Texas Highways – September 2019

22 texashighways.com

DRIVE | MADE IN TEXAS

College life in bustling El Paso, which

has close to the same population as Bhu-

tan (roughly 700,000), is a dramatic

change for students like accounting

major Chimi Wangchuk. Wangchuk grew

up enthralled by American movies and

learned about UTEP from another Bhu-

tanese student. When he decided to at-

tend college in the U.S., he’d envisioned a

modern American campus.

Photos: Christ Chavez

Bhutanese performers and artists to El
Paso. In 2008, as part of the university’s
Bhutan Festival, members of the
Bhutanese royal family visited El Paso.
“Your connections with Bhutan are not
just the oldest in the United States,” Prince
Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck told an audience
of several thousand, “they are among the
oldest in the world.”
Today, the university enrolls around 40
Bhutanese students. Most return to Bhutan
after graduation out of a desire to see their
country advance. The former monarchy
has recently transitioned to democracy
and, since the 1970s, has prioritized “gross
national happiness,” a philosophy that bal-
ances economic growth with environmen-
tal and cultural preservation. Still, most of
its citizens work in agriculture, and televi-
sion and the internet have only been al-
lowed since 1999.

At UTEP, he was initially disappointed

to see buildings that looked exactly like

his high school. But he realized UTEP’s

familiar architecture was accompanied

by a critical mass of Bhutanese students,

as well as American students who likely

could find Bhutan on a map and were

curious about it.

“El Paso and UTEP are a second home,

thousands of miles away from home,” he

CLOCKWISE FROM

LEFT: The Lhakhang;

UTEP Associate Vice

President for Facilities

Management Greg

McNicol oversaw the

Lhakhang’s recon-

struction; the Bhutan-

ese prayer wheel.

“It’s exactly the same—

how people value family,

and they really value

their culture. It’s just a

different environment.”