UHV diverse student body praised by U.S. News & World Report
The University of Houston-Victoria ranks second in diversity among regional Texas universities, according to the 2017 U.S. News & World Report released Tuesday.
UHV appears on the publication’s Best Ethnic Diversity list. In the category of regional universities in the West, UHV tied for 12th with California State-Monterey Bay. UHV is second among the five Texas schools that made the list. The rankings appear on the U.S. News website.
“Student and faculty diversity is a significant benefit of obtaining a UHV education,” UHV President Vic Morgan said. “We are a student-centered institution that prepares students to succeed in life. Having an environment where students are consistently communicating and interacting with people from different ethnic backgrounds is critical to preparing students to be world-ready.”
U.S. News put the list together to identify schools where students would most likely encounter undergraduates from different ethnic groups than their own. The publication used a diversity index formula to rank schools with 0.0 meaning least diverse and 1.0 meaning most diverse. UHV’s score was 0.69. The highest score was 0.78 by the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
About 65 percent of all UHV undergraduate students in fall 2015 were minorities. The largest category was Hispanic students with 1,293 students, which equates to about 36 percent of the undergraduate student body. UHV has been designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution since 2013.
“UHV is here to serve the educational needs of area communities,” Morgan said. “We have made great strides in recruiting and graduating Hispanic students, and it will continue to be a high priority in the future.”
In fall 2015, UHV had 487 African American undergraduate students, 205 Asian students and 64 multi-race students. International students are not part of the count for the U.S. News list. UHV’s final fall 2016 enrollment numbers will be out later this semester.
UHV has become more diverse in the last decade. Minority groups made up 35 percent of the undergraduate student body in fall 2005. In fall 2010, when UHV first added freshmen and sophomores, about 48 percent of undergraduates were minorities.
To view UHV’s U.S. News & World Report page, visit www.usnews.com.
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 80 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.
