SEPTEMBER 2019 21
I
n 1914, National Geographic pub-
lished an article about the Himala-
yan kingdom of Bhutan, a remote
Buddhist country tucked between
India and China. El Paso resident Kath-
leen Worrell, who was married to the
dean of the college that became the Uni-
versity of Texas at El Paso, was intrigued
by the photographs of Bhutanese for-
tresses and monasteries. She also noted
a resemblance between the rugged Hi-
malayas and the Franklin Mountains that
soar over El Paso. Three years later, as
the college’s new campus was being built
in the Franklin foothills, Worrell saw
an opportunity. She asked her husband:
Why not construct those buildings in the
Bhutanese style?
More than a century later, her idea is
reflected in almost all of the buildings at
UTEP. Their sloping walls are accented
near the roof with lines of brick and
mosaic designs called mandalas—
Sanskrit for “circles.” The roofs themselves
extend far over the edges of the buildings.
Even the parking garages follow the style:
Bands of dark-red brick run along the
top of their cream-colored walls, and
the stairwell towers are capped with
cantilevered red roofs.
A deeper relationship between UTEP
and Bhutan was forged in the late 1960s,
when Dale Walker, editor of the university
magazine, then called NOVA, started
corresponding with the queen of Bhutan
about the school’s Bhutanese architecture.
These letters appear to have introduced
the Bhutanese royal family to the fact that
UTEP was styled after Bhutanese public
buildings. The first student from Bhutan
enrolled at UTEP a few years later.
This connection was elevated when
former university President Diana
Natalicio took office in 1988. Natalicio
began traveling to Bhutan and inviting