Former name | The Junior College of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville Junior College |
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| Type | Public junior college |
| Established | 1926 |
| Endowment | $9,141,000 [1] |
| President | Jesús Roberto Rodríguez [2] |
| Location | , , United States 25°53′55″N97°29′31″W / 25.898495°N 97.492075°W |
| Colors | Orange and blue |
| Mascot | Scorpion |
| Website | www |
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Texas Southmost College (TSC) is a public junior college located in Brownsville, Texas, United States.
Texas Southmost College was established in 1926 under the name of The Junior College of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as a subsidiary of the local school district in Brownsville. On September 21, 1926, 84 students began classes, meeting in the old Brownsville High School. [3] From 1928 to 1948, it was located in Brownsville High School and Brownsville Elementary School on Palm Boulevard between Washington Street and Jefferson Street. Despite hard times during the Great Depression, the college continued to maintain nominal levels of enrollment.
The name of the college changed in 1931 to Brownsville Junior College, then to Texas Southmost College in 1950. During World War II, due to wartime mobilization, enrollment dwindled, with the number of graduates halved between 1943 and 1945. A major improvement came in 1948 when the city of Brownsville acquired the lands formerly comprising the decommissioned army base known as Fort Brown, which had been closed in 1946.
By 1948, when the college had an enrollment of around 1,250 students, its own campus, and a generous budget, talks had started within the school district about creating a separate district for the college. It was decided that the new district would cover southern Cameron County. In 1950, on the silver anniversary of the college, the Brownsville Independent School District handed over the deed to the college over to the newly formed Southmost Union Junior College District.
The Texas Southmost College athletics program flourished in the 1950s: the school had football, basketball, boxing and track teams and many of these teams won accolades for their performance. In the mid- to late 1960s, the TSC athletic program experienced a great decline and many competitive programs did not survive into the 1970s. In the 1960s, despite the declining competitive situation of the sports programs, the college gained the Rancho Del Cielo research center, located 300 miles south of Brownsville, in Mexico. This few acre research center has abundant plant life and rain forest climatic conditions. In 1973 Texas Southmost College began offering its first bachelor's degree programs and graduate courses in cooperation with Pan American University (later known as University of Texas–Pan American and located in Edinburg, Texas). This was the origin of the entity known as Pan American University at Brownsville, which worked independently from Texas Southmost College.
In the late 1980s, Pan American University created a partnership with the University of Texas System and the entity in Brownsville became known as The University of Texas–Pan American at Brownsville. Texas Southmost College and The University of Texas–Pan American at Brownsville combined their educational functions as The University of Texas at Brownsville on September 1, 1991. This created the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College. After 1991, UTB/TSC continued to grow, eventually boasting over 10,000 students. On November 2, 2004, voters in the Texas Southmost College district voted yes to a $68-million bond package so the college could do a number of building projects.
On November 10, 2010, the University of Texas System Board of Regents voted to end the University of Texas at Brownsville's educational partnership with Texas Southmost College as it stood. [4] On February 17, 2011, the TSC Board of Trustees voted 4-3 to separate from UTB. [5] On August 31, 2015, UTB was officially dissolved and UTPA's name was changed to The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. [6]
Harlingen is a city in Cameron County in the central region of the Rio Grande Valley of the southern part of the U.S. state of Texas, about 30 miles (48 km) from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The city covers more than 40 square miles (104 km2) and is the second-largest city in Cameron County, as well as the fourth-largest in the Rio Grande Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 71,892.
The University of Texas System is a public university system in the U.S. state of Texas. It includes nine universities and five independent health institutions. The UT System is headquartered in Downtown Austin. It is the largest university system in Texas with 250,000+ enrolled students, 21,000+ employed faculty, 83,000+ health care professionals, researchers and support staff. The UT System's $42.7 billion endowment is the largest of any public university system in the United States.
The Southland Conference, abbreviated as SLC, is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the South Central United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I for all sports; for football, it participates in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The Southland sponsors 18 sports, 10 for women and eight for men, and is governed by a presidential Board of Directors and an Advisory Council of athletic and academic administrators. Chris Grant became the Southland's seventh commissioner on April 5, 2022. From 1996 to 2002, for football only, the Southland Conference was known as the Southland Football League.
The University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA) was a public university in Edinburg, Texas. Founded in 1927, it was a component institution of the University of Texas System. The university served the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas with baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees. The Carnegie Foundation classified UTPA as a "doctoral research university". From the institution's founding until it was merged into the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), it grew from 200 students to over 20,000, making UTPA the 10th-largest university in Texas. The majority of these students were natives of the Rio Grande Valley. UTPA also operated an Upper Level Studies Center in Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas. On August 15, 2014, Dr. Havidan Rodriguez was appointed interim President of UTPA, the institution's final leader.
The Red River Athletic Conference is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). The conference's 14 member institutions are located in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
Eduardo Andres Lucio Jr. is a Democratic politician who served in the Texas Senate, representing the 27th District from 1991 to 2023. Lucio also previously served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1987 to 1991.
The Mathematics and Science Academy (MSA), a high school located in Brownsville, Texas, was established by the 79th Texas Legislature in May 2005. It was designed as a commuter program at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (UTB) for high school-aged students who are gifted in mathematics and science. Rather than complete their final two years of traditional high school at other public institutions, students of the Math and Science Academy are required to take classes taught by UTB/TSC faculty with regular UTB students, but are provided with more supervision and guidance than traditional college students. The students are not charged tuition, book fees, nor any other fees typically charged by the university, but transportation and food are not provided for students. Graduating from the Mathematics and Science Academy program grants you a Distinguished high school diploma as well as an Associates of Arts degree, if you complete the necessary college hours. MSA is only the second high school program of its kind; the University of North Texas hosts a similar program, the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science.
The American South Conference was an NCAA Division I athletic conference that existed from 1987–88 to 1990–91. The charter members were Arkansas State University, Lamar University, Louisiana Tech University, the University of New Orleans, the University of Southwestern Louisiana and the University of Texas–Pan American. The University of Central Florida (UCF) became the only expansion school during the conference's final academic season before the conference merged with the Sun Belt Conference. The Sun Belt, which was losing all but three members, merged with the American South conference. The combined conference retained the name of the older Sun Belt Conference. Craig Thompson, the American South's first and only commissioner, became commissioner of the merged Sun Belt. After serving as Sun Belt commissioner for eight years, he became commissioner of the newly formed Mountain West Conference in 1998.
The Texas–Pan American Broncs were the varsity athletic teams representing University of Texas–Pan American in Edinburg, Texas in intercollegiate athletics. The university sponsored 15 teams including men and women's basketball, cross country, golf, tennis, and track and field ; soccer and volleyball for women only; and baseball for men only. The last varsity sport to be established for the Broncs was women's soccer, added for the 2014 season, with men's soccer added in 2015, the year that the merger took place. The Broncs compete in the NCAA Division I and are currently members of the Western Athletic Conference.
The UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros baseball team, or the UTRGV Vaqueros, is the varsity intercollegiate baseball team of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, an NCAA Division I institution with several campuses in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, United States. UTRGV was formally founded in 2013 with the announced merger of the University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA), with its main campus in Edinburg, and the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) in Brownsville, with the merged university beginning operation in the 2015–16 school year. The Vaqueros compete in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), play home games at UTRGV Baseball Stadium in Edinburg, and are coached by Derek Matlock.
The College of Science, Mathematics, and Technology was the science college of the former (1992-2015) University of Texas at Brownsville. It consisted of six academic departments. The six departments employed diverse faculty members - many of whom are leading experts in the fields - who have received funding from a variety of funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the Department of Defense, among others. The average active ongoing external funding is about 25-30 million dollars. In 2002, the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy (CGWA) research center was founded to help "develop excellence in research and education in areas related to gravitational wave astronomy."
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is a public research university with multiple campuses throughout the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas. It is the southernmost member of the University of Texas System. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 after the consolidation of the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College and the University of Texas–Pan American.
The University of Texas at Brownsville was an educational institution located in Brownsville, Texas. The university was on the land once occupied by Fort Brown. It was a member of the University of Texas System. The institution was formed from a 1991 partnership between the two-year Texas Southmost College and University of Texas-Pan American at Brownsville. The partnership ended in 2011 as UTB became a standalone University of Texas institution, and Texas Southmost College returned to being an independent community college. UTB itself offered baccalaureate and graduate degrees in liberal arts, sciences, education, business, and professional programs.
The UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros is a collegiate athletic program that represents the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). The Vaqueros inherited the NCAA Division I status of the Texas–Pan American Broncs and were full members of the Western Athletic Conference through the 2023–24 school year In March 2024, it was reported that the Vaqueros would leave the WAC for the Southland Conference, beginning in the 2024-25 academic year.
Juliet Villarreal García is an American academic administrator. When she was named president of Texas Southmost College (TSC) in 1986, she became the first Mexican-American female to head a U.S. college or university. After TSC merged with a four-year university in 1991, she served as president of the resulting University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (UTB-TSC), then was president of the University of Texas at Brownsville when it became a separate institution.
UTRGV Harlingen Collegiate High (HCH) is a public high school in Harlingen, Texas. It is a specialized dual enrollment school which offers students the ability to earn up to two years of college credit at no cost at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), focusing in four general areas: education, engineering, computer science, and college academic core curriculum requirements. Each class is capped at 100 students each, which encourages a small learning community to support educational success. It is an open-enrollment campus available to all who live in the Rio Grande Valley, with a special focus in recruiting at-risk students and historically underrepresented minorities. The application process for rising freshmen places special consideration on the student's personal goals, college preparedness, academic success, and demographic background. In 2018, 92% of students were Hispanic, 57% were female, and 61% were economically disadvantaged.
The UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros men's basketball statistical leaders are individual statistical leaders of the Texas–Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros men's basketball program in various categories, including points, three-pointers, assists, blocks, rebounds, and steals. Within those areas, the lists identify single-game, single-season, and career leaders. As of the next college basketball season in 2024–25, the Vaqueros represent the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in the NCAA Division I Southland Conference.
The UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros football team will represent the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in U.S. college football as a future member of the Southland Conference in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). They will begin play at that level in 2025, after an exhibition schedule in 2024. They are coached by Travis Bush.
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