In key swing states like Florida and at the national level, Latino and new-citizen voters are changing politics. While these voters care about the same issues as all Americans, they have a unique and personal connection to the immigration debate that often shapes their political views.

On Thursday, October 4 from 5 to 7 p.m., pollsters, political analysts, and community leaders will discuss the politics of immigration and the Latino vote in an event held at the University of Miami’s College of Arts and Sciences Gallery. There, UM Professor Casey Klofstad will release fresh polling of Latino voters in Florida, and a diverse panel of experts will analyze the findings and assess the way the presidential, Senate, and House candidates have handled the immigration issue during their campaigns.

Can Mitt Romney meet his campaign’s ambitious goal of 38 percent of the Latino vote in Florida and nationwide? Can President Barack Obama build a strong enough case about his immigration record to energize and mobilize the Latino and immigrant community here and across the country? These and other questions will be probed by a range of experts.

Panelists will include Marc Caputo, Miami Herald reporter; Darío Moreno, political science professor at Florida International University; Gaby Pacheco, political director of United We Dream; Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice; and Jonathan Rodrigues, organizer, Florida New Majority.

The event will be streamed live. For more information or to RSVP for the event, please email ptobar@americasvoiceonline.org.

During the president’s one-on-one discussion with Univision anchors Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos, he discussed immigration reform, education, his goals for a second term of office, cooperation with Mexico in fighting drug cartels, and other topics.

A year from now, Arianne Alcorta will take part in an annual ritual that occurs as reliably as the sunrise: recent college students looking for jobs.

The 19-year-old University of Miami junior, who is on track to graduate next spring with a journalism degree, is concerned about job prospects in an employment market that remains thin. So, on September 20, Alcorta asked the nation’s highest authority—President Barack Obama—for his advice on what she and other Latina women should do to be successful in finding work. Read the full story

The University of Miami is one of the top schools in the nation when it comes to how successful its graduates are in their careers and lives, according to a recently released ranking platform that rates colleges based on alumni feedback.

UM is ranked on The Alumni Factor’s 2013 list of “The Top 177 Colleges,” placing 37th in alumni giving and ranking strongly in the categories of Graduate Financial Success and Loyalty. UM also is highly rated in Intellectual Capability, with a ranking in the top 50 of that category.

The Alumni Factor aims to give prospective students and parents a more empowering, performance-based method of measuring and choosing colleges. The “Top 177 Colleges” list is compiled from data and insights provided by college alumni. The 2013 rankings were released after four years of data collection and analysis. For additional details, click here.

President Barack Obama, left, and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will appear in back-to-back "Meet the Candidates" events on the UM campus.

With less than two months before the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Governor Mitt Romney will discuss education and the future of the Hispanic community during Univision News and Facebook’s “Meet the Candidates” forums at the University of Miami’s BankUnited Center Fieldhouse on September 19 and 20. Read the full story

For the fourth year in a row the University of Miami has ranked in the top 50 in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Colleges issue. UM comes in at No. 44 in the National Universities category, dropping from last year’s No. 38 ranking but retaining its position as the No. 1 ranked school in Florida and solidifying its status as a top-tier national institution.

“The University of Miami continues to be solidly situated within the top tier of national universities,” said Thomas J. LeBlanc, UM executive vice president and provost. “Having been ranked among the top 50 for the last four years, we will continue to work toward our strategic goals in all areas and to build on the remarkable achievements we’ve made over the last decade.”

UM continued to improve in two of the measures used to help determine the rankings, posting an SAT average score of 1315 (the highest in the institution’s history) for its freshman class and an improved student selectivity ranking of 39, up from 42.

U.S. News & World Report assessed more than 1,500 four-year colleges and universities, assigning each to a group of its peers based on the categories of higher education institutions developed in 2010 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The National Universities category consists of 281 institutions (173 pubic, 101 private, and seven for-profit) that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees, with some emphasizing research.

UM’s top-50 ranking comes on the heels of the UM Miller School of Medicine’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s being rated the nation’s No. 1 ophthalmology program for the ninth consecutive year in U.S. News’s annual Best Hospitals rankings.

For the complete U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, please click here.