• University
• Faculty and Academic Programs
• Students
• Prominent Alumni

University

• Texas State University-San Marcos, a member of The Texas State University System, was founded in 1899 to prepare teachers for Texas public schools. Its doors opened in 1903 with 303 students and 17 faculty members. Since then, it has grown into a comprehensive, doctorate-granting institution. Texas State is nationally recognized in many disciplines and has more than 28,000 students, 1,272 faculty and 130,000 alumni.
• The university's current students come from 231 of the 254 counties in Texas, as well as 48 states and 63 countries.
• Texas State offers 110 bachelor's programs through University College and the Colleges of Applied Arts, Education, Fine Arts and Communication, Health Professions, Liberal Arts, Science and the McCoy College of Business Administration. The university also offers 88 master's and eight doctoral programs through the Graduate College.
• Texas State is the largest university in the Texas State System, the seventh-largest university in Texas and the 75th-largest in the nation. Texas State is larger than 26 states' flagship institutions.
• 2006 marked the 100th anniversary of a Latino presence on the Texas State campus.
• The Princeton Review named Texas State a 2007 "America's Best Value College." Texas State was one of only four Texas institutions to be recognized.
• In 2006 and 2007, U.S. News & World Report ranked Texas State in the top tier of master's universities in the 15-state Western Region of the nation.
• In fall 2005, Texas State opened its first permanent classroom facility at the Round Rock Higher Education Center, its campus in Round Rock, Texas.

Back to Top

Faculty and Academic Programs

• Governor Rick Perry appointed Frank de la Teja, Texas State professor and Department of History chair, to serve as the first-ever State Historian of Texas. In 2007-08, de la Teja will promote the study of Texas history across the state.
• Professor Walter Trybula, director of Texas State's Nanomaterials Application Center, was named a 2007 SPIE Fellow by the International Society for Optical Engineering. This international accolade is reserved for researchers who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imagining.
• Paul Paese, director of teacher education at Texas State, was elected president of the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) for 2008. Representing more than 700 colleges and universities, ATE is devoted to improving teacher training for K-12 and post-secondary teachers.
• Texas State professors Brock Brown and Richard Dixon each received the National Council for Geographic Education's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006. These were the 13th and 14th such awards received by Texas State faculty — more than any other institution in the nation.
• Texas State professors Gary Beall and Chad Booth created a ballistic polymer that is 30 to 50 percent stronger than current materials. Their invention is now being fitted into the canopies of Cobra helicopters for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Professor Britt Bousmann, director of the Texas State University Center for Archeological Studies, along with a team of students and faculty, is conducting research in South Africa to learn why our species survived when others did not.
• Texas State ranks second in the number of faculty members who have received Minnie Stevens Piper Professorships — an award recognizing excellence in college teaching.
• Texas State's Department of Geography is the largest in the nation and has been recognized by the Journal of Geography as having the best undergraduate program in the United States.
• Texas State certifies more teachers than any other school in Texas. It has been recognized by the Association of Teacher Educators as one of the top three teacher education programs in the country and is the headquarters for the National Center for School Improvement, the Texas School Safety Center and other education initiatives that work to meet the challenges of public education.
• The McCoy College of Business Administration is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International). Fewer than 30 percent of business schools nationwide hold such accreditation.
• Since the university awarded its first doctorate in geography in 2000, the number of doctoral programs offered by Texas State has increased to eight, with more in the planning process. Doctorates are now offered in environmental geography; geographic education; geographic information science; school improvement; adult, professional and community education; aquatic resources; mathematics education; and physical therapy. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board praised the university for the way in which it developed its doctoral programs — by building on already successful undergraduate and graduate programs.
• With a generous gift from Bruce and Gloria Ingram of New Braunfels in 2006, Texas State has established the Bruce and Gloria Ingram School of Engineering. In addition to current programs in manufacturing engineering and industrial engineering, a new major in electrical engineering has now received approval from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
• Annual external grant expenditures, which totaled less than $2 million in the late 1980s, were $23.25 million in 2005.
• The Texas Rivers Center at San Marcos Springs, an innovative partnership between Texas State, Texas Parks and Wildlife and the National Parks Service, is leading the nation in vital research to the ecology of springs, steams, aquifers, bays and estuaries.
• The Texas State MathWorks Summer Program for middle and high school students received one of five Texas Higher Education Star Awards for exemplary programs to close the educational gaps that challenge the state. Its creator, Texas State professor Max Warshauer, was one of 10 individuals honored by President George W. Bush in 2001 for efforts to increase the participation of minorities in math and science.
• The creative writing program in the College of Liberal Arts is rapidly building a national reputation. It has been cited by Associated Writing Programs as "a dynamic program" that will likely establish Texas State as "a regional — and very likely national — center for the literary arts."
• The university's sound recording technology program, housed at Texas State's unique Fire Station Studio, is the only degree program of its kind in the Southwest.
• The Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children's Book Award was established by the Texas State College of Education in honor of the late Dr. Tomás Rivera, Texas State's first Mexican-American Distinguished Alumnus, in 1995. The award encourages authors, illustrators and book publishers to create quality children's literature that authentically reflects the history and culture of Mexican-Americans.
• Texas State's Honors Program is one of the fastest growing honors programs in the state, serving more than 500 students.
• The National Endowment for the Humanities designated Texas State the nation's study center for the Southwest, one of nine such centers in the nation. Others are at Rutgers, Tulane and the universities of Ohio, Nebraska, California-Davis, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Virginia.
• Katherine Ann Porter's childhood home in Kyle was purchased and restored by Preservation Associates Inc. and a group of local Kyle citizens, mainly with the generous help of the Burdine Johnson Foundation, to be used as a writer's residence and a site for lectures and seminars by Texas State's Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. The home has been recognized as a National Literary Landmark, the second such designation in Texas, and a National Historic Landmark with its name in the National Register of Historic Places.

Back to Top

Students

• Texas State has the sixth-highest retention and graduation rate among public institutions in Texas.
• During the NCAA‘s most recent reporting period, the six-year graduation rate for Texas State student athletes surpassed that of all other NCAA Division I institutions in Texas, including those in the Big XII.
• Honors students Kellie Beicker, Ashley Ralph and Hui-Yiing Chang collaborated with Texas State physics professors Donald Olson and Russell Doescher, to understand and predict the occurrence of "moonbows" — the nocturnal cousin of rainbows. As described in the May 2007 issue of Sky & Telescope, these students helped develop a computer program that predicts the dates and times favoring the appearance of moonbows at Yosemite waterfalls.
• Aquatic Resources doctoral student Shawn McCracken received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue exploring the reasons for the world's declining amphibian population. Working in Ecuador's rainforest, the Houston native has already identified two new species of amphibians and hopes to identify how changes occurring in the environment are impacting amphibian populations.
• Graduate student Daniel Homan signed a contract with Wildside Press to publish two works of science fiction — Queen of Hearts and Black Hands. The Gainesville, Fla., native chose the Master of Fine Arts program at Texas State for its outstanding faculty and its ability to generate great writers.
• Irina Gonzalez and Priscilla Riojas were two of 25 students selected nationwide in 2007 to receive Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for minority students who are pursuing careers in teaching. Texas State has had 19 students receive this prestigious fellowship.
• Michael Jason Cade, a computer science graduate student, won the 2006 IBM Master the Mainframe Contest. This international competition attracted 1,085 students from 177 universities across the United States and Canada. Fellow computer science student Christian McArthur finished fifth overall.
• The American Advertising Federation named advertising student Antonio Banos one of 50 Most Promising Minority Students in the nation for 2007.
• Texas State ranks among the top 20 institutions in the country in the number of undergraduate degrees granted to Hispanic students.
• Student teams in advertising and free enterprise routinely place well in national competitions. The National Student Advertising Competition team claimed its second national title in 2005. The Students in Free Enterprise team won the international competition in 2000 against 700 teams from 15 countries and, in 2007, placed among the top 20 in the region for the 10th consecutive year.
• Salsa del Rio, the Texas State Latin jazz band, has performed internationally and won 57 performance awards, including the Best Salsa/Merengue Group in the Premios A La Musica Latina competition in 2005 and 2006.
• The University Star, KTSW and Bobcat Update, the university's student newspaper, radio station and newscast, respectively, won 41 awards during the 2007 Texas Intercollegiate Press Association's convention. University Star and KTSW also took home eight awards, including four first-place honors, from the 2007 regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists. The newspaper's award for overall general excellence advanced it to the national finals.
• Texas State students in jazz, marching and concert band, symphony, choirs, instrumental ensembles, mariachis and steel drum band perform around the world. The jazz program has been featured many times at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
• Bobcats compete in 16 intercollegiate sports in NCAA Division I (Football Championship Series), where 360 students are scholarship athletes. Texas State also offers wide-ranging programs in intramural and club sports, which are open to all students.
• Students are offered leadership opportunities in more than 250 social, professional, political and religious organizations.

Back to Top

Prominent Alumni

• Lyndon Baines Johnson — 36th president of the United States
• George Strait — Grammy-award winning music artist and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame
• Powers Booth — Emmy-award winning actor, recently featured in the hit television series "Deadwood" and "24"
• Heloise (Ponce Cruse) — syndicated columnist and author
• J.H.U. Brown — member of the National Academy of Engineering and recognized as one of the world's top 2,000 engineers
• Karen Thompson — manager of exploration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Charles Barsotti — nationally known cartoonist with The New Yorker magazine
• Janet Ellis — Metropolitan Opera performer
• Don Flores — executive vice president and editor of the El Paso Times
• Tomás Rivera — prominent author and former chancellor of the University of California-Riverside
• Trisha Tingle — founder of the Texas Indian Bar Association
• J. Dan Bates — CEO of Southwest Research Institute
• Hermann Chinery-Hesse — founder of the SOFTtribe Ltd. and dubbed "The African Bill Gates" by the BBC
• Gary V. Woods — President and CEO of McCombs Enterprises
• T. Paul Bulmahn — founder of CEO of ATP Oil & Gas Corporation, an offshore development and production company
• Tino Villanueva — award-winning poet and author
• Charles Farmer — member of the team that designs stealth aircraft
• Major Rusty Keen — member of the Thunderbirds, the U.S. Air Force's precision flying team
• Charles Austin — Olympic gold medalist in high jump

Back to Top