TEXAS, UNIVERSITY OF

state university system based in Austin, Texas, U.S. Branch campuses are located in Arlington (founded 1895), Brownsville (1973), Edinburg (Pan American branch; 1927), El Paso (1913), Odessa (Permian Basin branch; 1969), Richardson (Dallas branch; 1961), San Antonio (1969), and Tyler (1971). There are health science centres at Houston (1972) and San Antonio (1969), Dallas (Southwestern Medical Center; 1943), and the Medical Branch at Galveston (1881). At Austin, the largest campus (founded 1883) in the University of Texas system, there are about 100 undergraduate degree programs and about 190 graduate degree programs. The master's degree programs in theatre and architecture are especially well regarded. The university awards about 70 doctoral degrees. It also has one of the largest academic library systems in the country (6.8 million books). There are more than 85 organized research units on campus, including the Institute for Biomedical Research, the Bureau of Economic Geology, the Center for Cognitive Science, and the Bureau of Business Research. Also on campus are the Texas Memorial Museum, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, and the Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center. Off-campus facilities include McDonald Observatory (dedicated in 1939) on Mount Locke near Fort Davis and the Marine Science Institute (1941) on the Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas. Approximate enrollment at the Austin campus is 48,500 students, making it one of the largest university campuses in the United States. Lawmakers of the republic and the state of Texas made several attempts to establish a state university, beginning in 1837. The state constitution of 1876 provided an endowment, and the state legislature, in 1881, established a campus at Austin and a medical branch at Galveston. The University of Texas at Austin opened in 1883, and the Medical Branch opened at Galveston in 1891. The tower of the Main Building, a distinguishing feature of the campus, was erected in 1937. In 1966 a student atop the tower shot and killed 15 people and wounded 31 before he himself was killed by a police officer. Oil was discovered on university lands in west Texas in the early 1920s. Zoologist and cytologist Theophilus Shickel Painter joined the faculty of University of Texas in 1916 and became president in 1946. Notable alumni and faculty members include geneticists Joseph L. Goldstein and George Davis Shell, astronauts Alan L. Bean and Robert Laurel Crippen, sociologists Charles Wright Mills and Kingsley Davis, inventor George Washington Pierce, linguist Hans Kurath, political scientist V.O. Key, Jr., ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, physician E. Donnall Thomas, and long-jumper Bob Beamon.