Check out the following news from CBF partner school Baptist University of the Américas:

Baptist University of the Américas has been formally recognized as a national leader in preparing Hispanic students for vocational ministry.

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education reported in its July issue that BUA, despite an enrollment of just 261, ranked second nationally among all accredited universities for Hispanic ministry graduates at the bachelor’s level for the 2010-11 academic year. But combining the two previous years shows BUA the leader by a significant margin.

“This is a very much a good news/troubling news situation,” BUA President René Maciel said. “Obviously we celebrate the hard data that shows we are being faithful to the specific call God has given BUA. But compare the numbers to the need!  In two years we graduated almost 10 percent of ALL Hispanics BA students to be ministers. The Top 100 schools combined in two years graduated only 429 — and that includes Protestant, Catholic and Jewish universities — in a country with more than 50 million Hispanics. I am haunted by the words in Hebrews warning us not to ‘ignore so great a salvation.’”

The magazine has ranked the Top 100 for minority students in other academic disciplines for years, but debuted the “religious and ministerial studies and theology” category this year. The report is based on research of Victor Borden at Indiana University Bloomington, using U.S. Department of Education data.

Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas topped the 2010-11 rankings granting 22 theology degrees while BUA had 18.

On its website, the magazine included 2009-10 figures that showed BUA ranked first for Hispanic theology graduates with 21. Combining the past two years, BUA (40) and Southwestern Assemblies of God (29) placed one-two.

The other Texas Baptist universities in the list were Dallas Baptist University, tied for 11th (18) and Howard Payne University in Brownwood, tied for 20th (4). (The complete reports can be found at http://diverseeducation.com/top100/)

BUA, founded in 1947 as the Texas Mexican Baptist Bible Institute and accredited to offer bachelor’s degrees in 2003, has grown steadily the past decade, from 50 students to the 261 last spring. Plans are underway for a new campus and a fourth BA program, in music, will debut this fall.

In addition to the BA program,  the university’s  Baptist Bible Institute, a diploma-level program, has more than 500 students in ministry training, primarily in Texas and Northern Mexico but also in India, South Africa and across Latin America.

“We have the faith, the dream, the call, the faculty and the land to significantly increase the numbers of students preparing to share the Gospel,” Maciel said. “We just need to build more classrooms and fill them with the men and women God is calling.”