Concordia University Texas

Missouri Synod Lutherans in Texas tried three times to start a school for future pastors, in New Orleans, Giddings and Clifton, before they succeeded in Austin with Lutheran Concordia College of Texas in 1926. The school bought 20 acres at what was then the northern edge of the city, and classes began on October 26, 1926, for 26 boys in Kilian Hall, a building with a pink Spanish-tile roof named for Rev. John Kilian, who had led about 500 Wendish Lutherans to Texas in 1854. Run as a German-style gymnasium preparing boys for the ministry, the school nearly closed during the Depression, when enrollment fell to 25, but grew after World War II, adding junior college courses in 1951 and admitting women in 1955. It became Concordia Lutheran College in 1965, ended its high school classes in 1967, won Southern Association accreditation in 1968, and received synod approval in 1979 to become a four-year college, awarding its first bachelor's degrees in 1982. Renamed Concordia University at Austin in 1995, it launched an accelerated degree program for working adults that year and took the name Concordia University Texas in 2007. In 2008 the university left its original campus near downtown for 384 acres in northwest Austin, the former Schlumberger Austin Systems Center, whose buildings are joined by covered walkways and border a nature preserve that belongs to the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve system. In November 2022 its regents adopted governance independent of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a move the synod challenged in federal court in 2023. Today the university organizes its programs around colleges that include business, education and nursing.

Sources: en.wikipedia.orgtshaonline.org