UT Wordmark Primary UT Wordmark Formal Shield Texas UT News Camera Chevron Close Search Copy Link Download File Hamburger Menu Time Stamp Open in browser Load More Pull quote Cloudy and windy Cloudy Partly Cloudy Rain and snow Rain Showers Snow Sunny Thunderstorms Wind and Rain Windy Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Twitter email alert map calendar bullhorn

UT News

UT Joins Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities With 19 Other Schools

Two color orange horizontal divider
campus
The University of Texas at Austin.

AUSTIN, Texas —With a goal to increase opportunity for those historically underserved by higher education, The University of Texas at Austin and 19 of the nation’s top research universities will form the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities.

The 20 universities represent every university that has been both categorized as R1 (very high research activity) by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education.

“We’re thrilled to partner with leading research universities to expand and empower the next generation of Hispanic doctoral students and professors,” said UT Austin President Jay Hartzell. “As UT Austin strives to increase its global impact, groundbreaking initiatives like the HSRU serve as a national model in forging pathways to bolster opportunity and excellence in higher education for years to come.”

The HSRU Alliance aims to achieve two key goals by 2030:

  • Double the number of Hispanic doctoral students enrolled at Alliance universities.
  • Increase by 20% the Hispanic professoriate in Alliance universities.

“Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States and are now 17% of the workforce, yet they continue to be underrepresented in higher education. No group is better positioned than we are to expand the pathway to opportunity,” said Heather Wilson, president of The University of Texas at El Paso and chair of the Alliance. “We believe we are stronger together than as individual institutions acting alone.”

Representing nine states, the 20 HSRU Alliance universities together enrolled 766,718 students in the Fall of 2020; of those, roughly 33% (254,399) were Hispanic. In 2020, the combined research spending of these universities totaled more than $5.9 billion. The four UT institutions collectively enrolled more than 152,000 students, of which almost 43% (65,061) were Hispanic. Their combined research spending totals $1.1 billion.

Prior to the formal announcement of the alliance, the universities began working together on several initiatives. The first project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, is focused on supporting more doctoral students in Latino humanities studies and guiding them to academic careers. A second initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation, expands opportunities for Hispanic students in computer science.

Universities in the Alliance are:

Arizona State University

City University of New York Graduate Center

Florida International University

Texas Tech University

The University of Arizona

The University of New Mexico

The University of Texas at Arlington

The University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at El Paso

The University of Texas at San Antonio

University of California, Irvine

University of California, Riverside

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Central Florida

University of Colorado, Denver

University of Houston

University of Illinois Chicago

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

University of North Texas

 

More information about the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities can be found at HSRU.org.