To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and introduce its new Hispanic Serving Institution director, UC Santa Barbara held its first “Hispanic Serving Institution Forum: Promoting Latine Excellence and Servingness” at Corwin Pavilion on Oct. 17. The event was hosted by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

The HSI forum included a wide range of events including a panel discussion, a grant showcase, a land acknowledgement and multiple Q&A sessions. Alyssa Dabney / Daily Nexus

UCSB was federally designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in 2015 for having at least a 25% Hispanic-identifying undergraduate population. Through the designation, UCSB staff and faculty are eligible to apply for Minority-Serving Institution federal grants, internships and other partnerships.

This year, as a result of a list of demands El Congreso student activists have outlined since before the university’s designation, UCSB appointed its first-ever HSI executive director, Veronica Fematt, on July 1.

“I was really pleased with how the event turned out. It was wonderful to see people connecting and engaging with one another. It was also an emotional experience, as this was the first HSI-focused event on our campus, despite UCSB having become an HSI in 2015,” Fematt said in a statement to the Nexus.

Fematt created the event to support student activists and help build a stronger community on campus.

“I wanted to respond to the demands raised by student leaders from El Congreso. They called for the establishment of my position and for greater transparency regarding the HSI grants awarded to UCSB and how those funds are being allocated. The HSI Forum was not only designed to foster community around HSI efforts at UCSB, but also to highlight the HSI grant-funded programs on campus,” Fematt said.

The HSI forum included a wide range of events including a panel discussion, a grant showcase, a land acknowledgement and multiple Q&A sessions. It was primarily geared toward graduate students, according to its Shoreline and Instagram promotion, and had around 70 people in attendance. The forum had a buffet-style lunch to kick off the event, as well as pastries and drinks later on.

Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, a professor and faculty director in the UCSB Chicana/o Studies Department, attended the event because of his longterm experience working with the Chicanx/Latinx community.

“In Chicana/o Studies, we listen deeply to our students, we try to serve them, that is, we try to teach them about academic theories, concepts, and methods, but we also go beyond that; by listening to them, we can guide them to ONDAS, CAPS, EOP, El Centro and other campus support services to address various needs,” Armbruster-Sandoval said. “All these campus entities are staffed by people that care — those people are often Chicanx/Latinx but many are not.”

The HSI committee presented the HSI-Grant Principal Investigator’s (PI’s) Project and Program overview, where Fematt and the panelists discussed the wide range of programs available on campus for students to participate in. Many of the programs are all still undergoing development, so committee members described their plans for their programs to grow, leading to implementation within the school.

The programs included Field-based Undergraduate Engagement through Research, Teaching, and Education, Integrated Networking, Scholarship and Peer Interaction for first-year engineers and many more. All of the programs are designed to help students grow professionally, especially those in underrepresented groups, speakers said.

The presentation also highlighted an already standing program Opening New Doors to Accelerating Success (ONDAS) Student Center, designed for first-generation students to find success and retention in their first year and experience with college, including a student center, workshops and a safe space to study with peers in the same situation, according to its website.

Adanari Zarate, the Associate Director of the Educational Excellence and Inclusive Training Opportunities program, also known at ÉXITO, was a speaker at the event during the HSI-Grant panel.

“I have always been interested in working with future educators. So it’s really wonderful to be able to work with the community I was very much a part of as a graduate student and continue that work with students here at UCSB and hopefully get more students of color to be educators in California, Zarate said.

A version of this article appeared on p. 5 of the Oct. 24, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.