What does it mean for UCSB to be a Hispanic-Serving Institution?
Oct 28, 2024 at 12 pm
This year, UC Santa Barbara approaches its 10-year anniversary as a federally-designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. In that time, the university has largely reassessed — and transformed — what it means to serve its Hispanic student population.
In 2015, UCSB was designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), the first university in the Association of American Universities (AAU) to become an HSI. It was the third University of California (UC) campus to receive the designation, following UC Riverside in 2008 and UC Merced in 2010. Now, nearly every UC is an HSI or is in the designation process.
HSI is a federal designation that non-profit campuses can receive if they have a total undergraduate Hispanic student full-time equivalent enrollment of at least 25%. The designation makes campus faculty and staff eligible for specific grants and funding. It is not geared toward increasing the number of Hispanic students, but serving the existing population on campuses, sources said.
In the 2023-24 school year, 28% of UCSB undergraduates identified as Chicane or Latine. Of this count, 21% identified as Chicane and 6% identified as Latine. Chicane is a term adopted by Mexican Americans, whereas Latine refers to a person of Latin American descent and encapsulates Chicane peoples. During the 2014-15 academic year when the HSI title was designated, Chicane and Latine students accounted for 26% of the undergraduate population.
In a larger trend across the UC, Latine students were the second-largest demographic, making up 23%. Additionally, 38.6% of California first-year admits in 2024 and 31.2% of domestic California Community College transfer admits are Latine. Latine students also make up half of first-generation students in the UC.
When the HSI designation was created by the U.S. in 1992, it helped campuses build their institutional capacity to retain rates of Latine students. UCSB, however, has a high graduation rate for all students, including Latine students. Its focus as an HSI is contextualized by its mission as an R1 research institution.
In total, UCSB has received $21 million in HSI funding, according to internal documents obtained by the Nexus. Much of this funding has gone toward supporting the creation of science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.) opportunities and research for undergraduates, graduates and faculty positions.
After the appointment of an HSI director nearly 10 years after the campus’s official HSI designation, and in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Nexus spoke with numerous administrators, faculty members and students about campus history and their thoughts on UCSB as a Hispanic-Serving Institution.
How did UCSB become a Hispanic-Serving Institution?
The University’s Latine student enrollment, campus resources, outreach and research initiatives are deeply rooted in activism by Latine students. From as early as 1968, students propelled the University to create a Chicana and Chicano studies department through the North Hall Takeover that year and El Plan de Santa Barbara conference in 1969, which respectively outlined the foundations of what would become the first Chicana and Chicano studies department in the UC system.
UCSB established the first-ever doctoral program for Chicana and Chicano studies in the U.S. in 2003, after student activists partook in hunger strikes in 1989 and 1994 to demand the University provide more resources for Latine students on campus.
Professor of Chicana and Chicano studies and former chair of the department from 2019-2022 Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval was hired in 1998 as a result of the hunger strikes. He published a book titled “Starving for Justice: Hunger Strikes, Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity” in 2017, detailing the process and goals of student activists at the time.
“I remember in 1994, some of the students who went on hunger strike said what they wanted from some of the faculty was for them just to know their name,” Armbruster-Sandoval said. “So to feel welcome in that environment, [we should have] curricular choices like books and films and other lecture topics that give voice to their family members that give voice to them.”
According to documents from Director of Strategic Research Initiatives and the Special Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor for Diversity Initiatives Barbara Walker, 2001-2006 Executive Director of Academic Preparation and Equal Opportunity Joe Castro and his predecessor Claudia Martinez made administrative efforts toward UCSB receiving its designation prior to 2014.
Former Associate Vice Chancellor (AVC) of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Maria Herrera-Sobek and current Executive Director of the Office of Education Partnerships Mario Castellanos also contributed to these efforts, according to Walker.
Martinez and Castellanos worked to develop partnerships with local K-12 schools and introduce Latine students to UCSB. This work was done through the HSI regional alliance , a collaboration with other higher education institutions on initiatives that aid success for underserved and economically disadvantaged K-12 students. The former Executive Director of Admissions Lisa Przekop and current Interim Director Cuca Acosta helped further those partnerships and grow the Latine student population.
The efforts culminated in 2014, when then AVC and Dean of Undergraduate Education Carl Gutiérrez-Jones created a campus committee to analyze student data on what were the most significant challenges for Latine students at the time. The committee allowed UCSB to apply for its first HSI grant in 2015, which led to the creation of the Opening New Doors To Accelerating Student Success (ONDAS) Student Center.
UCSB joined the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities in 2022, which spans nine states and 20 universities. The goal of the alliance is to double the number of Hispanic doctoral students and increase the Hispanic professoriate by 2030.
However, some students felt the designation and subsequent funding alone was not enough to holistically support undergraduate Latine students on campus. Activist organization El Congreso sent a direct letter to Chancellor Henry T. Yang — through email, social media and in person — in April 2022, criticizing his plans for student housing with Munger Hall, asking for physical and staff expansion of UCSB’s first cultural resource building, El Centro. They also listed several other demands to serve Latine students, specifically, appointing an HSI director and student-led HSI task force.
Shortly thereafter, El Congreso held a meeting with campus administrators including Chancellor Yang.
“At that meeting, the question was asked, ‘Who’s getting research HSI funding right now? Can you provide us a list?’ And I believe, as a response to that, a list was circulated, at least to El Congreso, if not more broadly, that had all of the faculty programs on campus who have received funding through HSI,” Chicana and Chicano studies professor and former chair of the department Gerardo Aldana said.
As a result of the letter and a realization of demands from students since 2015, a committee was formed after their meeting to seek out the University’s first HSI director. It included Gutiérrez-Jones, administrators, department directors, faculty and representatives from El Congreso.
“One of the things the committee did was make a recommendation to hire an HSI director. And I believe they were just picking up one of the demands in doing that,” Aldana said.
The next task for the committee was to create the position and find its first HSI executive director, a process that took over two years. Veronica Fematt, UCSB’s HSI executive director, obtained her master’s and doctorate from the Gevirtz School of Education at UCSB, cumulatively spending 12 years studying on campus. She was also previously the assistant director of the McNair Scholars program, which aims to prepare first-generation, low-income and underrepresented undergraduates for graduate programs.
Fematt’s research was connected to understanding ways to best serve Latine students. Her most recent research found that the disconnect in theory-based S.T.E.M. courses, unsupportive and busy research-focused environments and the psychological toll of being stripped of a S.T.E.M. identity all contributed to the pushout in S.T.E.M. among Latine students.
“One of the biggest areas that I want to focus on is the S.T.E.M. pushout that happened with Latine underrepresented students on our campus,” Fematt said.
As it stands, 15% of S.T.E.M. degree recipients across the UC were Hispanic or Latine in 2019, according to a UC Institutional Research and Academic Planning study.
Grants and Research
As an HSI, UCSB faculty apply for federal grants to fund research and other initiatives which may benefit Latine students on campus. Since becoming an HSI, UCSB has received its largest grants from the Department of Education (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The DOE funds three HSI grants including the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program, Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans Program — each totaling $600,000 per year for five years — and HSI STEM and Articulation Program, totaling $1.2 million per year for five years.
The NSF offers an Improving Undergraduate STEM Education and a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant. Field-based Undergraduate Engagement through Research, Teaching, and Education (FUERTE) was funded around $2 million by the NSF and serves to help students develop skills for a career in conservation and environmental sciences, according to documents obtained by the Nexus.
Also under NSF, the Center for Equitable Environmental Sciences (CEES) promotes careers in environmental justice to students of color in S.T.E.M. majors with a $3 million grant. The California Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Social Science Advancement (CAHSSA) addresses the lack of social science faculty research with $796,858.
ONDAS, which opened as a resource center for first-generation college students, was initially funded $3 million from 2015-2020 by the DOE Title V grant. Now the center is a campus-funded unit that provides mentorship, academic support and community spaces to “[promote] the success and retention of first-generation college students,” according to the ONDAS website.
“HSI grants are unique because they’re with specific faculty members [who] get a grant. Yeah, and it’s not necessarily designed to benefit the entire campus, which is a little bit like a head scratcher,” Armbruster-Sandoval said. “It has to be a grant that’s more widespread and more systematic. The ONDAS [Student] Center is like that. So that’s definitely something that’s been helpful.”
Educational eXcellence and Inclusion Training Opportunities (ÉXITO), which sets up a pathway for students to become certified Ethnic Studies teachers, is also funded by the DOE. The newest HSI initiative to come from the grants is Academy for Community-, Action-, and Use-Inspired Scholarship and Education (A-CAUSE), which focuses on involving undergraduate students in research.
Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture offers an HSI Education Grants Program. National Endowment for the Humanities offers a Humanities Initiatives at HSI grant and an Awards for Faculty at HSI grant. UCSB was given around $1 million for an Equitable Agriculture and Environmental Management (EAEM) project which aims to teach students research methods and career skills through the lens of social justice and equity as pertaining to agricultural issues.
Two projects given $150,000 each by the National Endowment for the Humanities will expand the UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections resources for underrepresented students and create two new minors to support medical and legal humanities.
The Department of Defense funds six UCSB initiatives, ranging from research on spectroscopy, quantum gases, materials science and thermal physics, totalling nearly $4.5 million. Students also apply for funds through the Student Initiated Outreach Program (SIOP), which have helped facilitate grassroots outreach projects in their communities.
Faculty and student opinions on how HSI serves the campus
Currently, faculty and students have mixed opinions on how the campus serves Latine students with its HSI funding, and more generally how it supports Latine students.
Dolores Inés Casillas, professor of Chicana and Chicano studies and director of the Chicano Studies Institute, said her goal through HSI is to provide Latine students equal opportunities to gain professional and research skills.
“I am concerned that, and a lot of exit data will confirm this, that Latinx students will graduate without the same number of research experiences or internship experiences as others. And I think that’s really important, and part of a college experience that we should all have,” Casillas said.
In terms of expanding resources for Latine students on campus, Armbruster-Sandoval said the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) is “dramatically underfunded” and in need of more counselors. He also called for permanent staff members at El Centro, an expanded Chicana and Chicano studies research portfolio and more Latine faculty in all campus departments.
“I think that the University should do more of an effort to make the campus welcoming to the broader community. And even in the Santa Barbara local Chicano community — just do more programming and events here on campus that brings people in to say, this is a place that you guys belong,” Armbruster-Sandoval said.
Student organizations also facilitate resources for fellow students. However, according to multiple organizations interviewed by the Nexus, more can be done to support them.
Sociedad Eterna is a Latine organization open to all majors that focuses on three pillars: academics, networking and community service. Most of their funding comes from grassroots fundraising. Although they’ve attempted to secure more funding through the Associated Students (A.S.) Finance and Business Committee, several of their past requests have been denied.
“I do believe that maybe if there was just better guidance on how to correctly do the application where we won’t be denied funding, I feel like that could be better,” third-year history of public policy and law major and Sociedad Eterna co-chair Andy Murga said.
Murga added that he would also like to see university administrators attend their events to get to know the members, and to see that the organization “does pull large numbers” and that they could “talk to us and see how students are doing.”
La Familia de Colores, an organization focused on Latine people in the LGBTQ+ community, hosts study hours and informational socials that pertain to topics affecting the community. The organization also independently raises the majority of its funding.
El Congreso hosts Latine College Day (LCD) — an event that encourages local Latine youth to pursue higher education — and regularly advocates for more student resources. Although they receive funding from multiple campus departments for LCD, they said they would like to see those funds allocated to them from the start, so El Congreso would not have to conduct extensive outreach throughout the year.
“When I first came to this campus it was more recognized that when people hear the term HSI, you refer [to] it as a Hispanic suffering institution,” third-year zoology and Chicana and Chicano studies double major and El Congreso co-chair Yvonne Gonzalez Martinez said.
“We have an HSI director finally on the demands of Congreso. It wasn’t that the chancellor was like, oh yeah, let’s finally get one after so many years. It’s more like, oh yeah, people are breathing down my back, maybe I should get someone in that position, and so I’ll be good at that,” Gonzalez Martinez said.
HSI for UCSB moving forward
President of La Familia de Colores and fifth-year biochemistry major Ivette Huerta said she would like to see more funding go towards El Centro and the Chicanx/Latinx Cultural Resource Center (CLCRC) so that they can expand their outreach.
“I know, especially in El Centro, they do so much for the community with the little support the University provides to them. So I can only imagine how much more they can do for the community if they just had the funding to do so,” Huerta said.
Huerta added that an HSI task force could help the various resources around campus coordinate better so that they’re easily accessible.
“I didn’t know UCSB was an HSI until last year,” she said. “[The] council can have all these types of resources that people can go to because I feel like resources are very spread out.”
Chairs of El Congreso emphasized the ongoing need for an HSI task force that could help direct and expand resources on campus.
Several members said that more resources should be geared toward S.T.E.M. students, as the course load and major declaration process can be especially difficult to navigate as first-generation students.
“Seeing that HSI status be across everyone, especially because in the S.T.E.M. departments, it feels like they’re always trying to push you out,” fourth-year aquatic biology major and El Congreso chair Jasmine Rebollar said.
Fematt says that her work is “going to be focused on unifying folks on campus who want to better serve Latine students.”
“Everybody’s kind of working on their own, working in silos. I’m coming in to unify our efforts, and share what we’re doing on campus,” Fematt said. “Because a lot of times, folks don’t know what’s happening on their own campus. We don’t know what HSI grants we’ve been awarded, and we don’t know what programs have been created out of those grants.”
Her office hosted the first community building event of the year on Oct. 16 with a forum explaining HSI projects. She also plans to collect data on the undergraduate experience in a campus-wide “servingness” survey.
One of the major things she wants to address is clarifying how the funding works and where it is going. She said every grant allocation is for the University to create a program or intervention that is meant to remedy a need on campus.
“You might have heard that it’s being used to buy lab equipment, but they can’t do that unless it’s written into the grant. Recipients of these funds actually have to use the funding that they get to create a program or an intervention or a service that’s going to help underrepresented and/or first gen students in some way,” Fematt said. “I think that misconception is one of the huge issues that I wanted to address coming in because a lot of Latine students don’t know where this money is going.”
In the larger mission, she wants to address the high attrition rate of Latine students in S.T.E.M. departments.
“It’s a chilly climate in S.T.E.M., and a lot of times there’s not enough resources to help these students thrive in those S.T.E.M. majors,” Fematt said.
Significantly, Chancellor Yang oversaw the designation of the campus as an HSI in 2015. He honored the agreement made between student hunger strikers and his predecessor, Chancellor Barbara Uehling Charlton. He also accepted requests from El Congreso to appoint an HSI director.
“Chancellor Uehling [Charlton] was the chancellor when that hunger strike was staged [and] created, and [Yang] wasn’t even appointed,” A.S. Executive Director Marisela Marquez said. “This particular chancellor could have not honored the demands and agreements, but instead [Yang] did.”
Of the demands El Congreso made for HSI, its demands for the expansion of El Centro and an HSI task force have yet to be met by UCSB administration.
Aldana said that while he thinks the campus could better serve Latine students in its current form, he is hopeful that the new leadership will bring about the changes students and faculty have been asking for.
“What I’ve even heard from a lot of folks since then is ‘Okay, now we’re really highly ranked. Now what?’” Aldana said. “Is it enough to just be highly ranked? Is it enough to just say, ‘Okay, we’re going to keep this ranking,’ or do you start to look for those things that maybe you’ve overlooked on your way to becoming highly ranked that now need attention?”
As for the next chancellor, Armbruster-Sandoval said he is looking for someone to implement more HSI-related programming and to hire more student support services.
“I think what I’d like to see the chancellor do is recognize the fact that there’s something really missing here, and to try to listen to the faculty and the students and the people in Student Affairs who know best what our community needs,” Armbruster-Sandoval said.
At the root of serving the Latine community on campus is the advocacy of students, several sources purported. As UCSB enters a new decade as an HSI university with a new director at the helm, the opportunity to further serve Hispanic students is palpable.
“I think it’s about time that we finally level the playing field for our students so that they can thrive,” Fematt said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the Oct. 24, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.