Optometry school coming to UTRGV
UTRGV is set to inaugurate a School of Optometry by Fall 2027. With the school, also comes a Doctor of Optometry degree.
William Miller, the dean for the school, said he hopes to increase eye care in the Rio Grande Valley and help people with early signs of diabetes.
“Many times patients are first diagnosed with diabetes at an optometrist office,” Miller said. “We can do tests that actually can see diabetes in its very early stages before it gets severe and be able to refer them to another health care professional.”
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, as of 2024, Hidalgo County ranks No. 107 in the state in number of licensed optometrists, with only 69 optometrists. Cameron County ranks No. 108 with only 33 optometrists.
“We are going to provide an excellent education at a very reasonable tuition,” Miller said. “What we want to do is make it affordable to students in the area so that, when they get out of optometry, they don’t have this huge debt that takes them years to pay back. … We are going to keep it very reasonable compared to the other two institutions.”
The “other two” optometry institutions in Texas are the University of Incarnate Word Rosenberg School of Optometry and the University of Houston College of Optometry.
Miller said the class sizes are to be about 40 students with about 18 to 20 faculty members. The student-faculty ratio would be 4:1 when in clinicals and possibly 20:1 in labs.
Gladys Pedraza, a physician’s assistant studies graduate student, said she did not know about the coming School of Optometry.
“It is a great opportunity for all the students that are here and want to pursue that,” Pedraza said. “And it’s also kind of just a great opportunity for the community to benefit from that, especially with a lot of diabetes in the area, that usually leads to glaucoma problems as it progresses. … It is an underserved area, in terms of a lot of medical problems, so it is definitely needed.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of May 2023, Texas was the second-highest state in optometry employment levels with 2,880 people employed, with an hourly mean wage of $73.10 and an annual mean salary of $152,060.
“We want to make this an excellent experience, excellent training experience for the students and, most of all, to have optometrists that are superb clinicians that can go back into their community,” Miller said. “Hopefully, they stay in the region and they provide and they become leaders in their communities and just provide that care that [is] so much needed right now.”
