Season 4

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/

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)

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