UNM's HSI Symposium

 
 

Overview

The University of New Mexico has long held the title as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Despite this historic title, UNM has not established an identity, praxis, or formal infrastructure to support Hispanic students, faculty, staff, and community. Institutional practices must value and acknowledge the diverse UNM community by creating opportunities that advance the successes of Hispanic and Latinx students. To further these efforts, we are organizing this symposium with the explicit purpose of bringing together university leadership, faculty, staff, students, and community partners to converge and be proactive in a campus wide initiative that reflects and advances a student-centric and unified vision of UNM’s HSI identity.

This symposium will feature Dr. Gina Ann García, professor of education and author of Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice, to facilitate this critical conversation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). As a scholar of equity and justice in higher education, Dr. García’s research and practitioner expertise will be instrumental to support UNM’s goal to create an uplifting culture that thrives on ensuring the success of Latinx and historically underserved students. We invite you to join us in transforming UNM’s identity and praxis! 

Details

We aim to engage in vital conversations to enhance the vision set forth by the UNM 2040 Strategic Framework. We invite our academic community and leadership to take part in the symposium to explore what it means to be an HSI; addressing infrastructural disconnect between the university and Hispanic populations regarding funding, institutional support, and academic programming. We aim to host Dr. García with the prospects to further enhance UNM’s understanding of HSI servingness and create a strategic action plan that goes beyond Hispanic enrolling to Hispanic serving.
Dr. Gina Ann García is a professor in the School of Education at University of California, Berkeley. Her research interrogates issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI). Specifically examining how HSIs embrace and enact an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She critically analyzes institutions, and the role administrators, faculty, and staff play in supporting Hispanic and Latinx students at HSIs. Dr. García is author of several books on this topic, including Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and edited, Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs (Information Age Publishing, 2020), amongst others. Her expertise on HSIs will augment UNM’s effort to brainstorm strategies and initiate the drafting of a strong plan of action towards a reimagined university structure. To learn more about Dr. García click here
The symposium will be held Friday, October 4, 2024, from 8:00am to 3:00pm in the Student Union Building Ballrooms. The event will begin with a keynote by Dr. Gina Ann García titled, “Defining Servingness in Practice at a Hispanic Serving Institution and Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions.” Following, Dr. García will host a workshop to reflect and assess department policies and procedures. During lunch, a panel of undergraduate and graduate students from across campus will share their experience. Finally, we will host a session where will continue to reflect and engage in action planning to move our university forward in establishing an identity and praxis to match our HSI designation. The day-long symposium is an opportunity to have critical dialogue about the current state of students and how we can transform already existing policies and practices to ensure that Hispanic and Latinx students are being retained, supported, and empowered.
 

This symposium is brought to you by various campus partners with a special thank you to:

  • African American Student Services
  • American Indian Student Services
  • Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
  • Deparment of History
  • Division for Equity and Inclusion
  • Division of Student Affairs
  • Office of Career Services
  • Office of Graduate Studies
  • Office of the President
  • Office of the Provost
  • Student Union Building
  • Collaborative Research: HSI-Hubs: Intersectionality as Inquiry & Praxis: Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity for Student Success in STEM. 

    - Award Number: 2310990; Principal Investigator: Dr. Nancy López. The opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

 

Special thanks to the planning committee:  

  • Alejandro Mendiaz-Rivera, Program Manager - El Centro de la Raza
  • Audrey García, Program Coordinator - El Centro de la Raza
  • Cinthia León Lazcano, Student Success Coordinator - El Centro de la Raza
  • Daniel Torres-Chaparro, Student Success Specialist Sr. - El Centro de la Raza
  • Dr. Nancy López, Professor - Sociology and Criminology
  • Froilán Orozco, Visiting Lecturer - UNM-Taos
  • Gustavo García, PhD Candidate - Chicana and Chicano Studies
  • Julián Ángel, Program Assistant - El Centro de la Raza
  • Natalia Toscano, PhD Candidate - Chicana and Chicano Studies
  • Rosa Isela Cervantes, Director - El Centro de la Raza & Special Advisor to the President on Latino Affairs
  • Valerie Chavez, Graduate Assistant - El Centro de la Raza