issue69-4-3
Scholars give talks on importance of Hispanic Serving Institutions
BY DIANA AMBROSIO
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and Hispanic-Serving Institutions Week, the first
installment of the President’s Lecture Series was dedicated to discussing HSIs’ past,
present, and future.
From fall 2015 to fall 2019, UHD had an upward trend in Hispanic undergraduate student
enrollment. HSI’s are universities that are “not-for-profit institutions of higher
learning with a full-time equivalent undergraduate student enrollment that is at least
25% Hispanic at the end of the award year preceding the date of application,” according
to the Department of Education.
“It is one thing to be a Hispanic-enrolling institution and a Hispanic-Serving Institution,”
UHD President Loren Blanchard stated. “I am thrilled that our guests will be able
to help us understand our responsibility of our work and our success centering around
all our students.”
Patrick Valdez, board chair of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education,
and Anne-Marie Nuñez, executive director of Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic
Student Success University of Texas at El Paso, spoke about the importance of HSIs.
Valdez gave the history of HSIs to show where the roots of HSIs came from. He went
on to show that these Hispanic/Latino-led groups were individually testifying in front
of Congress. These groups formed a coalition to help testify for funding from Title
III.
With two decades of research on HSIs, Nunez has addressed equity in science and has
collaborated on several National Science Foundation grants to build inclusive environments
in geosciences and computer science disciplines in HSIs. She wrote the “Hispanic-Serving
Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice,” which is the first
book to ever focus on HSIs as organizations.
“It is important to realize the potential of HSIs,” Nuñez stated. “The emerging research
on HSIs clarifies and refines practice, policy, and understanding on how to provide
equity in educational attainment.”
According to the speakers, building inclusive cultures in these higher education institutions
is essential. These institutions should not reach for the minimum enrollment just
to be classified as an HSI because the continuous use of the same strategies will
not work to keep these students on their campus.