Texas ranked second for international students

Linda: a new report shows texas ranks second when it comes to the number of international students enrolled at universities.

Utep officials say the university sees a lot of students coming from mexico, brazil, and india.

Nc9 today's daniela pardo is live in the newsroom with more.

Good morning, daniela... good morning, linda -- univeristy officials says a lot of their international students come to pursue science, technology, enginneering, and math careers -- also known as stem.

Reem issa is majoring in mechanical engineering at utep.

The palestine native is one of the 467-thousand international students in the u.s. enrolled in stem studies.

The new ice report shows the number of people pursing stem careers are up by 15-percent.

Issa tells us because she's a stem student, she's able to stay in the u.s. and work for an extra year after graduatiion -- something people with other degrees aren't able to do.

She says it wasn't just utep's engineering program that made her move to the borderland.

Issa: "for me it's the culture, more than anything.

It's a really friendly environment.

You don't see racism -- especially during this time where there's a lot of racism about arabs and about me as a muslim too -- but i don't see any of that -- that's what i like about utep" issa says she loves the mexican culture because it's very similar to hers.

She's learning spanish now and is encouraging her friends back home to join her at utep.

The university has about 20-thousand students -- 16- hundred of them are international.