The University of Texas at Austin (informally Texas, University of Texas, UT Austin, or simply UT) is a state research university in Downtown Austin, Texas, USA. It is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is approximately 0.25 miles (400 m) from the Texas State Capitol in Austin. The institution has the fifth-largest single-campus enrollment in the nation as of fall 2010 (and had the largest enrollment in the country from 1997 to 2003), with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and 16,500 faculty and staff. It currently holds the largest enrollment of any college in Texas.

The University of Texas at Austin was named one of the original eight Public Ivy institutions and was inducted into the American Association of Universities in 1929. The university is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $640 million for the 2009–2010 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, and the National Medal of Science, as well as many other awards.

Texas (ⁱ/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.

During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.

The University of Western Ontario, commonly referred to as Western, is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers 455 hectares (1,120 acres) of land, with the Thames River running through the eastern portion. Western administers a wide variety of academic programs between 12 faculties, professional schools and three affiliated university colleges.

The university was founded in 1878 as the Western University of London, Ontario, a denominational school of the Church of England, by Bishop Isaac Hellmuth and the Anglican Diocese of Huron. The university became secular in 1908 and was renamed to its present name in 1923. The school has over 23,000 undergraduate and 5,000 graduate students. More than 220,000 alumni and former students of Western can be found in over 100 countries around the world. The Western varsity athletic teams are known as the Western Mustangs, and are members of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport.

The university was founded on 7 March 1878 by Bishop Isaac Hellmuth (1817–1901) of the Anglican Diocese of Huron as "The Western University of London Ontario." It incorporated Huron University College, which had been founded in 1863. The first four faculties were Arts, Divinity, Law and Medicine, and there were originally only 15 students when classes began in 1881. The first of these students graduated in 1883. The Western University of London was eventually made non-denominational in 1908.