Taco Tech

Various universities with large Hispanic populations have been called “Taco Tech.” The University of Texas-El Paso and the University of Texas-Pan American (Edinburg, TX) have most often been called “Taco Tech,” mostly in the 1990s.
 
Texas Tech (Lubbock, TX) has been called “Taco Tech,” probably more for its “TT” initials and “Tech” last name than any of its programs or its student body. Several schools outside of Texas have been called “Taco Tech,” but the derisive name is not commonly applied to any one university today.
   
       
UT El Paso - 90th Anniversary Timeline
In 1971, two student groups—MEChA and La Mesa Directiva—took over the administration building and staged a sit-in. Soon after, a Chicano Studies Program was established.
   
The university was gaining national recognition for serving Hispanics. “Taco Tech” might have been its nickname, but the university was looking beyond stereotypes to become a model institution focused on educating successful Hispanic professionals.
 
Answers.com: University of Texas-Pan American
The University of Texas – Pan American, also known as UTPA or UT-Pan Am, is part of The University of Texas System. Located in Edinburg, Texas (Hidalgo County), it serves the Rio Grande Valley and southern Texas with offerings of various baccalaureate, masters-level, and doctoral degrees. Since the University’s founding in 1927, it has grown from a population of around 200 students to just over 17,000, the greater majority of these students being natives of the Rio Grande Valley. UTPA also operates an Upper Level Studies Center in Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas. 
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Awards
In recent years, the university has been recognized as a “hot-spot” for Hispanic students. According to Hispanic Outlook, in 2005, UTPA was ranked second in the nation for bachelor’s degrees awarded to Hispanics and fifth in the nation for number of master’s degrees awarded.
 
4 September 1990, Dallas (TX) Morning News:
“They used to call us Taco Tech, or Harvard on the River,’ Caceres said. “Now that they put The University of Texas in front of our name, it makes a real ...
   
13 October 1996, Dallas (TX) Morning News:
... bizarre as Mary Alice Kleberg served from a silver tea service at the famed ranch and groused about the South Texas school being called"Taco Tech.” ... 
 
Dallas (TX) Morning News
UT-Pan American credibility growing
Author:  Associated Press
Publish Date: May 12, 1997
EDINBURG - Once denigrated by critics as “Taco Tech,” the University of Texas-Pan American has added degree programs, buildings and clout since joining the UT System. “The powerful tie in Austin isn’t in dollars,” said Jim Langabeer, UT-Pan American’s vice president for business affairs.
 
“It’s in professional credibility. ” The Edinburg school joined the UT System in 1989 after the…
   
Wall Street Journal
South Texas Universities Seed
Powerful Hispanic Middle Class
By PATRICK BARTA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 16, 1997
 
MCALLEN—Meet the new Hidalgo County establishment.
 
Like the old guard, its members have master’s degrees and country-club memberships. Unlike the old guard, they have Hispanic surnames, and they credit their rise to prosperity to a university that some Texans still call “Taco Tech,” but is properly known as the University of Texas-Pan American.
 
“We went from picking cotton to what we’re doing now, and I can tell you it’s a lot better,” says 48-year-old lawyer Ramon Garcia. “It wouldn’t have happened without Pan Am. Most everybody I grew up with went to Pan Am. It was a way out.”
 
Indeed, while the Anglo elite in McAllen was sending its sons and daughters to the University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University or the Ivy League, the offspring of local Hispanic families were swelling the ranks of Pan Am in nearby Edinburg. And just as New York’s City College was once a gateway to the middle class for generations of European immigrants, Pan Am has served as the means to the mainstream for recent generations of this region’s long-disadvantaged Hispanic majority.
 
13 September 1997, The Economist, “One river, one country”:
The University of Texas Pan-Am in Edinburg ( “Taco-Tech’’ ), has seen enrolment grow by 400% since 1987.
 
Google Groups:alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys
Newsgroups: alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys
From: “FishStixx”

Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:47:58 -0600
Local: Thurs, Apr 25 2002 4:47 pm
Subject: Re: It’s all on Quincy now
 
Hey! no making fun of my school (UTEP)....aka Taco-Tech
 
Google Books
Rio Grande
by Jan Reid
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press
2004
Pg. 61:
But after a year of odd jobs and a full class load, he is sinking financially and returns home to attend the University of Texas at El Paso, sometimes called Taco Tech.
 
Myspace: DDDDOOOOOORRRRRRRR
Monday, March 27, 2006
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Im here again in BFN….see previous post for the answer to thar acronym, and again in a coffee shop near a university I call Taco Tech….or UTEP, once again taking advantage of free wi-fi.
   
Sooner Fans
Rogue
12/29/2006, 08:51 PM
Taco Tech is Gettin’ Thumped by the Gophers
14-0 and the Gopher is driving the field again.
 
Orange Power
oopalooga
01-20-2007, 05:58 PM
Re: taco tech taking down jayhawks
Raiders have had the upper hand most of the game too. Hope I didn’t speak to soon.