University of Dallas officials say they hope Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail can help the school grow even more.
John Plotts, vice president of enrollment and student affairs, said the small Catholic university in Irving grows regardless of the economy. In bad economic times, people go to school to retool and, when the economy is good, people have money to spend on education, he said.
Plotts said he hopes enrollment can grow even more with the opening of DART rail in Irving this summer.
The University of Dallas awarded degrees to 325 undergraduates -- almost 100 more students than last year.
Mary Parker, the spokeswoman for the university's business school, said she is curious to see how the availability of DART rail affects the MBA program.
"A lot of our students actually work in the Las Colinas area or in downtown Dallas area, so having the DART rail is going to be great, because they'll have an easy way to get to campus," she said.
School officials said they hope DART rail would make the university more visible.
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In the fall, the University of Dallas will launch a new nursing program in cooperation with Texas Woman's University. Plotts said DART rail would make it convenient for students to go from one campus to the other.
More than half of the university's student body is not from Texas. Lorena Luis Gomez Sandoval, an international student from Mexico, said her classes offered just what she was looking for.
"There was this, like, pamphlet the business school has, and it says, like, 'bringing business back to humanity.' And I said, 'Yes, that's what I want to do,'" she said.
