Austin College will hold the 11th annual edition of its TEDx conference on Saturday, Sept. 19, at its campus in Sherman, according to the college's conference page. Admission is free, with registration required, the college's events calendar states.
The theme this year is "Renaissance." The conference page puts the hours at 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and names the venue as the Sally and Jim Nation Theatre and Learning Commons, inside the college's Ida Green Communication Center.
Anyone driving down from Cooke County should know about one wrinkle in the college's own listings. A separate internal Austin College calendar blocks out that Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., wider than the conference page advertises, and the internal entry gives no explanation for the difference.
Two listings, two sets of hours for Sept. 19
Conference page
8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Internal calendar
8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with no explanation given for the wider window.
Source: Austin College conference page and internal events calendar
The conference started as a student idea. Members of the campus Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity proposed the program, and the first conference followed in September 2016 with four Austin College faculty members at the lectern, the college's magazine reported.
Speakers in recent years have come from well outside the faculty. The magazine reported that the ninth conference, on Oct. 5, 2024, put six people on stage: two alumni, a student, a college parent and two friends of the college. The magazine's account of the 10th conference, on Oct. 4, 2025, said it brought previous speakers back to discuss what had developed since their previous appearances.
The magazine's 2020 announcement described plans for the fifth annual conference, set for Oct. 3 of that year, that would hold in-person attendance to campus participants under pandemic restrictions and offer a free live broadcast to a broader audience.
Free admission sets the Sherman event apart from a nearby campus program. Texas Woman's University in Denton started its own TEDx event the same year Austin College did, but the university's official history says the program returned in 2025 after that first edition. TWU's 2025 event listing advertised morning and afternoon tickets separately, each at $5 for TWU students or $10 for general admission, with a limited number of free tickets to a campus virtual watch party. The university's 2026 sponsorship prospectus planned a Feb. 28 conference at Denton's Redbud Theater for roughly 100 people, a projected audience rather than a count of who came.
What it costs to get in
Austin College, Sherman
No admission charge. Registration is required.
Texas Woman's University, Denton
The 2025 listing priced morning and afternoon tickets at $5 each for TWU students and $10 each for general admission, with a limited number of free virtual watch-party tickets.
Source: Austin College events calendar; TWU 2025 event listing
TED licenses these gatherings rather than running them, describing TEDx events as community programs planned independently under a free license. The organization's 2025 impact report counted more than 4,400 TEDx events worldwide that year and reported that youth and university events grew by nearly half.
Talks from past Austin College conferences are posted on the college's YouTube channel, which the conference page points visitors toward.
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