Gina Garcia
We need faculty thinking about HSI distinctly around like faculty right around faculty life. So that’s top of my mind is learning from all this stuff that I’ve been sharing how to do HSI and surveillance for so long, and now I get to do it finally, I didn’t get to do it for so long. Besides campuses I worked with I obviously do a lot of consulting with campuses and help them to drive it but now it’s it’s matters because it’s my campus right and we’re gonna, we’re gonna see this come, we will see our 20 we will hit 25% I’m for sure I’m gonna see that. Will I see the moment where we are fully HSI fully embracing service? Probably not right. Like I said, this is going to take time, I’m going to embrace that. But so that’s pretty cool is that I get to finally do the work that I talked so much about.

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by Dr. Gina Garcia, who has researched written about speaks and consults in even as a podcast on Hispanic serving institutions. HSIs Gina is a fierce advocate for these institutions, especially the students they serve good and will serve. I’m so excited to learn from you today. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We released new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode or browser archives. It’s studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is sponsored by Routledge, Taylor and Francis, you their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. This episode is also sponsored by Huron a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, author and coach helping higher ed leaders and organizations advanced leadership, learning and equity. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. And I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands, and both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to the conversation. Gina, thank you so much for joining us. Let’s just give you some space to introduce yourself and your work with HSIs for folks who aren’t as familiar.

Gina Garcia
Okay hello, everybody. And thank you, Keith, for the invitation to be here on Student Affairs NOW. It brings me joy whenever I can get back to my student affairs roots. As you know, I have extensive training in student affairs have a degree from in college student personnel from the University of Maryland and did spend a lot of time my early formative years in various student affairs roles. I don’t spend as much time now because I am in a faculty role and do a lot of research. But I always keep that close to my heart, right that student affairs is really I always say that’s my entryway into higher education, despite the fact that I now do much sort of broader right, sort of research hired broadly. So you’re I’m Gina Garcia, I’m a professor at UC Berkeley, I’m a full professor, one of less than 2%, Latina identified full professors in the country. So definitely have to say that it’s mind blowing to me to even say that, but I do, you know, I do respect that. And also, it’s an honor right to be able to, to carry that and to know that there’s a lot of folks that are going to follow me and that part of my role is really opening the doors and making sure there are going to be more Latina, identified for professors to follow. So my pronouns are she and her for Spanish speakers, Aya and I, you know, write about Hispanic serving institutions, I pretty much do. That’s my whole life, if you really think about it. Many scholars have multiple strands of research, even when I would write my research statement early on, when I was a little baby scholar, as I say, I always had three strands. And at this point, I don’t have three strands. I HSI is my strand. There are different dimensions of how I write about each size, different dimensions of how I think about Hispanic serving institutions. But overall, that’s where I spend most of my time. I think part of it is because when I really started doing HSI research in 2012 2013, like when I was doing my dissertation, there was not a lot of extensive research about HSAs. At that point, there was some descriptive stuff, Excellency and education had wrote a series of briefs, they were doing a lot of, you know, policy briefs to help us to understand each size in general, but there wasn’t like deep empirical meaning making about a to size. And so it just there was so much to do when there’s still so much to do. When it comes to thinking about HSI size and how we’re going to think about serving this and advancing this idea of serving us. So yeah, so I spend most of my time thinking about HSI is I have a research team at UC Berkeley. My research team is eight students that like all were wanted to study higher education when I got there. I’ve been at UC Berkeley since fall 2023, so newer to UC Berkeley. And we just think about H size and do research with H sighs we have a couple of different projects, participatory action research type projects. That’s where a lot of my research is now is collecting data to make meaning make, you know, to create new knowledge around HSI is but really an action based part of my career where I’m like we’re going to do right we’re going to do surveys, we’re going to transform institutions. And if I can get grants to help campuses do that, while also studying it, then that’s what I want to do because I want to I want to see the actual change that I that I write about. So that’s why I spent most of my time doing besides Yes, I have a podcast get by HSIs check it out. And I spent a lot of time doing a lot of public speaking Hang, again being one of the I guess leading voices of HSI and one of the first like real scholar voices of HSI there’s a lot of great scholarship now a lot of good scholars doing work but you know, definitely have come into the scene as one of the leading voices of of HSI. So do a lot of public speaking as well.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, I love that intro. And we’ve known each other, I was trying to do the math, it’s almost 20 years. So I’m not gonna say strain. It was almost when you were a baby scholar at the University of Maryland. And so, you know, I use the word fierce in the introduction. And it’s no surprise that you’re focused on participatory research and action and the doing, and you’ve always been someone who wants to not just theorize and talk about it, but put it in practice and serve people and make the world a better place. And so you do that, in all of the different ways that you’re doing that. Let’s just get grounded here for maybe folks who this is a little bit new, who may not be as familiar and maybe dispel some myths and misconceptions that you may be encountering some of the work that you’re doing and some of the speaking engagements. But when we’re talking about Hispanic serving institutions, HSIs, what is that? What does that encompass? What does that really mean? And then we’ll dive in deeper, as you mentioned, into serving this year and a little bit. Yeah.

Gina Garcia
So Hispanic serving institutions are colleges and universities that enrolled 25% Hispanic students, it is a federal designation, been around since 1992 1992 to 1985, is the sort of timeframe that it becomes official, and then that they eventually get funded, right, that there is now a funding stream, with with monies that are earmarked for Hispanic serving institutions. But HSI really is not anything else beyond that definition. So from the federal government’s perspective, from the Department of Education, who is the one that they don’t as they actually say, they don’t designate, they actually, they determine whether or not an institution is eligible. So they call it HSA eligible and HSA eligible means HSA eligible to apply for competitive grants. So the 25% really makes you eligible to apply for competitive grants. And that’s the federal government’s role. And you know, because I study higher education, from this large perspective, I understand the federal government’s role in higher ed and providing funding is one of them without providing the regulation or the things that we have to do to make HSI HSI. So that’s not what the federal government that’s not what they’re in, in, that’s not their job, right. But to supply the funding, you can submit the competitive grant, and you can decide whatever you want to do with that competitive money, which I think is probably a very unique part of the HSI grants, and also a really good part. There’s, well, there’s pros and cons to it, everybody’s doing something different, like they’re doing whatever the heck they want. And some of that’s good to have a lot of innovation and be able to implement new things that your campus needs with your federal funding is great. But also there’s not regulations to what that looks like. So for example, you could submit a grant that’s only going to serve like 10 people and like you’re going to launch a new new type of curriculum that telling us like 10 or 20 people, and that’s, that’s fine. If it goes to the competitive process, and it gets funded, then that’s what HSI is for your campus. And so it’s it’s there’s there’s no consistency, right across campuses of what they’re doing with the funding. And therefore, this idea of serving us comes into play because we’re like, Well, what does it mean beyond the federal designation, like, what, more than enrolling 25%? Because across the board, most people agreed that enrolling 25% Latino Latino students was insufficient to be Hispanic serving, right, like that word serving for people was like, that can’t be it. Enrollment cannot be a particularly when you’re bringing in on a group of students who are historically underserved by educational systems, in many, many ways, historically underserved by this country in many, many ways. And say that now you’re serving them just because you provided them a slot, right? Like you. They admit it, you admitted them, right, that’s not serving, if you’re not actually doing anything to make sure that they like ensure their success at the end of the day. So the grants really are intended for that you are supposed to use the grants to ensure their success, ensure educational outcomes and attainment are greater than before you got the grant. That’s the goal, right is that you do things that are is going to be greater lead to greater outcomes. But again, like I said, it’s so like just undefined that people can do whatever they want. So there’s not a lot of consistency with what HSI is do with the with the federal dollars. I guess one myth I would say is that I dispel a lot is that people feel that HSI is Hispanic exclusive, and that doesn’t feel good to anybody and particularly When we’re in a world of like, you know, we want to be diverse, we want to be inclusive. So all of a sudden, it feels exclusive right to say where Hispanic Serving is like, but what about all the rest of our students? And so I spent a lot of time breaking down how it doesn’t mean exclusion. Federal Government definitely doesn’t mean intended to be exclusionary. Your federal grants actually are intended to serve your campus, their capacity building grant, so the campus is supposed to be better. The argument, of course, is that you should, if you make it better for your minoritized population, and like your Latino students, it’s going to be good for for other students as well. It’s just a matter of focusing on that population, I think, what do they specifically need? Right? What did it What’s your Latino students specifically need? But the exclusionary part feels weird for people. They want to know what about students? The biggest the biggest group of students I get asked about is what about black students? That’s huge, right? Like, people are like very concerned that like a really minoritized population. And I’ll just say minority, because often an HSI campus is a small, one of the smallest populations, not all each size, but one of your smallest populations being black students. Yet we know from an equity perspective, they’re struggling the most often, right that there are the greatest barriers to equity and least equitable outcomes for our black populations, also, our indigenous populations. So despite them being smallest groups on HSI campuses, how do we ensure we’re still doing that work? Right? How do we ensure we’re still doing equity work? So I do talk about HSI as a racial equity project for that reason, like HSI is non exclusionary, it’s a racial equity project. So if you’re doing equity work, and you’re disaggregating your data, then you’re going to continue to focus on the groups that really need you. And hands down. It’s always going to be your black students. It’s always going to be your Indigenous students or Native students, it’s often going to be your Latino Latina students. I say often because there are campuses that are almost hitting equity. And then they start to feel like oh, no, now what do we do? And I’m like, You celebrate or like,equity in the world.

Gina Garcia
What did you do? Exactly. But it’s weird. People get like, oh, no, there’s no way. We’re getting close to equity. I’m like, That’s great. Let’s do it. Right. So. So yeah, so there is a lot of that. That’s probably one of the biggest myths. There’s a tons of ton of myths and HSI but the feeling that it’s exclusionary is, I think the hardest for people to get past.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. So moving from this demographic designation. To the serving, this is a big part of it. 25%, you that’s still 75% of their students, right? There’s still room there. And some HSI is have a lot more than that. Some are right at that mark. But a lot of other students and I love your point about if you’re if you’re using these federal grant dollars, in ways that improves the campus community, for those Latin a Latin X Hispanic students, there will also be better for other students, particularly students who are struggling and if the campus becomes better for students who are struggling, it’s also better for students who experienced a lot of privilege and access, right, it’s going to be better for everyone. So I love that any other myths or misconceptions we want to dispel as we get off the gate here.

Gina Garcia
I said that we’re talking. There’s so many Ah, man. Oh, I think that’s the biggest one is exclusionary piece. I think the I mean, I think the usage of dollars gets misspelled like misconstrued for students, right? So when you start bringing students into the HSI conversation, which you should, you’re listening right now, and you’re trying to figure out how to do HS on your campus, please get students involved, like, students are not always brought into the HSI conversation. And it’s like, we’re trying to serve students, but we don’t ask students like, go figure, right. And so one of the things is, then students want to know, well, well, so we’re getting $2.5 million. Where’s the $2.5? million? Where where’s my piece of it? Right? Where do I since I checked the Hispanic box? Clearly, I’m part of the reason why you have an HSI designation, where’s the money, right? Where do I Where do I get to, you know, tap into some of those dollars. So having to dispel some of the that because like I said, they are capacity building grants that the campus gets to use them to create a better campus right in whatever ways they we believe, right, that the campus is going to be better. So even having to work through that with students. So to help them to understand what kind of grants these are over, particularly when they’re thinking about like grants or fellowships that come to them for individual, you know, for their individual need. This isn’t that kind of grant. Right. So it is it is a different kind of source of funding from the federal government that isn’t like your financial aid dollars, right. So that’s something to dispel with students, right, like so I think with each individual group, it’s really thinking through like, what is your misconceptions, right, what do you what do you think about HSI that is maybe incorrect, inaccurate, so I think that’s an important one, particularly student people are thinking about how to engage students in this a HSI conversation. But

Keith Edwards
and, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sort of thinking that the number of campuses that are going to become HSI is has to be like this hockey stick going up right now in terms of certainly certain parts of the country, but also in many parts of the country where that population is just booming. And like you said, there’s a lot of equity gaps, access gaps in pre college in K 12, and other things, also intersections of racism and classism, and ethnocentrism and immigration. But is this this seems to be like that, I would think the number of HSI is just ballooning right now and we’ll continue to do so.

Gina Garcia
Yes. So at the time we’re recording in July 2024. I’ll say that we are at 600 or so. Right? Yes, where 600 HSI is now currently at the campuses that have have met the 25%. Right? Mark, there are nearly 400 emerging HSI so the emerging HSI is, like 15 to 24%. So yeah, we are they’re, they’re gonna keep going up. It’s obviously correlated with the number of Latino students entering colleges and universities, which is, has dramatically increased in the last two decades, right, like, completely increase and will continue to increase because this is one of our largest growing populations in the country. So when you have a largest growing population, also a young population. So a young population is the school’s right, all we have to do is look at schools, school districts that are already hitting those predominantly matinee points. Obviously, those kids have to go somewhere, right. So where are they going? And we know that the patterns are generally that they are likely to stay close to home. Right, so we will see our Open Access broad access community college type of campuses that will see this designation quicker, right. So we’re not seeing it as quick as like, at the most selective institutions in the country, because that’s not where our Latino population is generally going. Right? There are obviously there are students that are entering that, but a big pop, big part of the population is staying close to home, it’s going to open access is going to community colleges, we know you know, community colleges have large percentages of Latino students are entering at the community college. So these it’s different types of institutions. Right. These are that’s that’s the that’s what HSI so HSI is wrapped up in, in broad access, sort of institutions that are close to the where the population is. Right, which right now is 30. States and location. So locations, including Puerto Rico, right, so we’re, you know, got 20 more states that haven’t hit that. But a lot of those states have the emerging HSI ‘s, and we’ll we’ll have them eventually. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
well, I’m having conversations in my work with institutions that are real close. And so they’re trying to figure out what’s that going to mean? And how would we shift things? And how would we adjust and how do we serve this population? But it seems like kind of a binary designation. When you have 23% Latin a students, you should still be thinking about them. You shouldn’t wait till you get to 25.1% and then start thinking about serving this right. Yeah, the the emerging. What are we building? What are we doing even though maybe we don’t have it? Yeah, that’s right. It’s a huge chunk of the student population. Oh,

Gina Garcia
yeah. Yeah, no, actually. So I’m writing a new book. I’m working on a book right now. So and I’m the chapter I’m working on right now is about emerging HSIs and how they’re actually doing some of the most dramatic work and most innovative work. So yeah, I’m excited about that chapter. I’m excited about the book in general, cuz I’m talking about processes of change our processes of towards serving this. And so yeah, those institutions are doing more than campuses that have been HSI ‘s for 30 years. There are there I’m working with a campus that I won’t name them but they know who they are, if they listen that I started working with them and they thought they were a new HSI and then as we dug in, they had been an HSI basically since the beginning of HSI like they had been an HSI for so long already. And they just had never talked about it or thought about it, right. It was just sort of, you know, the water swimming kind of thing, right that this is just the population without thinking much about any sort of intentionality around serving. So yeah, so the mergers actually, I think are doing some of the most innovative kind of work and if you want to learn from anybody look at the emerging emerging HSI are doing some really cool, cool type of work and getting ready because yeah, 25% is a lot particularly wetter, large campus. So it’s not we’re not talking small numbers, you know, like this. It’s a lot by the time you get to 25%. Yeah. And then the other thing is, I know you mentioned 75% of other students, the data are pretty much showing that at this point, we’re about 20. A lot of good majority of HSI czar at about 25% Why and 75% of students of color. And so that’s what the numbers are looking like that like, yes, 25%. But some are upwards of 50% left the day. And still you have another 25% Other students of color, right? Who are checking color students color boxes. So some of the most, I think, diverse institutions in the country, am I

Keith Edwards
right? No, that that totally makes sense and robust. I’m also thinking about the locations of some of these communities that they’re in. And they’re a part of these are not just diverse institutions, they’re in diverse places in diverse context. And not just racially and ethnically diverse, but I see as diverse and all of those things. And also, I’m imagining, you’re talking about open access institutions, institutions that are more rooted in the community, or connected to the communities that they’re a part of, then you may find it some more highly selective institutions that that are a little separated from that you’ve put into this thing a time or two. But let’s talk about serving this, which I know it’s really excited. And you’re the new book is on that and you talk about the podcast. So you mentioned it earlier, moving from, you know, a demographic designation to a serving as a student success focus, but tell us what serving this is and what this means and how institutions can put this into practice.

Gina Garcia
Yeah, for sure. Yes, serving this, the serving this term, multiple bullet points, officially getting coined in 2019, with an article that me and my colleagues wrote in 2019. Well, well, we wrote it, obviously, before 2019, we got published in 2019. So that’s when the term really, I guess sort of got solidified in the HSI vernacular. At the time, I don’t know that we realized that service was going to take off as like such a big thing. We were just proposing this framework to think about it but serving This to me was like I say often an embodiment, right of serving, that it’s actual bringing something to life right where you are, are so focused on that s in HSI that you bring it to life, right and becomes what you do, it becomes at your core, it’s your values, it’s your deep way of making sense of of how you’re going to do higher ed, right? For colleges and universities. So I think about embodiment, right? That’s how I think about serving as the embodiment of serving others. From the podcast, anybody that listens will know that people often talk about serving us that they’ve they’re serving this journey started when they’re with their grandma, right with their Abba litas with their communities, right with their mother with their theas with like that, like it’s sort of ingrained in us, right, if you are really committed to doing serving us, it, it’s it’s we, it’s part of our community, it’s part of our culture, right to sort of serve. So people have embraced eeriness in so many different ways. But the theoretical way of defining it, I would say, serving this is everything beyond enrollment, right. Like I said, enrollment was at that point where people are like, it cannot be enrollment only h size cannot be based on enrollment only. So it’s everything beyond enrollment. So yeah, great. Congratulations, you hit 25%. Now, everything else is serving us, right, like anything else you’re doing. And so for those campuses that are getting ready before the 25%, they’re doing serving as before the 25%, you can do serving this without having 25% You can do serving us without having HSI grants, because they are competitive and a lot of campuses don’t get them. It doesn’t mean you’re not an HSI and it doesn’t mean you can’t do service it actually you can. So you don’t need a grant. And you don’t need the official designation to do serving us. I guess the big important piece of serenus is the structural transformation. So I talk about everything we do at the campus level, the structural transformation is serving us. So I talked about infrastructure, and my newer book transforming HSI, there’s a whole chapter on infrastructure. And I always say infrastructure is like the tangible things that we do. And what the research shows is that students make sense of service by the tangible things. So if you ask students what Serena says to them, they’re going to tell you those tangible things. One of them is faculty diversity that comes up over and over again, students want the faculty to look like them. The data shows that they don’t that 60 to 70% of of eight, most HSI is have predominately white faculty, right 60 70% of the faculty are white, and that’s across the board. And those data have been cut in many different ways to your four year public, private and across the board. It continues to look like that. I think one of the most cited articles for those that want to look into it more is my colleague, actually here at UC Berkeley, Nicholas Vargas wrote an article 2019 published in race ethnicity and education, I believe, journal and they they do that they cut the data and all these different ways and it comes up that the faculty don’t look like the students NHSN is so that’s an that’s a huge one that’s big, so serving us would be getting you know, really Reaching that parity where our students and our faculty look the same. There aren’t as many articles or data about administrators and or staff, particularly classified staff. Although those populations tend to look a little bit more like the population, particularly our staff, so our staff like our Student Affairs staff, our classified staff, those populations, you know, with anecdotal data are almost exactly matching the students, right. And if we think about entry level, student affairs professionals, let’s say, entering immediately, you know, going from undergrad to a master’s program and entering like, age 24, right, like, they’re, they’re looking like the students, right, they’re like getting in, and immediately, like, we’re just those students, right, and are matching the population in many ways. Administration, it depends on the place, some places are changing dramatically. I’ll say like, for example, California community college system, there, the the dramatic transformation of administration is pretty cool to watch a lot of a lot of presidents of color coming in and bringing in, you know, entire, you know, executive committees of folks of color, but it is slower as well, it’s still you still need those folks that are at the administrative level, right to be able to,

Gina Garcia
to be at those upper upper decision making. So we don’t see as many presidents, you know, Latini identified presidents for sure. But that’s the whole bright that eventually our administration’s will also match the students getting there slowly, but the faculty is the big the big one. So faculty are compositional diversity is a huge service. And students notice that the curriculum, I talked about curriculum all the time been talking about curriculum since my dissertation, what are we teaching students, because if we continue to teach the same thing over and over again, the same, whatever narrative, we’ve learned all our lives, it is not likely going to be centering their ways of knowing it’s not going to be increasing their critical consciousness, right? It’s not those sort of things, besides the sort of usual places where we would see that like, ethnic studies, or gender, gender and women’s studies, right, like those sorts of places. We’re gonna see it, we’ve seen it since, you know, since the civil rights movement. So those places are, are often tapped out. Right? Those areas are like, we’ve been doing this forever, but at Forever, everybody needs to do it. Right. Like we say, Where’s math? Where’s the math teachers? where’s the where’s the chemistry instructors? Where’s your engineering? Folks? Where’s the nursing faculty? Right, like your social work? Faculty, right? And I say things like social work, and nursing, because I’m like, these are, these are areas that you’re training students who want to be service, those are service sort of based disciplines, and they want to immediately go out and serve their communities. Are we training them to serve their communities? Are we teaching them bilingual, medical, you know, language, right? Can they speak medical, Spanish? Can they serve their communities that they actually want to go back on answer to, that’s serving us, right, that we actually need to transform that curriculum, it can’t stop at the university level, right? Because students are only with us for a couple years before they go back out. And like I said, general patterns show that nothing a students stay close to home to go to college, they’re going to stay close to home to work to like, oh, good majority. So we’re going back and like you said there, HSI is tend to be sort of grounded in the communities that students are from. So how are we engaging with the communities that were from that service? And I talked about that all the time is like, are we thinking about that we actually are serving this community, just by graduating students from this campus. So yeah, so curricula, you know, composition of faculty, staff, administrators, curriculum or co curricular services, right. Any student support services, I tend to see also spaces, I call them like pockets of serenus, or spaces of circumstance. So your cultural centers, right, your, like spaces like that identity based spaces that, again, have always been doing this work. But then other areas that haven’t sort of caught up like financial aid or Admissions and Records, right? Places where students are like, I still not seeing right, the same sort of level of diversity right in those areas. So there’s a lot of work. There are a lot of conversations around, like outreach and financial aid, folks that are Spanish speakers. Bilingualism is a huge conversation and HSI I call it linguistic serving. This is an episode of Get by said HSI. I wrote a blog about it because it’s huge, right linguistics serving us. And the serving the linguistics arenas really is serving students families and serving their communities because our students generally are going to be English speakers in order to get into a US institution you have to be complete, you know, able to complete the English curriculum, right? But doesn’t mean that their families or the people surrounding them are bilingual. But then the other thing is, is we don’t allow them to be bilingual. Right? Allow students to be bilingual. What if we did? Right? What if we allowed students to be bilingual on our campuses? That would be serving us that would be linguistic serving this right. And it matters. It’s that validation theory louder. Rendon, right, kind of like that matters, right? Like I can speak Spanish and not feel like I’m going to be, you know, targeted or whatever it may be right, which people are targeted for speaking Spanish in this country to be able to openly do that right on a on a on an HSI campus. So a lot of campuses are are really thinking a lot about language. Of course, we have to be careful because Hispanic doesn’t mean, or Latina, Latina doesn’t mean you necessarily speak Spanish. There’s a continuum, obviously. So that’s the complexities right of this work. So yeah, what are the things? Those are like? I guess, like I said, the sort of tangible things, right, those are the things that are most, like germane to us, right, that we know the most, you dig deep into the surveillance framework, and we start getting into like policies, right, like, what kind of policies are preventing students from from succeeding? There’s a ton of policies that keep students from succeeding, like putting hold on their records, for financial reasons. Right. Okay. Yes, there’s reasons why we have to do that. But also, if that’s the reason our students are not enrolling the next semester, we have a persistence issue. Right. And it’s based on our policy, right, that that, okay, we need to rethink, like, is that policy serving our students? How can we rethink that policy in order to better serve our Latino students? Right? You know, maybe a policy that prevents students from being a child to campus could prevent them from coming to class that day, right? If they if they are a parent, right, let’s say that they’re a parent. And they’re like, I don’t have childcare, I, you know, I can’t come to class versus a campus. It’s like, you know, bring them it’s fine. We’ll, we’ll figure it out. Right. And there’s, I get it, there’s legal implications to that. But campuses are grappling with all of that, right. It’s like, what are the reasons why our students aren’t coming or aren’t persisting or missing a lot of class or whatever it may be. And with your Latino population, it’s it’s so layered of all the reasons why there are there barriers, right to barriers to finishing. So yeah, so that’s the deep level, like policy type of stuff, the hiring practices, I talk a lot, because if we have a diversity issue, we have a hiring issue, right? The fact that aren’t we can’t diversify fast enough. Partially, it’s in our hiring practices. We have to dig deep into those how racist are those? Right? Who how do we evaluate who we’re bringing in? How do we evaluate faculty coming in? Right? How do we evaluate administrators? Is it based on those, what I call the white normative ways of knowing or is it based on like, this person actually is committed to serving this population. And I talked about that all the time. And HSI is like the people that need to be here are the ones that are committed to serving low income, which is part of HSI designation, I didn’t mention low income students of color, right? You have to be committed to serving teaching mentoring, those students that this this your population, you’re not going to get to wish away and wish for some other students. This is the population of HSI. So you got to be 100% committed to that, and what that brings. So yeah, that’s some of the things

Keith Edwards
are new, get excited. That’s fantastic. Thank you for that. And I love that language. It’s so it’s so obvious because it’s right in the name. But then once you name service, there’s so much more. And I love that you you began, you give us a lot of tangible things that we could do, but also you began with the embodiment in being in that service, serving this mindedness. And this is how we do it’s part of the being of the institution. I think that can be really powerful in creating some cultural shifts and some paradigm shifts. Mm hmm.

Gina Garcia
Yeah.

Keith Edwards
I want to you know, you’ve been you said, You’ve been doing this for a long time, decades, written and edited three books, you’re writing another you’ve got the podcast with over 40 episodes, many more by design folks are listening. I’d love to hear what is sort of on the cutting edge of your thinking. What are you learning? What were you being pushed around HSI and what folks can be doing? What’s what’s on your learning edges? Yeah.

Gina Garcia
Oh, so many, thank you for asking. I am learning all the time. And I just love it, which is why I love the podcast, because I get to learn from folks on the ground, right. Like the people that come on to my podcasts are. I do have some academics, but mostly it’s practitioners, right? I get academics in there that you know, help us theorize but I want the people that are doing right that’s the people I invite are like you are doing this, like what are you doing, help us figure this out? And so I lot I learned a lot of from there, right? I think one of the things that I would say as far as what’s on my mind right now, because I am deep in like writing this book, right, this next book, we’re going to cover article like, I’m just in writing mode right then thinking mode. And I was thinking about HSI directors, right and whether or not we need HSI directors and that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. campuses that get HSI grants, they have a director of the grant. Right, so the title five is the most common funding stream but also title three. So those are the two common funding streams through HSI for each letter is HSI designated money. So the PII is the grant is sometimes is the director of the grant sometimes not right? Sometimes there’s a PII and a director of the grant, but either way that person’s job is to implement the grant. Right? They say alright, what are the what’s the logic model? What are the outcomes? What are we delivering? I have to report every year back to the federal government, how we’re spending the money. Did we hire the people we’re going to say, you know, we said we were gonna hire is very technical sort of grant. Anyway, this implemented a grant notice their technical grant implementation stuff. That’s not the same as an HSI campus based director, and very few campuses. I was just actually listen to a podcast, one of my episodes of goodbyes exercise, and it’s with MSU, Denver, Metro State University Denver, and their HSI director said there were eight in the country that he knew of. So there’s not that many that and when we say the HSI director is like that, that’s their job daily to implement HSI and to do so, but as some of the ones that are most well known, and I even say this in that episode is like Marla Franco, Dr. Marla Franco, at University of Arizona, very, you know, well known in our HSI community. She’s actually a vice, I think, President at this point of HSI. She was a provost at one point, I think she’s vice president of HSI initiatives. And she has a whole staff, right and, yeah, they help other people on campus get HSI grants, but that’s not their job, right? They’re not getting HSI grants, and they’re not necessarily implementing them necessarily. They might be getting some in their office, but their job is is to to move the campus right. And so that’s what the HSI directors are doing. They I was looking for themes, right. And they decide directors and one of them is I think relationship building is that campus, HSI director has spent a lot of time building relationships. The folks that I’ve had on the podcast that are he said, directors, that’s what they talked about. They’re constantly like daily building relationships. They’re over here trying to convince this faculty in this area to apply for a grant. They’re trying to convince advancement, the advancement office to build relationships with with with funders, right that can help support our advanced HSI work, because there is funding beyond the federal funding obviously that can be used for HSI right there over here talking to the alumni. You know, alumni, folks, how do we get more Latino alumni involved in this, you know, in this work, they’re talking to the Latinas cultural center, right, like making sure they’re engaged in student serving type of stuff, but students serving stuff isn’t the main goal, right? Like that’s one area and there are groups of folks that are doing that. But they’re doing all this like deep sort of movement, right of the campus. How are we going to move the entire campus and get everybody on board so that everybody on campus knows where I’d like to sigh which is I would say that’s my freedom dream is that we would all know we’re at an HSI. We’re not there. Meaning every single student enters they know they entered an HSI every faculty member knows I teach at an HSI every administrator knows we are an HSI. You know, at that point, hopefully alumni families all know where HSI right. And so that’s what the HSI directors role is. So that’s huge, right? Like having somebody that can sort of drive this work. But to know, like I just said, that’s the stat and I and I’m pretty sure I know all eight of those folks. You know, there’s not that many. That’s a little bit compared to 600. HSI is that half right, that are a two sighs

Keith Edwards
Yeah. It sounds like there’s a distinction here between the person doing the grant management and reporting. And then the person leading around serving us. Yeah, those are separate things. Let’s not totally different than the reporting. The leading those are separate. Yeah,

Gina Garcia
the grant implementation even right isn’t isn’t really disturbing us. Just like grants are in the service framework. So we talked about in the in the framework as like HSI grants will help you do serving us, but they’re not the only right. That’s not the end of serving. It’s not the beginning and end of service. It’s a dimension of service. And so yeah, you should absolutely get HSA grants. But like I said, some people just don’t Stephanie Aguilar Smith is writing a lot of really cool HSA work right now. And she looks at the perpetual winners of HSA grants and the perpetual not winners, that there are some campers that apply over and over again and don’t get it and she’s writing about what’s going on like the underlying, you know, a lot of it is around meritocracy and, you know, like larger systems of why some campuses are really good they’re the sort of networks that they have and the knowledge they have of even grant getting. Not all campuses have that. But you kind of need that grant getting right to help you move this stuff. That MSU Denver episode, they talked about, they launched a grant workshop for their faculty on campus, right, a grant like Institute to help their faculty right learn to write grants that will help them do this work that’s serving this right, like, how do we better equip our faculties have to do his work? We can’t just tell people, even this, like curriculum, right? We can just tell people like go implement antiracist curriculum that will be serving? That’s right. We were like, I don’t know what anti racism is. Right? Like, I don’t What are you talking about? Right? And what does it look like in math? Right? Like always, they always bring bath in. And so we have to a lot of the, you know, focus with HSI is professional development is training people to know how to do this stuff like so we’re retooling the entire campus, retooling the entire campus is gonna take decades, right? And we’re kind of like I have to convince campuses that like this is this is what this is right? You know, you’re committing to Now, decades work, right? That none of us are going to see actually the fruits of our labor. But we’re doing it because we know it’s right. Right. And it’s going to matter to students in the long run. It’s going to matter day to size and longer. And but but yeah, the retooling of campuses. So yeah, the directors role the relationship building that has to go into to doing this work. The kind of folks that do this work tend to be minoritized. Also. So not only Latina identified, but also a lot of women that are driving this agenda on their campuses. Who we know if you cross those intersection, Latinos are underpaid, right? If we hear about that often, right? Like, it will compare to other other groups, right? gender and racial groups. Yet they’re the ones driving the agenda, right for the entire campus, right and often on top of their job that they’re already doing. So a lot of around how do we compensate people for this work? Who owns this work comes up a lot, people get very territorial. So that’s interesting. Because people are like, we’re overworked. We can’t do HSI on top of our job. But then they get mad when they didn’t get invited to the HSI meeting. I’m like, didn’t you not want to do that? aren’t too overworked already? So it’s really interesting dynamics that come into play? Because it’s identity based, right? It’s like, it’s identity politics, politics, it’s huge. Is that should only let the gay people be doing this work? And or should we? What is solidarity look like in this work? Right? How do we get other groups involved in this work? That comes up a lot is a feeling like only Latino people on campus, are asked to do this work, and everybody else’s sort of gets a pass. And that feels like a lot when you’re one of the smallest groups, right? Particularly faculty and staff and staff still still are not anywhere where we need right as far as numbers on a lot of HSI campuses to really have a critical mass, particularly the faculty level.

Keith Edwards
So it doesn’t make sense that if we’re if the student population is going to so dramatically shift, the institution should also dramatically shift, right? Like you can’t say we have a completely different population than we’ve had before. And we’re just going to keep doing things the way we did for the past 50 years. Like there’s gotta come to be responsive. I know, higher ed is not always great at change. But But how do we do that? And I love that you mentioned, you know, you reminded me of cathedral thinking, in Cathedral thinking is that the people who built cathedrals never saw the end of the cathedral, right? The bricklayer who started the cathedral, his great grandson would be the bricklayer who would finish the national right? So what are the things that we’re doing now, that will play a benefit that is laying the foundation for something that will happen after we leave the institution after retire after we’re long gone? Putting some of those things in place? It’s just a different way of thinking about our work. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the now immediate results, immediate evidence, but some of these things these transformations take time. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do but how do we think with a broader scope of time, and

Gina Garcia
know that that’s, it’s gonna take time one of the comparisons I give, I don’t like to compare historically black colleges and universities to HSI because there’s just so different historically, but I do bring up on like, HBCUs when they started, they weren’t the HBCUs we see now. Right? We think about 89. And we could say 1890s is an important moment for HBCUs as far as like the 1890s Right? The the separate but equal right black institutions that came into play, particularly in the south 1890s an important moment for HBCUs that’s over 100 years ago, right? Those institutions did not look like what they look like now. And so we need a century. We’re gonna need a century to get to that point where, you know, we weren’t we really have reached a moment where this is an actual thing, right where HSI is actually thing and everybody knows they’re NHSI and it’s a liberating space and whatever it’s going to be for us. But we’re gonna need time and we need to be patient.

Keith Edwards
Well, there’s that blend of having those cathedral thinking the long term what’s the impact you want to have for things beyond horizon and there’s an urgency of the students who are here right now who are struggling there’s these equity gaps how do we how do we make sure we’re serving them so there’s there’s both the both and right that the urgency and also long term I think is really really great. This has been fabulous Gina but we are running out of time. So I want to move us to hearing what’s really with you now so the podcast is called Student Affairs now. We always like to end with this question about what are you thinking what are you troubling What are you pondering now and also if you want to share with folks can connect with you that would be great but what’s with you know

Gina Garcia
I mean, I shared a lot of it already because I like I said I’m in the in the now right now. It’s really thinking about what’s the next stage right of like, where do I take this next interest I work there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. That is with me now is how am I going to do this so I’ve been reading about HSI as well I wrote about HSI for 10 years from I always say one of the whitest institutions in the country because it is the University of Pittsburgh. It was never going to be an HSI it’s probably never going to HSI anyway Listen to me. Please find me. There’s so far from being an HSI and I wrote about HSI is from this space right which is also I had to like contend with that right of like why was I so I mean, I’m coming to teach aside because I’m a product of an HSI. I’m an alum of an HSI graduate of an HSI did HSI work as a Title Five implementer. So I knew what my driving reason was, but it was also doing it from from, you know, that sort of space of like that it was never going to be anything else. Right. But besides that, but I’m now at a place well, and to say that I was writing an offering recommendations are doing public lecturing about something that I wasn’t doing on my own campus. I should say that I wasn’t doing Latino things on my campus because I was I actually implemented a lot of Latino things at Penn and was sort of driving some of that agenda brought a lot of things, including our Hispanic Heritage Month to pick

Keith Edwards
up fierce advocate at the beginning, I think.

Gina Garcia
Yes, yes, I was definitely doing that. But we were never gonna be an HSI. So I wasn’t thinking HSI away. I was just thinking, we just need a little more visibility, like we’re 3% here. You know, we’re a little bit here. And so I am at a campus now UC Berkeley that that is an emerging and we’re in the emerging state, we’re at about 20%. We got 5% to go. And I’m so critical of elitism. In the higher ed. It’s so funny, I end up at one of the most elite public institutions in the country that’s trying to be an HSI, right. And I’m like, There’s reasons we’re not an HSI folks, and we’re in California, we could absolutely be one. But we have to contend with all of our selectivity and our elitism and all that sort of historical reasons why we are UC Berkeley, right? So how do we maintain UC Berkeley while becoming an HSI? And now I’m I’m in that I get to be a part of that I will be releasing some of our efforts in the fall fall 2020 for you know, helping to searches drive some of this right. So I the things I talked about learning like the relationship building thing, like I’m taking that in, I’m like, Okay, who do I need to build a relationship with on campus? Right? Who do I need to know? How am I going to help to get this going, particularly from a faculty perspective, which was is going to be my role, right? It’s like how do we develop an HSI like research agenda right from the faculty side of the house? Because we need that right? We need faculty thinking about HSI distinctly around like faculty right around faculty life. So that’s top of my mind is learning from all this stuff that I’ve been sharing how to do HSI and surveillance for so long, and now I get to do it finally, I didn’t get to do it for so long. Besides campuses I worked with I obviously do a lot of consulting with campuses and help them to drive it but now it’s it’s matters because it’s my campus right and we’re gonna, we’re gonna see this come, we will see our 20 we will hit 25% I’m for sure I’m gonna see that. Will I see the moment where we are fully HSI fully embracing service? Probably not right. Like I said, this is going to take time, I’m going to embrace that. But so that’s pretty cool is that I get to finally do the work that I talked so much about.

Keith Edwards
That’s awesome. All right. Dr. Garcia, where can people find you drop it all? Website? Podcast? Where do you want people to connect with if they have loved this conversation? Want more? I want to hear more from you. Where can they do that?

Gina Garcia
Yeah, for sure. So I make it easy. Every all all my connections, social media and website are all my full name. So Gina G is a middle name. So my website is Ginaanngarcia.com. On my my twitter I guess x handle my LinkedIn and we go to I know I always say I always still say retweet and I’m like I’m gonna say reacts that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. But yeah my Twitter handle on my Instagram my LinkedIn are all Gina and Garcia so as long as you have that middle name in there, you can usually find me. But ya know, for sure, check out the podcast. I think the podcasts for folks that really want to dig into this conversation that is the most up to date. current knowledge on HSI, like it’s happening on the ground. I can’t write fast enough about what’s happening on the ground and HSI so the podcast, as you know, brings really current, you know, style. I mean, today I talk to y’all about a book I’m writing that we’re not going to get to read for like two more years, right. But I gave you some of the snippets right of like, yeah, so you just can’t bring it to life quicker than like, let’s say these sort of spaces. So yeah, definitely check out the podcast. It’s called get by se to size all streaming sites. You can also find the links on my on my website. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
And in the show notes for this episode, we’re gonna get links to a whole bunch of that stuff. We’ll get that added in. And the website is it you know, the website, Gina Garcia is a great place to find the podcast, your scholarship, your research, the things in contact information, all of that. If you want to do the one stop shop, that’s the place to go. And you can Yes, yes, absolutely. Awesome. Thank you, Gina, this has been terrific. I really love seeing your leadership and your scholarship and everything emerge that you’re doing. It’s been fantastic. So thank you for being here.

Gina Garcia
Thank you, Keith, for having me. Appreciate it.

Keith Edwards
And thanks for sponsors of today’s episode Routledge and here on Routledge Taylor and Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators, and researchers. They welcome Stylus Publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education teaching, Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. Routledge is proud to sponsor the podcast Student Affairs now if you their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. And Huron is the global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation, and empowering businesses and their people to own their future by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo Huron create sustainable results for the organizations they serve. And as a huge shout out, as always, to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the work behind the scenes to make Gina and I look and sound good. We’d love the support for these important conversations from you, our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or our weekly newsletter where we share our new episodes each Wednesday morning. If you’re so inclined, you can also leave us a five star review. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest today Dr. GinaAnn Garcia and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you, Gina.

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