The U.S. News recently issued its Best Colleges rankings for 2013 and UHD was ranked 26th for regional colleges in the west.

To see UHD's profile, click here.

In the U.S. News ranking system, schools are first categorized by their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions as refined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Basic Classification in 2010. UHD is classified as a "Regional College," because it is focused on undergraduate education but grants fewer than 50 percent of its degrees in liberal arts disciplines.

Next, U.S. News gathers data from each college on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects their judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. To read more about the U.S. News methodology for ranking, click here.

Congratulations UHD!