The university also boasts a record high fall-to-fall retention rate of 84.1%, showcasing student satisfaction and success.

“Our enrollment and retention numbers send a clear message – students want to be here at the University of Louisville,” said President Gerry Bradley. “This remarkable growth is a powerful vote of confidence from thousands of students who have weighed their options and chose UofL and Louisville as their home. We’re committed to providing an outstanding education that prepares them for the careers and challenges of tomorrow.”

Enrollment highlights

Preliminary figures show that 3,373 first-time college students enrolled for the fall 2025 semester, a nearly 8% increase from the previous year.

Other highlights of the Class of 2029 include:

• 38.6% are first-generation college students
• Nearly 27% are from other states
• Top five majors are engineering, nursing, biology, education and business

Overall undergraduate enrollment increased by nearly 1,000 students, with notable gains in the Kent School of Social Work and Family Science, the College of Business, the School of Nursing and the College of Arts and Sciences. Graduate and professional enrollments also rose, particularly in the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

This year’s student body also includes representation from every Kentucky county, a testament to UofL’s statewide impact and reach.

Expanding student opportunities

Behind these record numbers are intentional efforts to expand access and affordability. The university has invested in targeted recruitment, launched new and innovative academic programs and increased financial aid opportunities. For example, the is one opportunity that makes college more affordable for many out-of-state students. In-state tuition is available to students from Illinois, most of Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia and select counties in Tennessee starting next fall.

“I chose UofL because coming here gave me the opportunity to become debt free after college,” said Casey Beck, a third-year College of Business student from Cincinnati, Ohio. “The Border Benefit cut out-of-state tuition in half, and UofL quickly became a top pick in college choices due to the jumpstart on college expenses.”

Final enrollment numbers will be available in November 2025. For more information, visit .

Executive Vice President and University Provost Lori Gonzalez provided senators with updated information on enrollment, endowments and the recent federal COVID-19 mandate. When compared to figures from fall 2020, enrollment is down 48 students. Although institutions nationwide are experiencing a drop in enrollment, the national average is a loss of only 2.3 students. Gonzalez reported that student retention was also down by 4.3%. Senators were informed that student enrollment and retention will be a targeted initiative for the university and administration for the foreseeable future.

Gonzalez also provided senators with information on the current state of the university’s endowment funding.

“So many of our endowments were previously underwater, but this past year they’re all above water,” Gonzalez said. “Our return on investment for our endowments was 33%. This means endowments will go up for the next fiscal year, since they are done on a three-year rolling average.”

A university-wide informed members of the Cardinal community of a recent federal mandate regarding COVID-19 response. The executive order requires all federal contractors and covered contractors to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Due to the numerous federal contracts that the university depends upon for operation, this federal ordnance will apply to UofL.

“The federal government allows medical and religious exemptions; however, the state-approved conscientious objector exemption is not allowed by the federal government. It’s my understanding that Kentucky’s attorney general may be challenging this rule, but we must wait for the outcome of that decision on conscientious objector exemptions,” Gonzalez said.

Executive Vice President of Research & Innovation Kevin Gardner gave a presentation on UofL’s impressive fiscal year 2021 research impact. The presentation highlighted the record-breaking $201.5 million in competitive research funding, which was over $30 million more than the previous record set in FY20. Gardner also featured several UofL research initiatives that addressed the three Grand Challenges of research and innovation outlined in the : empowering our communities, advancing our health and engineering our future economy.

Committee reports and a of the meeting can be accessed on the . The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for Dec. 1 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

The Black Male Initiative formally began at UofL in 2011 as the African American Male Initiative. In its 10 years, the student success program’s objectives haven’t wavered – increase the retention, graduation, engagement and overall success of Black males.

The program has done this in a number of ways; for example offering academic coaching, community service and leadership workshops. However, perhaps the most effective initiative is the BMI’s laser-sharp focus on creating connections among peers.

Those connections have become ever more critical now in a largely virtual environment, and Brandyn Bailey, assistant director at the Cultural Center and adviser of the BMI, touts the work the team has done to ensure programs and discussions on topics like mental health continue. One such initiative that is ready to launch, for example, is a new video series on YouTube called Wednesday Wisdom. The idea is to increase access to mentors – both on and off campus – virtually, and cover topics like financial literacy, healthy relationships and internships.

Bailey has overseen the BMI since October 2018 after a stint at the Muhammad Ali Institute. Prior to that, he was part of a program called the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and was selected from a national pool to be a part of the inaugural Building Beloved Community Leadership Fellowship. He has taken much of what he learned from that program to create his vision for the Black Male Initiative into its second decade.

“I want to make Black male achievement at UofL the expectation and not the exception and doing so by building out an infrastructure that supports Black male students who are not athletes or are not on scholarship,” he said. “Those are the students most affected by adverse circumstances outside of the classroom.”

Such circumstances can make it hard to even get into UofL, let alone get a degree. Bailey said a number of students he works with have to work to make ends meet, and that’s when balancing classes and grades becomes a particular challenge.

To navigate this challenge, he has recruited staff and faculty across campus who identify as Black males and who represent a variety of professional fields to be mentors.

“I want to create a large enough network so if a student tells me he wants to be a social worker, I can connect him with someone on campus who looks like him and who has social worker experience so they can show what that profession looks like on a daily basis,” Bailey said. “The goal is for them to build relationships with those individuals, and myself, so they have multiple people as accountability partners and so their idea of success no longer remains in this esoteric space, but is something that is achievable.”

Bailey pulls his motivation and this strategy from his personal experience growing up in Louisville and attending Noe Middle School, where he witnessed fights “literally every day and a lot of students living far below poverty levels.”

“All of this stuff was happening, these traumatic pieces that you take in at 11 or 12 years old, and you’re still expected to pass a math test in the middle of the afternoon. My priority is making sure our students have folks around them to not only make sense of all of their experiences but also helping them get through,” Bailey said. “We have to take this hands-on approach because these students might not have people in their lives who reflect the future that they want to have.”

The BMI uses a platform called Cardsmart to match students to specific advisors or academic coaches who work with students based on an identifying marker. Bailey said there is a lot of growth opportunity with this networking program. At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, there were about 980 students who identified as a Black male. A few are distance or nontraditional students, others are student-athletes or scholarship awardees, and 100 or so are Metropolitan College students employed by UPS.

“That leaves about 400 or 500 students I’m trying to get to. The others are going to be OK. I want to get to them, but they have resources, or at least not as many barriers,” Bailey said.

Bailey has also put into place a BMI Wise Council, which gives students even more networking opportunities.

“I believe the council will be a difference maker. In theory, if there are more people to choose from for mentorship or coaching, then we’ll be able to see more students a year,” he said. “We have to accept that a vast majority of education in the scope of higher education happens independently of the classroom. That’s where the rubber meets the road. In that scope, I want to provide healthy and artistic platforms for our students to build community and self-esteem with that ultimate goal of graduating everybody.”

It’s hard not to see some progress here. According to a recent report card from the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center,. Scores were based on factors like the percentage of Black undergraduates and the six-year graduation rate for Black students.

Still, much work remains. In 2018, UofL’s six-year graduation rate for Black students was about 47%, compared to the school’s overall graduation rate of 53.2%. Boosting these rates is a priority of President Neeli Bendapudi, and the Black Male Initiative has been .����

Bailey is up to the challenge and is extremely optimistic about the program’s future.

“We have a foundation now and it’s time to grow it and scale it,” he said. “We also want to sustain it to make sure sophomores and juniors in high school see UofL where they can come and foster a path to success, so they know there are folks here to support you.”

UofL’s 2020 ranking was No. 192.

UofL’s jump was the third highest among its 17 benchmark institutions, behind University of Illinois-Chicago’s 20-spot increase and University of New Mexico’s 31-spot increase. Those benchmark institutions are identified by the Council on Postsecondary ����ֱ��.��

UofL’s scores increased in a number of categories, including:

• Actual 6-year graduation rate: 59%. This is up from 57% last year and more than 10% from 10 years ago.
• Percentage of classes with less than 20 students: 42%. This is nearly double what it was 10 years ago.
• Percentage of freshmen students who were in the top 10% of their high school class: 27%. This is up from 11% in 2017.

Also of note, the average alumni giving rate has increased for the first time in two years and now stands at 10%.

The U.S. News and World Report’s ranking system is based on two pillars. Schools are categorized according to their mission (as determined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) and 17 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects the judgment of U.S. News and World Report about how much a measure matters.�� ��

The “Expert Opinion” score accounts for 20% of the overall ranking and gives significant weight to those in a position to judge a school’s undergraduate academic excellence (e.g. presidents, provost and deans of admissions). UofL’s rank in this category jumped by 9 points this year, following graduate rate performance and alumni giving as the third-highest category mover for the institution.

The progress in many of these metrics coincide with the work being done as part of UofL’s broader, three-year Strategic Plan, which officially kicked off in the fall of 2019. The biggest driver behind this plan is how to make UofL a great place to learn, work and invest while fostering diversity, equity and inclusion.

The 36^th edition of Best Colleges evaluated more than 1,400 colleges and universities. More information about this year’s results is .

1.) Dr. Pinto was born in Bombay, India, and experienced a childhood “as different from Louisville as you can imagine.” He credits his parents for their commitment to education as enabling him to succeed.

“They invested heavily in our education and that gave me an advantage and prepared me for my future,” he said.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in India, Dr. Pinto went on to Penn State University, where he earned his MS and PhD in chemical engineering and served as a teaching assistant. This sparked his interest in teaching as a career and he honed this interest as a professor at the University of Cincinnati before joining UofL as Dean of the Speed School of Engineering in 2011.

This was not the path he expected.

“My original plan was to come back (to India) and work with my dad on my business. But I started to love academics and gain an interest in research as a graduate student. At Cincinnati, I met students whose path was different from mine and it was a sort of an evolution once I understood my true job: exposing them to the highest level of education you can have – that’s what’s driven me.”

2.) Dr. Pinto believes UofL exists because of the students: “They are the center of our decisions. That is how I approach my responsibilities.”

He shared some strategies for student retention and student success that he hopes will enhance the university’s reputation. These strategies will focus on resources and how to be strategic in investments, including with the new Student Success Center, expected to open in the new Academic Building in the fall of 2018. The building will include more open spaces, career advising and academic support spaces and more. The SAC renovation scheduled for completion at about the same time also revolves around student spaces, encouraging learning outside of the classroom.

“Student engagement is important to every aspect on campus. In that context, we have a strong commitment to success of our students,” Pinto said.����

3.) International recruitment is also a priority for Dr. Pinto.

“For a university of our stature, the goal is globalization and the impact that’s going to have on our students in the future is something we have to address very aggressively,” he said.

The number of UofL students who have international experience has steadily remained around 800 to 900 throughout the past few years, and Dr. Pinto recognizes economic barriers in raising that number dramatically.

“There is a different way of doing this and that is to bring the world here and to have a diversified group of students peppered in with our students,” he said. “International students benefit from their education here, and our students benefit from them being here as well.”��

4.) Dr. Pinto was asked how to boost morale of faculty and staff on campus and he said it’s important to remain focused on why we’re here.

“The work we do is so important to society that we have to focus on the reason we do this. There are factors we can’t control, but we can control what we choose to focus on and be energized by,” he said. “It all goes back to why are we doing this – because it’s important and worth it and we can make a difference.”��

5.) Dr. Pinto hopes to achieve his goals by better anticipating the future and promoting education’s benefits.

“Can we be known nationally for original thinking, for new paradigms that will help us change the game?” he asked. “To do that, you have to ask the big questions. What will education look like in 30 or 40 years?”

Dr. Pinto added that it’s incumbent upon faculty to get out there and tell people why education is important.

“We can’t just sit back and wait for the applications to come in,” he said. “Universities are a big part of the engine of progress in this country. We’re repositories safeguarding society’s values.”