¿Qué pasa, HSIs?

The Origin Story of HSIs & OLLU’s Role

Do you know the origin story of HSIs and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU)? In this episode we dive into the archives, by way of President Abel Chávez, to learn one perspective on how HSIs and HACU came to be. Dr. Chavez shares how Our Lady of the Lake University, or OLLU, played an integral role in the foundation, hosting an important convening of the first 11 colleges advocating for the designation. On January 22, 1986, the meeting titled, “Predominantly Hispanic Institutions of Higher Education Meeting” took place and a week later a proposal was submitted to the Ford Foundation to fund a “center” for HSIs. This episode reminds us that our HSI historical roots must be documented. Dr. Abel Chávez is the 10th president of OLLU, known as an integrative leader and learner. He is a first-generation, first-in-family college graduate, son of immigrants, and bilingual administrator and academic committed to enhancing quality, access, and affordability for all students while serving the needs of families, economies, and communities. Throughout the episode he conceptualizes what servingness is, advocating for an environment that honors Latine legends of the past and Latine cultures of today. Dr. Chávez is a proud HSI president who envisions HSIs to be a cornerstone of higher education.
 
Guest:
Abel A. Chávez (he/him/his)
President, Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU)
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, September 8). The Origin Story of HSIs & OLLU’s Role (No.503) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.facebook.com/OurLadyoftheLakeUniversity  https://www.instagram.com/ollu_saints/ 
https://twitter.com/OLLUnivSATX 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR-p8JyaDh51_v2ufrrpUfg 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127464201@N02/sets/ 
www.ollusa.edu 
https://sanantonioreport.org/hispanic-university-of-america-abel-chavez-commentary/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.948399/full
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106162

Historically Black [emerging] HSIs

What is a Historically Black [emerging] HSI? This episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? breaks it down and delivers the message you didn’t know you needed to hear. We know that HBCUs are unapologetically Black-serving, historically and authentically, but HSIs aren’t. In this episode we talk about what HSIs can learn from HBCUs with a focus on liberatory curriculum and empowerment pedagogies. We also talk about how HBCUs are good servers to Latine students, and especially Afro-Latine students. Importantly, we talk about the complexities of being an HBCU AND an emerging HSI, and whether it is federally possible to be both. The mujeres in this plática are brilliant, empowered, and melanated! (Future) Dra. Stacey Speller is a Nuyorican doctoral student at Howard University (#HBCUOrgullo). Dra. Dwuana Bradley is an assistant professor at the USC Rossier School of Education examining the ways anti-Black sentiment perpetually undergirds the drivers and levers of federal, state, and institutional policies. Dra. Gina English Tillis is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner with over a decade of experience shaping educational experiences at various HSIs, HBCUs, and emerging Hispanic-serving HBCUs. Dra. Natalie Muñoz is an AfroLatina assistant professor at Rutgers University Newark's social work department researching AfroLatine identity development, mental health equity, and educational justice. These scholar activists not only teach us about HBCU-eHSIs, but model what true academic hermandad looks like.
Guests: 
Stacey Speller (she/her/ella)
Graduate Student, Howard University
X: @mizzspeller | IG: @mizzspeller | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-speller-8376686a/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stacey.speller.75
Dr. Dwuana Bradley (she/her/we)
Assistant Professor, University of Southern California
X: @dwuanabtweeting
https://rossier.usc.edu/faculty-research/directory/dwuana-bradley
Dr. Gina Tillis (she/her)
Associate Researcher
Center for Research on Educational Policy, University of Memphis
Dr. Natalie Muñoz (She/her/ella)
Assistant Professor, Social Work, Rutgers University
X: @curlyprofesora  
www.nataliemunoz.info
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, August 25). Historically Black [emerging] HSIs (No.502) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show Notes: 
Burmicky, J., Duran, A., Muñoz, N. (2024). Latinx/a/o senior leaders in higher education: A systematic review of the literature. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584241242752 
Burmicky, J., Rzucidlo, K., Muñoz, N., Servance, W., & Thornton, M. R. (2022) Mattering and belonging: An HBCU case study exploration of campus involvement during the pandemic. Journal of Negro Education, 91(3), 309-321.    
Tillis, G. (2018). Antiblackness, Black suffering, and the future of first-year seminars at historically Black colleges and universities. The Journal of Negro Education, 87(3), 16. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.87.3.0311 
Garces, L. M., Johnson, B. D., Ambriz, E., & Bradley, D. (2021). Repressive legalism: How postsecondary administrators’ responses to on-campus hate speech undermine a focus on inclusion. American Educational Research Journal, 58(5), 1032-1069. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312211027586
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pain-and-promise-dr-gina-tillis-sheri-neely/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1B0lwig55g 
https://blackshearbridge.org/
https://www.m13f.org/

Classified Professionals’ Self-Advocacy & Empowerment - Video

We kick off season 5 of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? with a dynamic duo of Chicana-Latina leaders who serve their campuses and advocate for their colleagues through the Classified Professionals Senate. Classified professionals is a term used in the California Community College system to refer to staff who are in non-faculty, non-counselor, and non-administration roles including administrative assistants, financial aid, facilities, and maintenance, to name a few. This episode elevates our awareness of the ways classified professionals, or staff, advance servingness for students while advocating for classified colleagues on campus. Amparo Medina currently serves as the Student Activities Specialist at Oxnard College and is heavily involved in the Classified Senate where she completed 6 years as the Classified Senate President. Desiree Ortiz works at Irvine Valley College Police Department as the Senior Administrative Assistant and is a past Classified Senate President. Amparo and Desiree describe how their volunteer roles in Classified Senate is essential to servingness, both for students and for their colleagues as they advocate for equitable representation on campus.
Amparo Medina (she/her)
Student Activities Specialist, Oxnard College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amparocmedina 
Desiree Ortiz (she/ella/her)
Senior Administrative Assistant, Police Services, Irvine Valley College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/desiree-ortiz-2ab78863/
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.ccccs.org/nonprofit-organization-about-us/4cs

Classified Professionals’ Self-Advocacy & Empowerment - Audio 1

We kick off season 5 of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? with a dynamic duo of Chicana-Latina leaders who serve their campuses and advocate for their colleagues through the Classified Professionals Senate. Classified professionals is a term used in the California Community College system to refer to staff who are in non-faculty, non-counselor, and non-administration roles including administrative assistants, financial aid, facilities, and maintenance, to name a few. This episode elevates our awareness of the ways classified professionals, or staff, advance servingness for students while advocating for classified colleagues on campus. Amparo Medina serves as the Student Activities Specialist at Oxnard College and is heavily involved in the Classified Senate where she completed 6 years as the Classified Senate President. Desiree Ortiz works at Irvine Valley College Police Department as the Senior Administrative Assistant and is a past Classified Senate President. Amparo and Desiree describe how their volunteer roles in Classified Senate is essential to servingness, both for students and for their colleagues as they advocate for equitable representation on campus.
Guests: 
Amparo Medina (she/her)
Student Activities Specialist, Oxnard College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amparocmedina 
Desiree Ortiz (she/ella/her)
Senior Administrative Assistant, Police Services, Irvine Valley College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/desiree-ortiz-2ab78863/
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.ccccs.org/nonprofit-organization-about-us/4cs
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, August 11). Classified Professionals’ Self-Advocacy & Empowerment. (No.501) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/
 

Summer 2024 Charla with Dra. Garcia & Allen “AC” Williams

Guests: 
Gina Ann Garcia (she/her/hers), Professor of Higher Education, UC Berkeley https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginaanngarcia/
Allen “AC” Williams (he/him/his), Assistant Director for Retention Initiatives, University at Buffalo https://www.linkedin.com/in/acwp95/  
 
Episode Description: 
This is a short episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? available in both audio on your favorite podcast apps and video on our YouTube channel. Join our host Dra. Gina Ann Garcia and our production manager Allen “AC” Williams as they talk about the summer 2024 listening lists and share the tea on some of their favorite episodes.

Decolonizing HSIs

In this final episode of season 4 we dive into the concept of decolonizing HSIs. This plática features Lorena González, a Michoacana, Purepecha, Mexica Indigenous cis gender mujer who is faculty in counseling and La Raza Studies at Contra Costa College. Lorena lays out practical ways that HSIs can move beyond land acknowledgements and towards true decolonization for Latine students. She calls HSIs in, challenging us to reflect on the ways colonial logics are ingrained in the practices, policies, and culture of the institution, from the flags that are raised on campus to the language used to describe inequities. She pushes us to think about these inequities as injustices, because in a decolonial model we must move past the smoke and mirrors, and for HSIs that means having hard conversations about the ways that HSI grants are insufficient for advancing justice and liberation for communities of color. Lorena’s servingness philosophy is grounded in her lived experience as a transnational, multilingual woman crossing borders in education and life. She provides us a glimpse of what it looks like to embody a decolonial perspective and to live it through and through, from mothering to serving her community to disrupting her own HSI in practice. This episode is the perfect finale to this season, as we kicked it off with reflections on decolonization and liberation in equity spaces, and finish it with truth telling from our wise ancestor in the making, La Lorena, a true revolutionary.
Guest: Lorena González (she/her/ella), Faculty (Counseling/La Raza Studies), Contra Costa College
Instagram: @xingona516
Show Notes:
https://voices.berkeley.edu/education/committed-equity-education
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, June 2). Decolonizing HSIs. (No.410) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/410

Noncredit institutions are HSIs too: A conversation with President Tina King

In this episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? we learn about San Diego College of Continuing Education, a noncredit college that enrolls more than 25% Hispanic students, yet is unqualified for HSI eligibility due to the federal definition. Dra. Tina King, president of SDCCE, talks about how the college enacts servingness despite HSI ineligibility. We talk about her equity-minded approach to leadership and her unwavering commitment to students. She also talks about her life growing up as a proud Afro-Latina born to a Black father and Mexican mother from Jalisco. Despite her pride, she also shares her experiences with anti-Blackness in the Latinx community. She reminds us of the teachings of Paulo Freire on how those who are oppressed can become oppressors too. President King is a transformative leader whose vision is guided by the core values of inclusive excellence, equity-mindedness, and institutional responsibility for student success. Before serving as president, she was Assistant Superintendent/Vice President for Student Affairs at Southwestern College, an HSI, following a high impact career in both public K-12 education and postsecondary education. Dra. King is the first Afro-Latina to lead one of California’s community colleges and her pride and joy in this work is evident throughout this episode. 
Dra. Tina M. King (She/Her/Ella), President, San Diego College of Continuing Education
Instagram: @sdccepresident | X: @drkingtina | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-maria-king-ed-d-14943235/ 
Website: https://sdcce.edu/organization/president
Attachments / Show Notes: 
https://workforce.org/news/san-diego-workforce-partnership-development-board-welcomes-three-new-members/
https://timesofsandiego.com/education/2023/11/27/san-diego-college-of-continuing-ed-awarded-1-175-million-grant-to-expand-welding-program/
https://www.hispanicoutlook.com/articles/dr-tina-m-king-giving-back-students-her
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, May 19). Noncredit institutions are HSIs too: A conversation with President Tina King. (No.409) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/409

Lessons in Grassroots Leadership

In this episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? we engage in lessons in grassroots leadership with Dra. Leticia Villarreal Sosa, a scholar activist who serves as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor in the School of Social Work at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She shares stories of the risks and challenges that grassroots leaders face while trying to transform their campuses into Latine-serving spaces. As a social worker who centers feminist teachings and racial justice in her work, enacting servingness comes natural to her, yet she has faced numerous struggles and strong opposition along the way. One of her passions is curriculum redesign, which she describes for us, providing techniques for making changes to curriculum, measuring critical consciousness as a goal of the course, and strategies for getting changes through formal governance structures. We also talk about our co-authored article on “decolonizing faculty governance” and the fear, anger, and resistance we invoked from colleagues. With every story, Dra. Villarreal Sosa weaves in the risks she has taken while doing the work. Grassroots leadership is vital to HSI transformation, and many of us can learn from Leticia in this episode.
Guest: Dra. Leticia Villarreal Sosa (she/her/hers/ella), Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development | Professor in the School of Social Work, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
X: @leticiavillarr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leticia-villarreal-sosa-58a2b320/ 
Instagram: @nepantlahealing
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, May 5). Lessons in Grassroots Leadership. (No.408) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/408
Attachments / Show notes: 
Villarreal Sosa, L., Garcia, G. A., & Bucher, J. (2022). Decolonizing faculty governance in Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/15381927221126781
Villarreal Sosa, L., & Castillo Martinez, M. (2023). Human rights and Latina feminisms: Implications for clinical practice with the Latine diaspora in anti-immigrant times. Clinical Social Work Journal. https://doi.org//10.1007/s10615-023-00892-0
Villarreal Sosa, L., Roth, B., Rodriquez, S. (2021). Crossing borders: Exploring the role of social workers in immigrant-serving schools. Social Work Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svab011  
Villarreal Sosa, L. & Lesniewski, J. (2020). De-colonizing study abroad: Social workers confronting racism, sexism and poverty in Guatemala. Social Work Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1770719
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088162 (link to forthcoming book)

Sac State Using Student Voices to Transform HSIs

We are committed to centering student voices on ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? This episode provides the opportunity to learn about the Using Our Voices to Transform HSIs project at California State University, Sacramento (Sac State). The project, funded by the College Futures Foundation, explores Latinx/e student perceptions of servingness at Sac State and aims to interrogate how university policies, programs, and practices support Latinx/e student success. Four members of the Using Our Voices team, Dr. Amber Gonzalez, professor at Sac State, Dr. Kevin Ferreira van Leer, assistant professor at University of Connecticut, Jacky Villalobos, alumni of Sac State, and Samantha Secundido, student at Sac State, talk about the history of the project, their process as co-researchers, and some of the core findings. They also share how their project caught the attention of the administration on campus, which has led to structural and policy changes for students. Participatory action research (PAR) has the power to transform HSIs, but it’s not easy work. This episode spotlights the processes necessary to engage in successful PAR work with students at HSIs. And if there is one thing all HSIs should do, it is listen to their students.
Guests: 
Amber Gonzalez (she/her), Professor, California State University, Sacramento
Kevin Ferreira van Leer (he/him/el), Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut
Twitter & Instagram: @DrKevinFvL | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin1ferreira/
Website: https://www.drferreiravanleer.com/ https://arclab.hdfs.uconn.edu/projects/elevating-equity/
Jacky Villalobos (she/her), Alumni & Doctorate of Physical Therapy Student, California State University, Sacramento 
Samantha Secundido (she/her), Student, California State University, Sacramento
Instagram: @xo.samy
Attachments / Show notes: 
Instagram: @csus.usingourvoices 
Website: https://www.usingourvoiceshsi.com/
https://www.csus.edu/news/newsroom/stories/2023/9/listening-to-students.html

Brown Table Talk with President Olivo

In this episode we transform the ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? microphone into a brown table talk with one of our favorite HSI leaders Dra. Cynthia Olivo, who is the 10th president of Fullerton College. Dra. Olivo’s career spans nearly three decades, serving in many roles including Assistant Superintendent and Vice President of Student Services at Pasadena City College and Associate Director of Admissions and Student Recruitment at California State University, San Bernardino. In this plática we learn about how she has served as a champion for equity and academic excellence for students, how she has worked towards organizational change, poco a poco, with minor tweaks, and how culture, ceremony, and celebration are core tenets of her leadership. She also shares best practices for coalition building across racial-ethnic groups as informed by an organization she co-founded, The Coalition. Throughout our plática Dra. Olivo shares her personal history as the granddaughter of migrant farmworkers, the daughter of a single mother, a first-generation college student, and a third-generation Chicana who went from EOP student to college president.
Guest: Cynthia Olivo (She, Her, Ella), Presidenta, Fullerton College
Social Media: @drcynthiaolivo
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, April 7). Brown Table Talk with President Olivo. (No.406) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/306
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.fullcoll.edu/president/
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/09/25/higher-educations-racial-inequities-000978/
https://edsource.org/2021/to-close-racial-equity-gaps-make-it-simpler-for-community-college-students-to-transfer/657575
https://www.thecoalitioncc.org/