Austin, Texas · Founded 1875 · Rams
“Austin's first college and its only HBCU — 150 years old, sitting on Bluebonnet Hill in East Austin, with a jazz band that plays Austin City Limits and a $150 million gift that changed everything.”
The Huston-Tillotson Collective — the urban-contemporary stage band drawn from the Jazz Orchestra — performs at the first HBCU joint college reunion at TMEA in San Antonio, Feb 10, 2023; the description calls HT 'Austin's only HBCU' and its 18-member Count Basie-style big band the program's core.
Full concert program of the HT Jazz Orchestra at the 2024 HBCU Jazz Festival — Ellington's 'Isfahan,' Jason Marshall's 'Mrs. Garvey,' and Bryan Carter's 'The Neighbor from Naylor' — presented by Carter's Jazz Clinics in collaboration with the university, with NEA Jazz Master Donald Harrison among the guest artists.
KVUE (Austin's ABC station) reports the HT Jazz Orchestra taking third place at a national competition at Lincoln Center's House of Swing in New York City — the moment the program announced itself nationally.
Trailer for 'The Week That Rewrote Everything,' the documentary of HT's 150th-anniversary homecoming — filmed by Chris Scott and executive-produced by President Melva K. Wallace — from the roar of Mary E. Branch Gymnasium to the classrooms.
Head coach John A. Smith's postgame press conference after the Rams went punch-for-punch with No. 2-ranked LSU–Alexandria in the 2025 RRAC tournament — the game that earned a preseason-picked-last team national respect.
Full Class of 2023 commencement from Shoreline Church North Campus, May 6, 2023 — guest speaker Attorney David Godsey, HT Class of 1994 and now Board of Trustees chair.
Class of 2022 commencement, May 7, 2022 — commencement speaker U.S. Representative Alma Adams, with the 'Genius Generation' hashtag all over the program.
2024 Honors Convocation, May 3, 2024 — convocation speaker Joya T. Hayes; HT's annual celebration of its top-ranked students.
The 2026 Honors Convocation on the university's official YouTube channel — the newest edition of HT's spring academic tradition.
The September 18, 2025 fall convocation where Moody Foundation trustee Ross Moody surprised the campus with the $150 million gift — the largest single donation in HBCU history — after telling President Wallace to expect $130 million.
Dr. Melva K. Wallace's first opening convocation address as seventh president, September 1, 2022, in King-Seabrook Chapel — the start of the 'from First to Foremost' era.
Livestream of the 2026 fall opening convocation posted by the university — a year after the Moody gift, with the new 'We Are the Soul of Success' brand in view.
First African American admitted to the University of Texas Medical School; first native Texan Black graduate of a Texas medical school and first licensed to practice medicine in Texas.
Treasurer of the United States under President Jimmy Carter — her signature appeared on U.S. paper currency.
Radiochemist on the team that discovered elements 104 (rutherfordium) and 105 (dubnium) in 1969-70; the first Black person to help discover new elements on the periodic table.
Dallas civil rights leader and politician; her house is a National Park Service civil-rights landmark.
Samuel Huston College class of 1933; United Methodist minister, former college president, Jackie Robinson's pastor — and the man who married Jackie and Rachel Robinson.
Jazz trumpeter, cornetist, bandleader, and composer; a major figure in avant-garde jazz.
Jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, educator — and longtime HT faculty member; an Austin jazz institution until his death in 2024 at 83.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Director of the National Park Service under President Bill Clinton.
Retired pastor of St. Luke 'Community' United Methodist Church in Dallas; prominent civil-rights-era preacher.
Bishop of the United Methodist Church; regional minister across Texas and Oklahoma congregations.
Longtime minister of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco; community leader, author, and nationally known advocate for the poor.
Civil rights movement activist in Austin.
First African American Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives since 1882; represented Lubbock County 1985-1989.
HT English professor for 35 years and department chair; one of the first five Black students admitted to the University of Texas after Sweatt v. Painter.
Professional wrestler; WWF Intercontinental Champion in the 1990s.
First president of Kennedy-King City College in Chicago.
Baptist leader and educator honored in The Crisis magazine's 'First Ladies of Colored America' series (1943).
Public health activist and Austin historian.
Physician and social justice advocate; first female African American physician in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Huston-Tillotson's official founding dates to 1875, when the Freedmen's Aid Society of the American Missionary Association of the Congregational churches — working with namesake Rev. George Jeffrey Tillotson — set out to build a school for newly freed Black Texans in Austin. It was the first institution of higher learning in Austin, founded just a decade after emancipation, on what locals called Bluebonnet Hill in East Austin. The school was chartered as a coeducational institution in 1877 and opened its doors on January 17, 1881. It would eventually become Tillotson College and Normal Institute.
A year after Tillotson was chartered, Rev. George Warren Richardson, a Methodist minister from Minnesota, leased St. Paul Methodist Episcopal Church in Dallas as a school for what the record calls 'the colored youth of Dallas.' The Methodist West Texas Conference agreed in 1877 to move the school to Austin, where it operated out of the basement of what is now Wesley United Methodist Church. An 1883 agreement with the Freedmen's Aid Society put the college on firmer footing and launched its real growth.
The first permanent building on the Tillotson campus — Allen Hall — was constructed in 1879 on the land at what is now 900 Chicon Street. That address is still the university's home nearly 150 years later, making HT one of the rare HBCUs that never had to relocate. Every building raised since then followed the hyphenated naming convention that honors both founding colleges. The campus itself would later be listed as a National Register historic district.
Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute formally opened on January 17, 1881, with William E. Brooks (1881-85) as its first president. Twelve presidents would lead Tillotson before the merger, a roll call that runs from Brooks through John Hershaw, Henry L. Hubbell, William M. Brown, Winfield S. Goss, Marshall R. Gaines, Arthur W. Partch, Isaac M. Agard, and Francis W. Fletcher. The school's early mission was teacher training for Black Texans shut out of white institutions. That normal-school DNA still shows in HT's education programs today.
The relocated Methodist school was renamed Samuel Huston College in 1887 in honor of Samuel Huston of Marengo, Iowa, a benefactor whose support helped carry the young institution. The college formally opened in 1900 and was approved as a senior college by the Texas Department of Education in 1926. It sat at what is now Twelfth Street and I-35 in East Austin — less than a mile from the Tillotson campus. For more than sixty years the two schools operated as neighbors, competitors, and eventually partners.
Evans Industrial Hall went up in 1912 to house industrial arts instruction on the Tillotson campus, reflecting the era's emphasis on vocational training for Black students. It joined Allen Hall and the circa-1914 Old Administration Building (now the Anthony and Louise Viaer Alumni Hall) as the campus's historic core. All three buildings survive today as contributing properties of the university's National Register historic district. The district's draft application notes that most of the campus's notable architecture is firmly in the modernist camp.
Samuel Huston College became a founding member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) in 1920 and competed there through the 1953-54 season — a stretch when it was majority-known as Samuel Huston College. That made HT's predecessor one of the charter programs of what is now an NCAA Division I FCS powerhouse conference. The Rams' SWAC era is a point of deep pride, and the school's athletic identity today descends directly from those Samuel Huston teams. The merged university left the SWAC after 1954 and now competes in the NAIA's Red River Athletic Conference.
J. T. Hodges served as Tillotson's president from 1924 to 1929, the first African American to hold the office. His appointment marked a turning point for a school founded by white missionary societies — Black leadership of Black education, in Jim Crow Texas. He was succeeded by Mary E. Branch in 1930, and William H. Jones took the presidency in 1944. The line of Black presidents that began with Hodges continued through the merger and defines HT's leadership to this day.
From 1926 to 1935, Tillotson College operated as a women's college, one of several institutional identities it wore — junior college, women's college, then senior coeducational institution — before settling into its modern form. The decade as a women's college shaped a campus culture where women led, and its most famous leader was still to come. The era ended in the mid-1930s as the school moved back toward coeducation. That flexibility — reshaping itself to survive — became a Tillotson trademark.
Dr. Mary E. Branch became Tillotson's first woman president in 1930 and served until 1944, steering the school through the Great Depression. She is remembered as one of the great builders in HT history — so much so that the campus gymnasium, the roaring home of Rams basketball and the center of homecoming week, bears her name today. Branch died in 1944, the same year William H. Jones succeeded her. Her name still echoes every February when homecoming fills Mary E. Branch Gymnasium.
Rev. Karl E. Downs graduated from Samuel Huston College in 1933 and went on to become a United Methodist minister and president of the college. Downs was the personal pastor and close friend of Jackie Robinson — the man who had recruited Robinson to the school in the first place. Downs performed the marriage ceremony uniting Jackie and Rachel Robinson. Few HBCU alumni can claim they married an American icon; Downs is one of HT's most storied names.
Before he joined the Kansas City Monarchs — and before he broke baseball's color line — Jackie Robinson accepted an offer from his old friend Rev. Karl Downs to become athletic director at Samuel Huston College, then a SWAC member. Robinson coached the school's basketball team for the 1944-45 season; with few students trying out for the fledgling program, he sometimes inserted himself into the lineup for exhibition games. Outmatched on the scoreboard, he was respected as a disciplinarian — and drew the admiration of Langston's Marques Haynes, a future Harlem Globetrotter, who played against him. It remains the single most famous chapter in HT athletic history.
On October 24, 1952, Tillotson College and Samuel Huston College — less than a mile apart in East Austin — signed a charter of merger creating Huston-Tillotson College, chartered by the State of Texas. The merger produced one of the largest Black Protestant church-related colleges in the country, and it made HT the sole provider of higher education for African Americans in Central Texas until Brown v. Board of Education was decided two years later. Dr. Mathew Simpson Davage became the merged institution's first president (1952-55). The hyphenated name was deliberate: every building, every tradition, would honor both colleges equally.
Dr. John Jarvis Seabrook became president in 1955 and led the young merged college for a decade, through the civil rights movement's most dangerous years. His tenure steadied an institution still stitching two proud schools into one. His name is permanently joined with his successor's on the King-Seabrook Chapel, the campus's most recognizable building. He served until 1965, when John Quill Taylor King Sr. took over.
Dr. John Quill Taylor King Sr. assumed the presidency in 1965 and held it until 1988 — the longest tenure of any Huston-Tillotson president. He guided the college through desegregation's aftershocks, the Vietnam era, and the lean years when small private HBCUs were widely written off as doomed. The brutalist King-Seabrook Chapel and its landmark bell tower, built in 1974 during his watch, still defines the campus skyline. A 1963 Lubbock newspaper already listed him as Dean of Instruction at the college, showing how long he'd been in HT's orbit before taking the top job.
The brick-clad King-Seabrook Chapel, with its sleek minimal-brutalist bell tower visible from East Seventh Street, was built in 1974 by the Austin architectural partnership then called Brooks, Barr, Graeber and White. It quickly became the campus's visual signature and the spiritual center of HT life — convocations, coronations, Charter Day, and the Concert Choir all run through it. The chapel anchors the National Register historic district designated in 2022. For generations of Rams, the bell tower is what 'home' looks like.
Dr. Joseph T. McMillan Jr. became president in 1988 and served until 2000, a twelve-year tenure that carried the college into the modern fundraising era. University archives hold his convocation addresses — including his 1990 President's Convocation titled 'Change' — showing a leader thinking hard about what a small HBCU had to become. He presided over the Charter Day celebrations and the 50th anniversary of the merger in 2002. His successor would build directly on the stability McMillan left behind.
Huston-Tillotson moved its athletics into the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), joining the Red River Athletic Conference in the 1998-99 academic year, where the Rams still compete today. The move ended the post-SWAC wandering and gave HT a stable small-college home. The Rams now field 12 varsity sports — men's baseball, basketball, cross country, soccer, track & field; women's basketball, soccer, softball, track & field, volleyball; plus co-ed cheerleading and eSports. Baseball plays at historic Downs Field at East 12th Street and Alexander Avenue.
Dr. Larry L. Earvin became president in 2000 and spent fifteen years rebuilding the institution from the inside out. When he arrived, enrollment sat around 500; when he retired in June 2015, it had more than doubled to 1,031. The endowment grew from about $5 million to more than $11.5 million under his watch. His successor, Colette Pierce Burnette, credited him with 'setting the stage' — though she noted dryly that when she arrived, the local paper said the college 'wasn't facing outward,' and she made fixing that her mission.
On February 28, 2005, Huston-Tillotson College officially became Huston-Tillotson University, a change President Larry Earvin drove to alter how the world perceived the school. 'University' signaled graduate programs, research ambition, and a bigger footprint than a small liberal-arts college label allowed. The institution added a master's degree in educational leadership and an MBA program in the years that followed. The name change stuck — and twenty years later, the school is ranked the No. 1 private HBCU in Texas by U.S. News for 2026.
The Lady Rams women's basketball team qualified for the NAIA Division I women's basketball championship, beginning a run of national-tournament appearances in 2014 and 2016, per NAIA all-time participation records. In 2014 they knocked off No. 8 Our Lady of the Lake in the RRAC semifinals behind Ariel Callis's 21 points; in 2016 they reached the RRAC title game before falling to OLLU. Those bids — the program's first taste of the national stage — remain the high-water mark of HT women's basketball. The 2019 volleyball team would later match the feat with the program's first RRAC title and first nationals berth.
The Board of Trustees selected Colette Pierce Burnette — former CFO of Central State University's Dayton satellite campus, chosen from nearly 70 applicants — to succeed the retiring Larry Earvin. She was the sixth president since the 1952 merger and only the second woman to lead the institution in its 140-year history (after Mary E. Branch at Tillotson). Burnette made HT 'face outward,' raising its profile across Austin; civic leaders credit her with doubling down on community presence and growing the endowment. She was later named Austinite of the Year. She served until 2021.
The Lady Rams volleyball team went 26-5 and 11-1 in conference play, then stormed back from 2-1 down against Our Lady of the Lake to win the Red River tournament title — the first conference championship and first national-tournament berth in program history. Tiara Thompson was RRAC Front Row Player of the Year, Anabel Bustamente shared Setter of the Year, Mir Tillman took Defensive Specialist of the Year, and Dan Behnke was Coach of the Year. The team earned votes in the NAIA Top 25 poll. It was the program's arrival as a conference power.
Two landmarks in one year. The Huston-Tillotson Jazz Collective — a small ensemble that had been playing Friday sets on the music building's balcony — caught the ear of ACL organizers C3 Presents, two blocks from campus, and earned its first Austin City Limits performance in 2022, returning annually after that. And on April 22, 2022, the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Huston-Tillotson Historic District (ref. 100007662), with 14 contributing properties including the Viaer Alumni Hall and the King-Seabrook Chapel. The same year, Dr. Melva K. Wallace became the seventh president on August 15, succeeding interim president Archibald W. Vanderpuye.
HT turned 150 in 2025 and celebrated with its biggest year ever. At the September 18 fall convocation, Moody Foundation trustee Ross Moody surprised the campus with a $150 million donation — the largest single gift ever made to an HBCU, and the largest in the foundation's 80-year history. President Wallace had braced herself to hear $130 million; Moody and his daughter Elle announced $150 million instead, and she answered with 2 Corinthians 9:11. The money funds new residence halls for roughly 800 students, academic spaces, research labs, and scholarships. The Jazz Collective played its fourth straight ACL, took third place at a national competition at Lincoln Center's House of Swing, and the university filmed its sesquicentennial homecoming as the documentary 'The Week That Rewrote Everything,' executive-produced by Dr. Wallace.
The RRAC's HBCU-on-HBCU grudge match. On February 22, 2025 — Homecoming Saturday, in front of a sellout crowd at Mary E. Branch Gymnasium — the Rams beat Jarvis Christian 57-46 to claim the final RRAC tournament berth, with Ja'Patrick Blackmon and Blake Fisher leading the way; htramsathletics billed it as 'two rivals heading in opposite directions.' Jarvis had beaten HT 69-66 in Hawkins earlier that season in one of the conference's most hostile gyms, so the homecoming win was payback with a postseason ticket attached.
Wiley was HT's homecoming opponent for the 2022 men's basketball homecoming game in Austin — another Texas HBCU matchup that doubles as a reunion weekend for both alumni bases. The schools' shared history runs deep through the old SWAC days when Samuel Huston and Wiley were conference foes.
The conference heavyweight HT keeps running into in March. In the 2025 RRAC tournament opener, the Rams — picked dead last (13th of 13) in the preseason poll — went 'punch-for-punch with the nation's No. 2-ranked team for 38 minutes' in a 77-66 loss at LSUA, earning what coach John A. Smith called national respect. The Generals had beaten HT by an average of 29.5 points in the regular season, so the close tournament game played like a moral victory with receipts.
San Antonio's OLLU is the program HT measures itself against: the Saints beat the Lady Rams in the 2016 RRAC women's basketball title game (after HT's semifinal upset of OLLU in 2014), and in 2019 the Lady Rams volleyball team had to go through OLLU — down 2-1 in the fifth set — to win the program's first RRAC championship and first trip to nationals.
🥁 Huston-Tillotson Jazz Orchestra / HT Jazz Collective
Huston-Tillotson has no marching band — there is no football program — and that is the honest shape of it: this is a jazz school. The 18-piece Jazz Orchestra (Count Basie-style big band) and its smaller sibling, the Jazz Collective, are the sound of HT. The Collective started playing Friday sets on the music building's balcony, caught the ear of ACL organizers C3 Presents two blocks away, and has played Austin City Limits every year since 2022, plus the Austin Blues Festival. Competition wins include first place at the Ronald Carter HBCU Jazz Competition in Nashville and the Louis Armstrong HBCU Jazz competition (per KUTX), and third place at Lincoln Center's House of Swing. Jazz trumpeter alumnus Bobby Bradford and faculty legend James Polk root the program in real Austin jazz history.
Director of University Bands and assistant music professor (as of 2025). Led the Jazz Collective through its ACL runs and national competitions; told the Daily Texan the 150th anniversary year was 'the year of winning' and pushed to reconnect with the program's unsung alumni musicians.
Director of Jazz Studies. Leads the 18-piece Jazz Orchestra, a Count Basie-style big band playing Basie, Ellington, and Thad Jones; under him the orchestra won the Ronald Carter HBCU Jazz Competition in Nashville and took third at a national competition at Lincoln Center.
Director of the HT Concert Choir, which performs at Charter Day and convocation ceremonies in King-Seabrook Chapel.
Legendary Austin jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and HT faculty member (and alumnus), who died June 24, 2024 at age 83. KUTX notes 'jazz has always been an emphasis at Huston-Tillotson — the late Dr. James Polk was among their distinguished faculty.' Faculty trombonist Andre Hayward (Duke Ellington Orchestra) carries the professional-jazz lineage forward.
NPHC life is active at HT — the Daily Texan reported HT's NPHC chapters strolling alongside UT's at the biannual Hump Night gatherings. The campus Greek-life guide lists seven Divine Nine organizations (Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Iota Phi Theta, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma) plus the campus NPHC council; Zeta Phi Beta's presence is confirmed by the national chapter roll though not in the campus guide. Sigma Lambda Beta is also listed on campus directories as a multicultural fraternity presence.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
The campus's oldest surviving anchor — the Old Administration Building, later renamed for Anthony and Louise Viaer — is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2024 it got a historically sensitive roof restoration: the original lead roof came off and a standing-seam metal roof went on, with custom metalwork soldered and flashed around every chimney, plus new fascia, gutters, and three reconstructed entrances.
The central study space on campus, designed by Austin architects Kuehne, Brooks and Barr in 1960 — the same partnership behind most of the campus's modernist buildings. CasaBella Architects renovated it in 2013 into a two-level, ADA-compliant library that now houses the University Archives: HT's documents, artwork, photographs, and proclamations. It sits between the Davage-Durden Student Union and Evans Hall, across from Jackson-Moody.
Built in 1974 by Brooks, Barr, Graeber and White in a minimal-brutalist style, the brick-clad chapel and its sleek bell tower are the most visible structures on Bluebonnet Hill and the campus's signature image. The chapel hosts convocations, the royal court coronation, Charter Day, and Concert Choir performances. In 2024 the chapel's aging multi-layer roof was reframed from the inside — preserving the exterior walls — and re-shingled for structural integrity with minimal visible change.
CasaBella Architects' 2013 remodel of the 1960 Kuehne, Brooks and Barr library turned it into the campus's living room — two levels, ADA-compliant, with professional librarians, media equipment, and the University Archives. The HBCU Buzz tour of the upgraded library was part of the case for the campus's National Register listing.
On April 22, 2022, the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Huston-Tillotson Historic District (ref. 100007662), with 14 contributing properties spanning the 1914 administration building to the 1974 chapel. The designation recognizes not just the modernist architecture but the site's role as Austin's first institution of higher learning and East Austin's Black educational anchor under Jim Crow.
LOA Construction carried out a historically sensitive re-roofing campaign on the College Row Park chapel, the Davage-Durden Student Union, and the Viaer Alumni Hall — removing 3-4 layers of organic shingles and wood shake, reframing where needed, and installing modern materials (standing-seam metal, TPO) that met historic standards. The project balanced structural integrity with preservation of buildings central to HT's identity.
The Moody Foundation gave just under $1 million in 2024 to install air conditioning in the Mary E. Branch Gymnasium and several classroom buildings — a basic-comfort upgrade that mattered enormously in Texas heat. It was the foundation's first major HT gift, a year before the historic $150 million announcement.
Congressman Greg Casar's office secured $850,000 in the federal budget for HT to renovate two residence halls and the 1960s-era Davage-Durden Student Union. President Wallace and SGA vice president Breyanna Jones framed it as the 'First to Foremost' infrastructure push: with only two residence halls for 1,000+ students, most Rams were forced into expensive off-campus housing. Trustee Dianne T. Land noted that as a private institution, HT can't rely on state funds for buildings.
The September 18, 2025 gift — the largest single donation ever to an HBCU and the largest in the Moody Foundation's 80-year history — is earmarked for new residence halls housing roughly 800 undergraduates and graduate students, upgraded academic spaces and research labs, innovative scholarships aimed at debt-free graduation, and the strategy/marketing infrastructure to raise HT's national profile. President Wallace: the gift 'will completely transform Huston-Tillotson, as well as the city of Austin, and set us up for success for another 150 years.'
In September 2026, months after the Moody gift, HT unveiled a full brand refresh: the maroon-and-gold palette expanded into vibrant reds, deep golds, and neutral tans, browns, and greens, with a new campaign — 'We Are the Soul of Success' — drawn from the founding motto 'In Union, Strength.' VP for Marketing, Strategy, Impact and Innovation Dr. Shaquille Dillon said the identity honors the legacy while speaking to today's students and 'the generations of Rams who will come after them.'
In January 2026 HT launched a Cultural and Historic Preservation course, a direct outgrowth of the 2022 National Register designation — the campus itself became the classroom. It signals how the university is turning its 150-year-old built environment into an academic asset rather than just a maintenance burden.
Notable faculty past and present include jazz legend Dr. James Polk (pianist/organist/bandleader, d. 2024), faculty trombonist Andre Hayward of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, longtime English chair Dr. June H. Brewer (one of the first five Black students admitted to UT after Sweatt v. Painter), and former president Dr. Mary E. Branch. The athletic department fields 12 varsity sports out of the NAIA's Red River Athletic Conference.
Seventh president (since Aug 15, 2022); landed the $150M Moody gift; 'from First to Foremost' agenda.
Served as interim president 2021-22; now Wallace's chief academic officer.
Appointed November 17, 2025, to lead the Rams' 12-sport NAIA program.
Architect of the 2026 brand refresh and 'We Are the Soul of Success' campaign.
Assistant music professor leading the Jazz Orchestra/Collective through the ACL era.
Leads the 18-piece Jazz Orchestra; competition wins at Nashville and Lincoln Center on his watch.
Coached the 2024-25 Rams to a four-game closing win streak and a Homecoming Saturday sellout win over Jarvis Christian that clinched an RRAC tournament berth; his postgame press conference after the LSU-Alexandria tournament game is on YouTube.
HT alumnus who rose to chair the board; delivered the 2023 commencement address.
HT is tiny — about a thousand students on 24 acres — and it feels like it: the Daily Texan's phrase for the campus is a place where Friday jazz drifts off a balcony across East Austin. Homecoming runs in February, not fall, because basketball is the big sport here (there is no football team). Students call themselves the Genius Generation, pack Mary E. Branch Gymnasium for homecoming, and stroll with the Divine Nine at UT's Hump Night. The campus sits in historically Black East Austin, blocks from downtown, and the school's church roots (United Methodist, United Church of Christ) still shape a culture the university describes as grounded in faith, service, resilience, and innovation. The W.E.B. DuBois Honors Program and a Prairie View A&M engineering dual-degree give the strongest students somewhere to stretch.