The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university and the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. Founded in 1881 as "The University of Texas," its campus is located in Austin, Texas, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Texas State Capitol. UT Austin was inducted into the Association of American Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. The institution has the nation's eighth-largest single-campus enrollment, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty and staff.
It is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $550 million for the 2014–2015 school year. The university houses seven museums and seventeen libraries, including the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art, and operates various auxiliary research facilities, such as the J. J. Pickle Research Campus and the McDonald Observatory. Among university faculty are recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Emmy Award, the Turing Award, and the National Medal of Science, as well as many other awards.