The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is forging dramatic new directions in higher education. UTEP has become a national model for successfully executing highly competitive academic and research programs while maintaining a deep commitment to serving a 21st-century student demographic. This dedication to providing access and excellence to students in the region has resulted in UTEP becoming the only public research university in the United States with a Mexican-American majority student population.
UTEP officially opened in the fall of 1914 and is the second oldest institution in The University of Texas System. It is a Carnegie high-research-activity, urban University that enrolls more than 25,000 students. It serves its primary constituency — residents of far west Texas, southern New Mexico, and northern Mexico — with 74 undergraduate programs, 76 master's programs, and 22 doctoral degree programs, including a growing online degree portfolio. With an 80% Hispanic student population, UTEP proudly reflects the demographic composition of the bi-national region from which it draws the vast majority of its students. Eighty-four percent of students are from El Paso County, and 4 percent are Mexican nationals.
The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., ranked UTEP No.1 among all U.S. public universities that perform well in research productivity and student social mobility. The University ranks among the top 10 colleges and universities nationally for Hispanic graduates in public relations and communications, education, engineering, mathematics and statistics, homeland security and law enforcement, and business management and marketing.
The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts have become an internationally renowned venue for contemporary art, focusing on work relevant to the U.S.-Mexico border region. UTEP's Creative Writing faculty of award-winning novelists and poets offers the nation's first bilingual (English-Spanish) MFA program. The UTEP Dinner Theatre is the only full-time dinner theatre on a university campus. One of El Paso's most popular entertainment venues, showcasing UTEP theatre arts students and faculty talents who have won national recognition for acting, choreography, and set design. The University of Texas at El Paso commits itself to provide quality higher education to a diverse student population. Classified as a Doctoral/Research-Intensive University, UTEP seeks to extend the most significant possible educational access to a region that has been geographically isolated with limited economic and educational opportunities for many of its people.
The University will ensure that its graduates obtain the best education possible, equal one, and in some respects, superior to that of other institutions so that UTEP graduates will be competitive in the global marketplace. UTEP also envisions capitalizing on its bi-national location to create and maintain multicultural, inter-American educational and research collaborations among students, faculty, institutions, and industries, especially in northern Mexico.
The UTEP community - faculty, students, staff, and administrators - commits itself to the two ideals of excellence and access. Also, the University accepts a strict standard of accountability for institutional effectiveness as it educates students who will be the leaders of the 21st century. Through accomplishing its mission and goals via continuous improvement, UTEP aspires to be an educational leader in a changing economic, technological, and social environment: a new model for Texas higher education.
The University of Texas at El Paso is dedicated to advancing the El Paso region through education, creative and artistic production, and the generation, interpretation, application, and commercialization of fundamental discoveries, and the dissemination of knowledge. UTEP embraces its role as an intellectual, cultural, and socioeconomic asset to the region, offering programs to meet human resource needs and contribute to the quality of life.
As a public university, UTEP is committed to providing access and opportunity to the people of the El Paso region and the State of Texas. UTEP's mission of ensuring access is coupled with a commitment to excellence reflected in rigorous programs, which prepare students to make significant contributions to their professions, their communities, and the world.
As a research/doctoral institution, UTEP fosters a climate of scholarly inquiry, with a particular focus on applying innovative interdisciplinary approaches to explore and address significant issues that confront the multicultural, U.S.-Mexico border region.
UTEP shares a rich history with the surrounding region. We were founded in 1914 as the Texas School of Mines and Metallurgy, with 27 students and a handful of faculty and staff to respond to the mining industry's needs in the region. From this modest beginning, UTEP has grown into a dynamic urban university that serves its more than 25,000 students enrolled in 70 bachelor's, over 80 masters, and 22 doctoral programs.
UTEP is recognized nationally for its leadership role in changing the face of U.S. higher education. Our students, who are 78% Hispanic, mirror this region's population and, increasingly, that of Texas and the United States. UTEP's success in serving as a catalyst for economic development and quality of life in this region has placed us in the national spotlight as a model 21st century U.S. research university.
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