PHILADELPHIA ― Launched in January, the Penn Center for Minority-Serving Institutions (CMSI), via the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, was created to highlight and advance the contributions of minority serving institutions (MSI) in higher education. The goals of the center include, among many, connecting academic and administrative leadership, advancing effective policies that strengthen MSIs, increasing development and support of students and faculty, and augmenting initiatives that aim to close achievement gaps in underrepresented groups.
Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education in the GSE and director of the center, explained the significance of an MSI designation and their specifics at higher education institutions in an interview with Diverse on Tuesday.
“In addition to interactively mapping online all the MSIs throughout the country, we will be able to then monitor the progress of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), which have seen the most growth.”
Gasman went on to state that “once colleges reach designation percentages and federal monies are received, institutions can then support on-campus initiatives like the way Sacramento State University and De Anza Community College fund activism programs.”
The MSI designation also applied to community colleges, which, according to Gasman, amounts to about “half of all community colleges in the country.”
Thai-Huy Nguyen, a research assistant and current Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, currently is working on a report in conjunction with the Community College Research Center at Columbia that analyzes community college MSIs and compares testing, degree/certificate completion rates, transfer rates, and the relationships with four-year institutions to majority community college institutions. There is not much data addressing the underrepresented at the associate degree level, and the CMSI hopes to shed light on the lack of minorities graduating and/or transferring to four-year institutions. Gasman noted that “success rates among African-American males always are reported on, but [for] those that struggle, we need to know why that is and how to change that.”
When asked about the proposed Obama administration college ranking system that intends to rate colleges and universities based on yet-to-be determined metrics and reward high performance, Gasman pointed out that “Institutions that take more risks on students should be rewarded for taking those risks. Institutions that are highly selective are not taking risks on students. They are accepting students that they think look perfect on paper. Why should we reward institutions that take no risks?”
