Season 5

Stories of Transformation & Healing

Class is in session with Dr. Alexandro Jose Gradilla, an activist professor at Cal State Fullerton who is grounded in liberatory and decolonial praxis. In this episode we learn how to utilize both federal and private foundation grants to enhance servingness with and for Latine undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. In his words he provides us with a “hometown buffet” of things you can do as a faculty member at an HSI including building pathway programs, designing and developing curriculum, and advocating and changing policies that harm students. Dr. Gradilla shares stories of success in institutional mentoring and building curriculum that serves both the Cal State University system and the California Community College system. He has been a co-PI on Title V, Part B grants that are making an impact and is currently the PI for a Mellon Foundation grant that funded two programs at CSU Fullerton: the Escritores Promotores and the Social Justice and Storytelling Institute Summer Program. Dr. Gradilla is a storyteller, an activist, and a healer with a clear vision for what servingness is and should be. Beware, this episode will ignite your desire to make change on your campus and in your community!
Guest: 
Alexandro Jose Gradilla (El/He), Associate Professor Chicana/o Studies, CSU Fullerton 
IG: @amoxpoa @escritorespromotores | X: @ajgradilla
LinkedIn http://linkedin.com/in/alexandrojosegradilla
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, November 17). Stories of Transformation & Healing. (No.508) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://hss.fullerton.edu/latinxlab/storytelling.html
https://hss.fullerton.edu/latinxlab/escritores-promotores/
https://hss.fullerton.edu/chicano/faculty/facultyprofile/a_gradilla.aspx

The New England HSI Movement

Let’s welcome New England to the mic! In this episode we learn about the HSI Movement taking place in Massachusetts and across the New England region. Our guests include Dra. Elisa Castillo, the Assistant Vice President of Hispanic and Minority Serving Initiatives at Salem State University, and Julissa Colón, the Founding Director of El Centro at Holyoke Community College. These mujeres are fierce and claiming their role as leaders in the HSI movement. They describe the New England Hispanic and Minority Serving Institution Conference which was funded by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education and talk about the many ways the state is supporting their HSI efforts. Elisa shares the journey of Salem State, an emerging HSI that has laid out a “Roadmap to Servingness” while Julissa contrasts that with the story of Holyoke Community College, one of the first HSIs in the Massachusetts with a longer history of servingness. They talk extensively about the unique identities of the Latines they serve including Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Brazillians and describe the need for Caribbean-specific servingness (think, Bad Bunny, Portuguese, and mofongo). The energy in this episode is high and the knowledge-sharing is abundant. Wepa!
Guests: 
Elisa Castillo (she/her/ella)
Assistant Vice President for Hispanic and Minority Serving Initiatives, Salem State University
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-castillo-phd-9192384 
Julissa I. Colón (she/her)
Director, El Centro, Holyoke Community College
Facebook: Julissa Colon | Instagram: @jewelsjuliecolon | 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julissa-colón-mpa-9b50981bb/
APA Citation 
Garcia, G. A. (Host). (2024, November 3).  The New England HSI Movement (No.507) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://www.salemstate.edu/hsi
https://www.salemstate.edu/hsiconference
https://www.salemstate.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/The%20SSU%20Roadmap%20to%20Servingness_10_23_WEB.pdf 
https://www.hcc.edu/courses-and-programs/academic-support/el-centro
https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/09/julissa-colon-helps-latinx-students-succeed-at-holyoke-community-college.html 
https://www.hcc.edu/about/news-events-and-media/news-stories/julissa-colon

¿Si No Yo, Quien? HSI Directors Leading the Way

This episode features Dra. Cyndia Morales Muñiz who serves as Senior Director of HSI Initiatives at University of Central Florida (UCF). Dra. Muñiz led efforts that resulted in UCF becoming a federally recognized HSI in 2019. She now works across the university to develop a centralized vision for maximizing this designation in a way that meaningfully serves students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members from diverse backgrounds. In this episode we learn how she leverages her HSI director role to lead the HSI movement on campus, start conversations about servingness, and encourage faculty and staff to get involved with HSI initiatives. She shares the process of UCF achieving the Seal of Excelencia and highlights the value of using the Seal’s guidelines in conjunction with the servingness framework as a way to transform the campus. She also talks about how the campus has used the HSI designation to open conversations about better serving all students, while holding people accountable for talking specifically about Latine student success. She drops so many gems for all HSI campus leaders and shares many stories of success in achieving federal, private foundation, and corporate grants to be innovative in their servingness efforts.
Cyndia Morales Muñiz (She/Her/Ella), Senior Director, HSI Initiatives, University of Central Florida
LinkedIn: Cyndia Morales Muñiz, Ed.D. | Facebook: Cyndia Morales Muñiz
LinkedIn and Facebook: UCF Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives
Instagram: @cyndiamuniz and @ucf_hsi
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G. A. (Host). (2024, October 6). ¿Si No Yo, Quien? HSI Directors Leading the Way (No.505) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
Attachments / Show notes: 
https://access.ucf.edu/hispanic-serving-institution/ 
https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-awarded-5-7m-in-federal-funding-for-hsi-initiatives-through-2027/
Franco, M. A., & Muñiz, C. M. (2022). Centering servingness: Framework‐informed assessment of Hispanic‐Serving Institutions. In A. A. Mitchell & K. M. Dixon (Eds.), New Directions for Student Services: Student Affairs Assessment: Nuanced Practice to Leverage Equity (97–109). Wiley.

HSIs as Public Policy

In this episode Luis Maldonado teaches us about little “p” policy, or public policy, which includes finding solutions to difficult problems. As a policy advocate and lobbyist working with various organizations in Washington, DC for nearly 30 years, Luis has extensive knowledge on how public policy works. He served as director of government relations for HACU for 9 years, successfully establishing in law the federal authorization to create two important funding programs directed exclusively at HSIs: the Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (PPOHA), or Title V, Part B, and the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education HSIs Grant program at the National Science Foundation. Luis provides us with an overview of how these programs, that HSIs may now take for granted, came into fruition and the long-term advocacy that was needed. Luis is a storyteller, sharing consejos from the trenches of public policy. He also shares his thoughts on the 2024 election and Project 2025 and offers advice for our listeners to become knowledgeable voters. Luis does servingness from the public policy space, advocating for the students and institutions he cares the most about—Latines and HSIs.
Guest: Luis Maldonado (he/him), Vice President for Government Relations, American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)
Social Media: @AASCUPolicy
Attachments / Show notes: https://aascu.org/
APA Citation: 
Garcia, G.A. (Host). (2024, September 22). HSIs as Public Policy (No.504) [Audio podcast episode]. In ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?. https://www.ginaanngarcia.com/podcast/ 
 

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/