What role do presidents have to play in shaping campus policy to be inclusive of all students but particularly Hispanic students at institutions that serve a predominantly Hispanic student population? A panel of three presidents serving universities with a significant Hispanic student population pondered the question at a panel at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference on Monday.
In the past decade alone, the number of colleges and universities serving a large Hispanic student population has nearly doubled. As of 2013-14, 409 colleges and universities were designated as Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), according to Excelencia in Education’s most recent data, as opposed to 242 HSIs in 2004-05. An HSI is an institution that serves a student population that is more than 25 percent Hispanic.
That number appears to be poised to grow, as there were an additional 296 “emerging HSIs” in 2013-14, or institutions serving a student population that is 15 to 24 percent Hispanic. As college campuses change, so must their institutional practices in order to better serve Hispanic student populations.
Three HSIs were represented at the panel: California State University, Northridge (CSUN); California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CPP); and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
Shaping policies around diversity and inclusion is a job that falls to all players within the university, said CSUN President Dianne Harrison. “I think the temptation when you have a chief diversity officer is to point to that person and hope that they’ll figure it all out,” Harrison said. The problem requires a more nuanced and inter-institutional approach.
“Our issues always have to do with scale, because we have so many students and we want to serve each and every one of them,” Harrison added.
Institutions have been working on best practices for Hispanic students for decades. UIC, for instance, is home to the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services (LARES) program, which has grown over the course of its more than 40 years of existence to serve more than 3,300 students.
