For the past 15 years, Hispanic-Serving Institutions around the country have been facing the challenges, and fulfilling the educational promise, of the growing numbers of Latino students.
LAST JANUARY KRISTA RODIN ARRIVED AS THE campus executive officer at Northern Arizona University Yuma with a major problem to solve. "Nothing was in place to serve Hispanic students," she says, even though they comprised 57 percent of the student body. "We needed to build programs helpful to them, and importing the curriculum from Flagstaff (the principal NAU campus) without modifications was not working."
So Rodin started making changes, from implementing writing courses geared towards the largely first-generation Latino student population to developing a grant for an entire Hispanic studies program. She also applied for federal status as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). "It was the first thing I did when I got here," she recalls.
By March, NAU Yuma had joined the burgeoning ranks of more than 200 officially designated HSIs, all of which have at least a 25 percent Hispanic student population and are eligible to share almost $100 million in annual grants under Title V of the federal Higher Education Act.
A League of Their Own
The league of HSIs, which is barely 15 years old, reaches from community colleges to state universities across 15 states and Puerto Rico, and enrolls almost two-thirds of all Latino college students. While the majority of these schools are located in the states bordering Mexico, they also include members as far flung as St. Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J.; Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Wash.; Morton College in Cicero, Ill.; and Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kan.
The federal recognition of HSIs in 1992 has given a higher profile to the challenge and promise of Hispanic education, says Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. HACU was founded in 1986 by 18 member colleges and became a driving force behind the law that established HSIs. The organization also includes more than 200 associate members and partner institutions that have not yet passed the 25 percent enrollment threshold but have sizeable Hispanic populations.
"There's a much greater awareness of the impact of HSIs on the economy and on the future workforce of this country," Flores says, noting that Hispanic-Americans represent the fastest-growing segment of the population and are projected to make up one-third of the workforce by 2025. "If we don't prepare them well for highly skilled jobs, we'll all be in trouble. This is not just about Latino success. It's about our national well-being."
Milton Gordon is the president of California State University, Fullerton, which became an HSI in 2004 and graduates more than 1,300 Hispanic students annually, sixth most in the nation, according to a recent survey (see sidebar on page 48). Gordon himself attended Xavier University in New Orleans-one of the country's Historically Black Colleges and Universities-and he insists that having an official status as a minority institution makes an immediate difference. "What an HBCU or an HSI does is raise the national level of consciousness, conversation, and thought process about how we can help these groups," Gordon says.
"It's part of the American story. That's what we've done to respond to student populations through the years," adds Tomas Arciniega, the assistant to the chancellor of the California State University system and the former president of CSU Bakersfield, another HSI.
What's also become part of the story is a newfound and increasing influence in the corridors of power. HACU has led the way in Washington, actively lobbying and rolling out an extensive legislative agenda for 2008 that includes almost doubling the Title V monies available to HSIs from the U.S. Department of Education and casting a wider net for federal aid-from the Departments of Agriculture and Defense to the National Science Foundation and NASA.
The election in recent years of three Hispanic U.S. senators has helped the cause, notes HACU's Flores, as have the continuing efforts by longer-term congressmen such as Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas). This year, Hinojosa, who chairs the U.S. House Committee on Higher Education, introduced legislation to provide $125 million in 2008 specifically for HSI graduate programs.
