The board of regents of the Texas State University System settled on a tract at the junction of Chandler and Sunrise roads owned by the Avery family. It was chosen over three other sites in the same northeast Round Rock area.

The next step is to persuade the legislature, which convenes in January 2003, to provide the $23 million needed to buy the land and start building out the campus. The facility, called a Multi-Institution Teaching Center, would offer undergraduate and graduate courses and degrees from Southwest Texas State University, Austin Community College and Temple College at Taylor. The schools currently offer classes in Round Rock, but they are held at several locations. The effort to build a new campus is being coordinated through Southwest Texas, which has its main campus in San Marcos.

For Round Rock, the facility would serve two purposes: it would meet the city's long-standing goal of having a higher-education facility in the city, and it would provide an anchor for further development in the northeast part of the city.