Bob Glenn, University of Houston-Victoria president, has recently chosen to affiliate with the Presidents for Latino Student Success, a national network composed of collegiate presidents who have committed to creating inclusive learning environments where Latino students, and all students, can excel.

Bob Glenn

“To me, it’s a matter of being deliberate,” UHV President Bob Glenn said. “It’s a matter of making sure that we are going to go the extra mile to get where we need to be as an institution to really be able to thrive and grow.”

Currently, 40 percent of Texas’s population is Hispanic, with Hispanic students accounting for much of the collegiate student body, said Karla DeCuir, UHV interim vice president for enrollment management. Finding different avenues to better support the students, whether they are current or prospective students, is of the highest priority, she said.

“Only about 24 percent of Latino adults have an associate degree or higher; our goal is to increase that,” DeCuir said. “The majority of our students are nontraditional students, meaning they are working or have families to take care of. It’s important that we not only address the needs of our students, but also some of the challenges they often face that become barriers to them completing college.”

There are 175 college presidents across 29 states nationwide who are affiliated with the network, DeCuir said. In Texas, there are 40 presidents alone. The network allows presidents from different institutions to gather once a year to share best practices and ways they are intentionally leading their institutions to better serve the Hispanic student body.

Karla DeCuir

“I’m excited because we are a Hispanic-Serving Institution. About 40 percent of our students are Hispanic, and 62 percent of all students are first-generation college students,” DeCuir said. “We are so excited to see that we are able to participate in this network of excellence for our Hispanic students.”

Additionally, the network offers a series of different support systems through reviewing data on how Hispanic students are performing in college, and post-college as well.

“The whole idea is for us to become more deliberately engaged in making sure if we’re going to say we are a Hispanic-Serving Institution, we are actually going to do something that serves Hispanic students,” Glenn said.

Ultimately, the goal is to make sure UHV moves in a direction to make higher education more accessible to all people in the area, especially in South Texas, which holds a significant number of Hispanic students, Glenn said.

“I hope we become more deliberate with Hispanic students, which will help us be more deliberate with all of our students,” Glenn said. “We’re an institution that has to, in my view, demonstrate our value to our potential students.”