The University of Texas at El Paso, popularly known as UTEP, is a public, coeducational university, and it is a member of the University of Texas System. The school is located on the northern bank of the Rio Grande, in El Paso, Texas, and is the largest university in the nation with a majority Mexican-American student population.

Founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy, a mineshaft still exists on the mountainous, desert campus. It is composed of buildings of Bhutanese architecture, with massive sloping walls and overhanging roofs. In the mid-1950s, UTEP, then called Texas Western College, became the first college in a Southern state to integrate its intercollegiate athletic teams.

Although the campus population was less than 1% African-American, in 1966, basketball coach Don Haskins and his Texas Western team thrilled portions of the nation by winning the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship with an all-black starting lineup, thus breaking an unspoken barrier and transforming the history of college basketball.

By 1967, the Board of Regents authorized that the name of the college be changed from Texas Western College to its present name. Currently there are some 19,842 students enrolled at UTEP. About 73 percent of UTEP's student population is Hispanic. UTEP is the country’s only doctoral research intensive university with a student body that’s predominantly Mexican American.

The historic 1966 Texas Western College win over The University of Kentucky for the NCAA basketball championship was depicted in the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer movie Glory Road, which was released on January 13, 2006 and in the national bestselling 2005 book "Glory Road" written by Don Haskins and Dan Wetzel. Glory Road lies between the two basketball arenas on the campus, stretching from Mesa Street to Sun Bowl Drive.

Today, the institution is devoted to the ideals of access and excellence, educating the population at a sprawling campus in the westernmost part of the State of Texas along the borders with Mexico and the State of New Mexico.

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