Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Q&A with Dr. Gina Garcia

(A. Solano)

Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities
Gina Ann Garcia

Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is an associate professor in the department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches master’s and doctoral students pursuing degrees in higher education and student affairs. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on three core areas: Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs; postsecondary institutions that enroll at least 25% Latinx undergraduate students), Latinx college students, and race and racism in higher education.

Dr. Garcia was a Title V HSI STEM retention coordinator at California State University, Fullerton. She also held a position funded by a National Science Foundation grant, working with community college transfer students who wanted to major in science and math. She graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change, where she worked with Dr. Sylvia Hurtado at the Higher Education Research Institute.

Website: https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/
Twitter & Instagram: @ginaanngarcia
Other short articles and podcasts:
HigherEdJobs
Equity in Higher Ed
Future of HSIs Video
HSI Podcast Video

Note: Due to COVID19 and issues through third party sites such as Amazon, if you'd like to purchase the book, please do so directly from the Publisher. Thank you.

For readers of this blog, the author is offering the following 30% discount code: HTWN

(Thank you Dr. Garcia!)

Q&A

1. What inspired you to write the book?

When I was a doctoral student at UCLA, I began conducting research on HSIs that was reinforcing what other scholars were already saying, “That Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) were underperforming when compared to Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs).” My quantitative research, at that time, showed that HSIs were not graduating Latinxs in equitable numbers. This is precisely why scholars were asking whether HSIs were simply “Hispanic-enrolling,” meaning they enroll a large percentage of Latinx students, but don’t actually educate or graduate them. Contributing to this deficit narrative of racially minoritized institutions didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to flip the narrative on HSIs, and instead sought to answer the question, “What do HSIs do well or better than PWIs?”

Since then, I have been conducting mostly qualitative research with HSIs, primarily through case study methodology. I spend a tremendous amount of time with HSIs as I collect data and learn side-by-side with the educators in HSIs who are doing the best job they can considering they are educating some of the most oppressed students in higher education. This is where I always remind readers that the normative measure of graduation is highly correlated with student demographics such as race, income, and college generations status, so of course it’s easier for highly selective (white) institutions to graduate students at higher rates compared to HSIs, which are historically broad access institutions.

I wrote the book Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities primarily to advocate for HSIs and to provide positive stories about these complicated institutions. I wanted to share stories that were grounded in the struggle of the educators on the ground in HSIs. As a former coordinator of a Title V Developing HSIs grant at Cal State University Fullerton, I know how hard it is to transform an entire institution into one that effectively serves racially minoritized students. The book is guided by the “Typology of HSI Identities” (Garcia, 2017, link to article here), with each of the 3 institutions highlighted representing 1 of 4 HSI types (Latinx-serving, Latinx-producing, & Latinx-enhancing).

2. Who should read this book?

The book is intended for both higher education practitioners and scholars. First and foremost, I wanted to offer faculty, staff, and administrators at HSIs ideas and solutions for better serving their students. At the same time, I wanted to reassure them that becoming a “Latinx-serving” institution is difficult. The stories within the book intentionally highlight the tensions that many educators at HSIs deal with as they seek solutions for better serving their students. HSI practitioners have effectively used the book to start conversations about research-informed ideas that can work in practice. Some have invited me to online chats, virtual discussions, and book clubs, while others have invited me to give keynote lectures about the book. I love hearing from educators who are using the book in their own creative ways. While I have leveraged the book to support practitioners who are using it to learn how to change their organizational structures in order to better serve Latinxs, higher education scholars, faculty, and graduate students are also using the book to frame their own studies about HSIs as organizations. In the book, I offer perspective on conducting research through a critical organizational lens.

3. What is the significance of the title of the book?

The title is significant because I see becoming HSIs as a process. Since HSIs were not born HSIs, with most being historically white institutions, colleges and universities that meet the eligibility requirements to become federally designated as HSIs must work towards this new status. Yet there are many reasons why it is difficult to become an HSI. One problem is that most HSIs do not have a historical mission to serve racially or economically minoritized students, and therefore they lack the infrastructure and knowledge for how to serve these students. Another problem is that the federal government is not in the game of defining what I call “servingness” (Garcia et al., 2019, link to article here), and therefore has left HSI practitioners to define it on their own, with little empirical research prior 2010, to guide their practice. Finally, it is difficult to serve all students with a one-size-fits-all model, as “Hispanic” is an umbrella term encompassing a diverse group of people who have different ethnicities, races, historical connections to their culture, and immigration histories, to name a few. Colleges and universities must see their work to become racially just institutions as a process, and lean into the discomfort of embracing a new organizational identity.

4. What makes the book unique?

The stories in the book are written as (counter)narratives, which makes the book unique. The stories amplify the voices of the students, faculty, and staff within HSIs, through the (counter)narrative approach, yet they are also real, in that the tensions that people are experiencing within these institutions are amplified. These real stories show the process of becoming an HSI as multidimensional and complicated. Although HSIs are not perfect or ideal, they are unique and can offer something special to Latinx and other minoritized college students, which the book highlights.

5. What are the suggestions you offer in the book?

Since the book is empirical, I make recommendations based off the data and by drawing from the empirical chapters (ch 3-5). I make the following 6 recommendations to HSI educators:
a. Provide curricula and programs that are grounded in equity & justice (not diversity & multiculturalism); faculty must rethink all aspects of the curriculum and rework the knowledge taught and the way it is delivered, and not leave this work solely to ethnic studies programs and/or faculty of color.
b. Hire faculty, staff, and administrators committed to equity & justice; this includes hiring more people or color and people from minoritized backgrounds, but it also means that folx from dominant groups (i.e., white people) must also be committed to equity & justice.
c. Value non-normative input, process, and outcome indicators of success; by this I mean that 6-year graduation rates cannot be the only way to measure how well HSIs are doing at serving students. I suggest HSIs also consider “liberatory outcomes” including civic engagement with local/minoritized communities, social justice orientation, critical consciousness, and aspiration for graduate school.
d. Reinforce multilingualism and the preservation of languages that students come to campus with; although in the book I specifically reference Spanish, we must embrace more than just Spanish, as there are many languages that students come to college with, and all are important.
e. Provide high touch practices for students, including experiential learning and intrusive advising; yet, make sure these practices are not race-neutral, meaning they must be centered on and considerate of the ways that students of color experience the world.
f. Provide students with diverse financial aid packages; this one is difficult, but HSIs, by definition, enroll over 50% low income students and their needs must be considered. This may also include providing services that are considerate of the needs of low income, food insecure, and housing insecure students, including helping students borrow books and clothes, and/or providing food through on-campus pantries.

***

References

Garcia, G. A. (2017a). Defined by outcomes or culture? Constructing an organizational identity for Hispanic-Serving Institutions. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1S), 111S-134S.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216669779

Garcia, G. A., Núñez, A.-M., Sansone, V. A. (2019). Toward a multidimensional conceptual framework for understanding “servingness” in Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs): A synthesis of the research. Review of Educational Research, 89(5), 745-784. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319864591