Gene Ray Nichol, Jr. is an educator who served as the twenty-sixth president of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. He succeeded Timothy J. Sullivan and officially served from July 1, 2005, to February 12, 2008. It was the shortest tenure for a William & Mary president since the Civil War. During each year of his presidency, however, the college continued to break its own application records.

The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 52,384 students as of Fall 2022, it is also the largest institution in the system.