The University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) is a public university in Odessa, Texas. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTPB was authorized by the Texas Legislature in 1969 and founded in 1973. UTPB is now home to over 7,000 students and 250 teaching faculty. History The University of Texas of the Permian Basin began in 1973 as a university that initially offered only junior, senior, and graduate level programs. Among those who pushed for the establishment of UTPB was the oil industrialist Bill Noël, who with his wife, Ellen Witwer Noël, became major philanthropists of the institution. A rivalry with Odessa College (OC) got underway from the very beginning, when OC students taunted the UTPB students that they were too old to produce a streaker. A student finally agreed, and with only his head covered, streaked across the campus. In 1991 the university began accepting freshmen and sophomore applicants, and in 2000, the J. Conrad Dunagen Library and Lecture Center was completed, featuring a twenty-station multimedia lab and classroom. During 2006, the university was holding discussions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the construction of a new High-Temperature Teaching and Test Reactor which, if successful, would finish licensing and construction around 2012. It would also be the first university-based research reactor to be built in the US in roughly a decade, and one of the few HTGR type reactors in the world. In late November in 2016 the city of Odessa granted site permission. That was the first step in official authorization. On April 17, 2008, the university broke ground on a new Science and Technology Complex. The new building houses chemistry, biology, physics, computer science, and information technology programs. The new building contains 41 labs, 56 offices, six classrooms, and three sunken lecture halls. Despite warnings from a UTPB Geology professor, the contractor failed to identify an underground aquifer that could cause the building supports to sink. Construction was delayed while the contractor reinforced the building supports after drilling into the aquifer; however, the building opened in time for the Fall 2011 semester. The building houses classrooms, multiple laboratories including two large demonstration labs, a 200-seat lecture hall, and a state-of-the-art Data Communications Teaching Lab for undergraduate and graduate students. The Computer Science Department maintains a computer science research lab and a computer networking research lab. A state-of-the-art building known as the Wagner Noël Performing