About Alvernia University

Alvernia University is a private Franciscan Roman Catholic university in Reading, Pennsylvania. Once known as Alvernia College, the school gained college circles status in 2008.

Reading (/ˈrɛdɪŋ/ RED-ing; Pennsylvania German: Reddin) is a city in and the county chair of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, it is the fifth-largest city in Pennsylvania. Located in the southeastern portion of the state, it is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area, home to 420,152 residents, and is with included in the greater Delaware Valley.

The city, which is nearly halfway amid the state’s most populous city, Philadelphia, and the disclose capital, Harrisburg, is profitably situated along a major transportation route from Central to Eastern Pennsylvania, and lent its state to the now-defunct Reading Railroad, which transported anthracite coal from the Pennsylvania Coal Region to the eastern United States via the Port of Philadelphia. Reading Railroad is one of the four railroad properties in the eternal United States relation of the Monopoly board game. Reading was one of the first localities where outlet shopping became a tourist industry. It has been known as “The Pretzel City”, because of numerous local pretzel bakeries; currently, Bachman, Dieffenbach, Tom Sturgis, and Unique Pretzel bakeries call the Reading area home. In recent years, the Reading Place has become a destination for cyclists. With beyond 125 miles of trails in five major preserves, it is an International Mountain Bicycling Association Ride Center.

According to the 2010 census, Reading had the highest allocation of citizens vivacious in poverty in the nation for cities taking into account populations of greater than 65,000. Reading’s poverty rate fell higher than the next decade. Reading’s poverty rate in the 2018 five-year American Community survey showed that 35.4% of the city’s residents were under the poverty line, or less “than the infamous 41.3% from 2011, when Reading was acknowledged the poorest small city in the nation.”