT student-athletes banded together with their WeAreOne statement on Twitter among changes including renaming certain campus buildings and replacing statues.

• 7. Notable Alumni And Faculty Achievements

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  Thirteen Nobel Prize winners, twenty-five Pulitzer Prize winners, three Turing Award winners, two Fields Medal recipients, two Wolf Prize winners, and three Abel Prize winners have been affiliated with the school as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. As of 2021, its students and alumni have earned a total of 155 Olympic medals. In foreign governments, the university has been represented by Fernando Belaúnde Terry, the 42nd president of Peru, and by Abdullah al-Tariki, co-founder of OPEC. Additionally, the prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, Salam Fayyad, graduated from the university with a PhD in economics. Tom C. Clark served as United States attorney general from 1945 to 1949 and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967. Alan Bean became the fourth man to walk on the Moon while James P. Allison won the Nobel Prize for immunology research. Walter Cronkite, the former CBS Evening News anchor once called the most trusted man in America, attended the University of Texas at Austin.