¿Qué pasa, HSIs?

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/

Navigating AANAPISI & HSI Dual Designation

This episode is packed with MSI-HSI-AANAPISI knowledge! Whether you are at a dual or multiple designation campus or not, this episode is for you! Our guest Dr. Mike Hoa Nguyen is an assistant professor of education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the principal investigator of the MSI Data Project. He has extensive professional experience that informs his research, having served as a senior staff member in the United States Congress and a program associate at De Anza College, an AANAPISI in California. In this episode we dive deep into the weeds of the MSI federal designation, with Dr. Nguyen educating us on the complexities and possibilities of being dual designated as an HSI & AANAPISI. He also talks about the usefulness of the servingness framework for AANAPISIs (Asian American & Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions) and offers suggestions for engaging with state and federal legislators and private foundations as a way to advance our HSI-AANAPISI grant work. He also shares the roots of the MSI Data Project and talks about ways to use the data in research and practice.
Guest: Mike Hoa Nguyen (he/him), Assistant Professor, New York University
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, March 24). Navigating AANAPISI & HSI Dual Designation (No.405) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show Notes: 
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/mike-hoa-nguyen
https://www.msidata.org/

Elevating Managerial Professionals & Support Staff in Servingness

In this episode Dra. Karla Silva talks about her research with managerial professionals and support staff at HSIs. Her findings indicate that these practitioners are often the people on the ground implementing servingness at HSIs, yet they are overlooked in the servingness research, not invited to the HSI conversations on campus, and don’t feel like they are part of servingness efforts. They also feel overworked and underpaid, yet the majority are women and Black, Indigenous, People of Color with a great level of commitment to serving minoritized populations. Karla shines an important light on this essential group of staff members at all HSIs, and asks us to consider how we are serving them. Dra. Silva, who is a first-generation college graduate, Chicana, daughter of immigrants, mama, scholar-practitioner, serves as the Director of HSI Initiatives at the University of Arizona. In addition to her research, she shares some of the secrets to doing intentional servingness work and the importance of having a permanent HSI Director on campus. We explore important topics like engaging alumni and working with private foundations and corporations to support servingness efforts.
Guest: Dra. Karla Silva (She/ Her/ Ella), Director, Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives, University of Arizona
Social Media: 
X: @DraCruzeSilva
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karla-cruze-silva-phd-b110b958/
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, March 10). Elevating Managerial Professionals & Support Staff in Servingness (No.404) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show notes:
https://hsi.arizona.edu/

HSI NOW: Advancing Servingness in Wisconsin

We make our way to the Midwest for this episode, learning with the HSI Network of Wisconsin. HSI-NOW is a coalition of leaders from colleges and universities across the state of Wisconsin with a mission to collectively develop the ideal conditions to serve, educate, and advance Hispanic/Latino* students to create equitable opportunities in higher education. In this plática, I talk to 2 members of the network who share the origin story, purpose, and major milestones that the network has made. A key take-away of this episode is that collaboration and cooperation will take us much further in our own individual campus servingness journeys than competition will. Our guests include Jacki Black, the Director of Hispanic Initiatives and Diversity & Inclusion Educational Programming at Marquette University, and Alberto Maldonado, the Director of the Roberto Hernández Center at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Both Jacki and Alberto have an unwavering commitment to serving Latine/x students in higher education and both value community, family, language, and culture and work hard to ensure that students on their individual campuses are seen, heard, and served.
Guests:
Jacki Black (She/Her), Director of Hispanic Initiatives and Diversity & Inclusion Educational Programming, Marquette University
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacki-black-036170123/
 
Alberto Maldonado (He/Him/Él) Director Roberto Hernández Center/Special Assistant to the Vice-Chancellor for DEI & Co-lead for the Chancellors Committee for Hispanic Serving Initiatives, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Instagram:@donpepe1970
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alberto-maldonado-b4b00512/
 
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, February 25). HSI NOW: Advancing Servingness in Wisconsin (No.403) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
 
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://stories.marquette.edu/the-hispanic-serving-institution-network-of-wisconsin-hsi-at-marquette-f93e10eec2f7
https://www.hacu.net/images/hacu/conf/33ac/MarquetteHACU%20presentation%202019_final.pdf
Hispanic student enrollment up at Milwaukee-area universities as schools increase efforts | WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR
UWM's Roberto Hernández Center provides Latinx students a home away from home (youtube.com)

Confessions of a Critical Friend to HSIs

In this episode we elevate the voice of one alumni of an HSI who calls themselves a critical friend to the institution. Throughout this episode we grapple with the tensions of calling on HSIs to change the structural ways they serve students while acknowledging some of the progress being made. I talk to Carlos Benitez Cruz (they/them) who is a PhD student in Community Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Carlos reflects on their time as a student at Dominican University, highlighting how they advocated for a cultural center on campus by learning from the legacy of struggle highlighted in the PBS documentary, The First Rainbow Coalition. Carlos also reflects on lost opportunities, like the failed retention of a Latina staff member who was highly favored by students of color, and calls to question the role of class struggle in HSIs, which continue to be neoliberal institutions that rely on the production of students who get jobs and the money they bring into the institution. The confessions of a critical friend are also the confessions of a highly engaged, politically active, student artist-activist at an HSI that didn’t adequately serve them.
 
Guest: Carlos Benitez Cruz (they/them), PhD Student in Community Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Social Media: X: @xismoso_
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, February 11). Confessions of a Critical Friend to HSIs (No.402) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.genderjustice-uic.org/ 
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-first-rainbow-coalition/

Honoring the Past & Strategizing for the Future

We kick off another season of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? with our friends from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Dr. Michael Benitez, Jr. serves as the Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion and Dr. Del Real serves as the Executive Director of HSI Initiatives and Inclusion. In this episode we talk about the strategies they have used to advance servingness both on campus and across the state of Colorado. They talk about using HSI grants to advance servingness and discuss the importance of having both a V.P. of Diversity and Inclusion and a campus-funded Director of HSIs on campus to drive HSI efforts. We also dream about educational liberation and Latinx-informed innovation and accountability for serving. Throughout this episode we honor the past, the work of elders, and the work of leaders who sometimes put their jobs on the lines for what would become HSIs.
Guests: 
Dr. Michael Benitez, Jr. (He/His/Him/Yo), Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion,
Metropolitan State University of Denver
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-benitez-jr-ph-d-4656333/
 
Dr. Manuel Del Real (He/Him/Él), Executive Director of HSI Initiatives and Inclusion,
Metropolitan State University of Denver
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-d-66532925
Instagram: elpositivo03 | msudenverdiversity
 
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, January 28). Honoring the Past & Strategizing for the Future. (No.401) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
 
Show Notes: 
https://www.msudenver.edu/diversity/hispanic-serving-institution/
http://www.tobyjenkins.net/the-hip-hop-mindset.html

Linguistic Servingness at HSIs

For the final episode of season 3 I talk to Vanessa Varela, Assistant Professor in Education, and Jason Meyler, Associate Professor of Spanish at Mount Mary University, a small women’s college HSI in Wisconsin. In this episode we dive into HSI NOW efforts in Milwaukee, the evolution of servingness at Mount Mary University, and the importance of acknowledging language and multilingualism in servingness efforts. Our guests highlight Mount Mary’s multilingual strategic plan, which is embedded in their HSI philosophy, and the Culture, Classroom, and Multilingual Learners Workshop, which builds capacity among faculty, adjuncts, and tutors to deliver academic content in diverse linguistic classrooms. This is the first ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? episode to unpack linguistic servingness in HSI, but it won’t be the last as this topic is truly multidimensional as Vanessa and Jason highlight. Listen in and learn about linguistic mobility at HSIs.
Guests:
Vanessa Varela (she/her/ella), Assistant Professor in Education, Mount Mary University 
www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-varelam1
https://twolanguageedition.wordpress.com/ 
Jason Meyler (He, him, él), Associate Professor of Spanish | Chairperson of the World Languages Department | Coordinator of the Leadership for Social Justice Seminar, Mount Mary University
linkedin.com/in/jason-meyler-48a86573
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2023, November 12). Linguistic Servingness at HSIs. (No.310) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcasthttps://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/episode/c29d5e2b/linguistic-servingness-at-hsis

The Making of an Intentional HSI: Cabrillo College

This multi-guest episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? is full of knowledge sharing. I had the opportunity to talk to 5 members of Cabrillo College’s HSI Task Force, who shared their journey to making an intentional HSI. They talk about the accomplishments of their HSI Task Force, share tips for gaining support on campus for HSI efforts, and talk about the secret sauce to servingness work, which includes grassroots leadership and support from positional leaders including the president and trustees. We also learn about the historic moments along Cabrillo College’s path to becoming an HSI. Ann Endris, Title V HSI Director at Cabrillo College and former associate faculty member is joined by Cabrillo College alum Dr. Blanca Baltazar-Sabbah who shares much of the historical aspects of Cabrillo’s HSI identity. Dr. Alicia Bencomo Garcia, a tenure-track instructor of Ethnic Studies at Cabrillo, and Serina Eichelberger, a social justice focused educational leader and Title III HSI STEM Project Director at Cabrillo share information about Cabrillo’s current efforts to embrace an HSI identity. President Matt Wetstein rounds out the group in this episode, sharing a president’s perspective on the process of becoming an intentional HSI.
Guests: 
Ann Endris (she/her), Title V Director
Instagram: @akendris
Blanca Baltazar-Sabbah (she/her/ella), Dean, Academic Counseling, Career, and Educational Support Services (ACCESS)
X: @DraBaltazar | https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-blanca-baltazar-sabbah-5a2374b2
Alicia Bencomo Garcia (she/her), Faculty
X: @AliG_phdjourney
Serina Eichelberger (she/ella/they), HSI Title III STEM Project Director
linkedin.com/in/serina-eichelberger-335b3220
Matthew Wetstein (he, him), President
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2023, November 5). The making of an intentional HSI: Cabrillo College. (No.309) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/episode/9e499aaf/the-making-of-an-intentional-hsi-cabrillo-college 
Show Notes: 
Cabrillo College HSI Task Force Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19fQ43ZqjOyLrYIYk1kub3GGIwYeoNDc-/view 
Cabrillo College HSI website: https://www.cabrillo.edu/office-of-instruction/hispanic-serving-institution/ 
Cuellar, M. G., Garcia, G. A., Nuñez Martinez, M., & Bencomo Garcia, A. (2023). Building capacity for equity and servingness across California’s Hispanic-serving community colleges. USC Race and Equity Center. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62c4ba2609f6370427726636/t/64e3fc4108a23457e70a9415/1692662859454/Report%2B4%2BHSCC-spreads-small+%281%29.pdf
Delayed name change at Cabrillo College  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/community-colleges/2023/08/17/cabrillo-college-delays-choosing-new-name# 
Title V Transfer Pathways: https://www.cabrillo.edu/title-v/ 
Title V Abriendo El Camino: https://www.cabrillo.edu/abriendo-el-camino/
Title III ACCESSO: https://www.cabrillo.edu/title-iii-hsi-stem/

Streetwise Epistemology and Servingness

In this episode of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? we think outside of the normative constructs of higher education learning with and from Dr. Joe Louis Hernandez who is the Director for the Rising Scholars program at Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC). Dr. Hernandez is a Streetwise Scholar who attended Mt SAC, Cal State LA, and Cal State Long Beach, all of which are HSIs, having profound effects on his educational journey. But more so than the institutions, he talks about mentors and co-defendants who have guided him along the way, many of whom believed he would get a PhD before he did. He talks to us about his own journey from the carceral system to the graduation stage at Claremont Graduate University. His research focuses on the experiences of formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students in higher education with an anti-deficit perspective on this student population. Joe Louis' passion for serving this population arises from his own experience with incarceration and having gone through the criminal justice system. We discuss the Rising Scholars Program, which fosters a college-completing atmosphere and a holistic approach to student development, and his research, which teaches us how servingness can co-exist with streetwise epistemology.
Joe Louis Hernandez (he/him/él), Rising Scholars Director, Mt. San Antonio College | Adjunct Professor, Cal Poly Pomona Department of Educational Leadership
Twitter: @STRWISEScholar | Instagram: @STREETWISE_SCHOLAR
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-louis-hernandez-ph-d-2b223318a
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2023, October 29). Streetwise epistemology and servingness. (No.308) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/episode/a170d1f8/streetwise-epistemology-and-servingness 
Attachments / Show notes: 
Hernandez, J. L. (2023). A struggle so beautiful: The roses that rise from the concrete: Exploring transformative ruptures in the higher education journeys of formerly incarcerated Latinx/a/o students through relationships with institutional agents. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Claremont Graduate University. 
Hernandez, J. L., Murillo, D., Britton, T. (2023). Hustle in higher education: How Latinx students with conviction histories move from surviving to thriving in higher education. American Behavioral Scientist, 66(10), 1394–1417. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211054827
Abeyta, M., Torres, A., Hernandez, J. L., Duran, O. (2021). Rising Scholars: A case study of two community colleges serving formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students. Journal of Applied Research in the Community College, 28(1), 99-109.
Binnall, J. M., Sotelo, I., Vasquez, A., Hernandez, J. L. (2019). Making good one semester at a time: Formerly incarcerated students (and their professor) considering the redemptive power of inclusive education. In K. M. Middlemass & C. J. Smiley (Eds.) Prisoner reentry in the 21st century: Critical perspectives of returning home (pp. 382-395). Routledge.