UTEP Centennial: Shirt Says 1913, But Website Says 1914

The University of Texas El Paso is about to celebrate 100 years of higher learning in the Borderland.

The Centennial Celebration is slated for 2014.

But ABC-7 producer Andy Guerra noticed shirts sold at area Target, Wal-Mart and Walgreens stores boasting that the university was established back in 1913, not 1914.

Does that mean that countless shirts around the Sun City could be wrong?

Not necessarily.

We spoke with UTEP senior executive vice president Dr. Howard Daudistel, who cleared up the confusion.

It turns out, Daudistel said, there are two dates that are important to the birth of the school.

“The first was in 1913, when the governor of the state of Texas signed a Senate bill authorizing the creation of the State School of Mines and Metallurgy,” said Daudistel.

But the school wasn’t open to students until a year later.

“In September of 1914, however, our first class of students began their studies at the university. So we choose to mark the beginning of UTEP’s 100 years as 1914, because that’s when students began to take classes,” said Daudistel.

That makes both the shirts and the Centenial Celebration right on schedule.

For a link to UTEP’s Centennial Celebration website, click here.