The University of Texas at El Paso

Coordinates: 31°46′12″N 106°30′18″W / 31.77000°N 106.50500°W / 31.77000; -106.50500

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Texas System. Its campus is located on the banks of the Rio Grande river in El Paso, Texas. The school was founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy, and a mineshaft still exists on the mountainous desert campus. It became Texas Western College in 1949, and The University of Texas at El Paso in 1967. In Fall 2012, enrollment was 22,749 (19,217 undergraduate and 3,532 graduate students).

UTEP is the largest university in the U.S. with a majority Mexican-American student population (about 70%).

Other notable features of UTEP are its campus architecture (modeled after the dzong style of Bhutan), and its athletic history (UTEP was the first college in the American South to integrate its intercollegiate sports programs and to this date is the only school in Texas to bring home a NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, which was in 1966).

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