Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in California, Texas, Florida, and other states with large Hispanic populations are the stewards of a major federal investment in Latina and Latino student transfer and access to STEM bachelor's degrees, and access to STEM graduate degrees. In 2010, sixty-five million dollars were awarded to community colleges and their university partners in California and Texas alone, amounting to 66% of the total funded through the new Title V HSI-STEM transfer and articulation program. As highlighted in the Center for Urban Education's (CUE) newest STEM report, grantees should embrace and create truly Hispanic serving cultures and practices to steward these funds effectively.
Community College Change Agents at HSIs: Stewarding HSI-STEM Funds for Latino Student Success in STEM, the sixth in a series of CUE reports produced with funding from the National Science Foundation, provides exemplars of effective practice and effective practitioners for HSIs. Indicators of culturally responsive pedagogy in STEM are among the tools added to CUE's STEM Toolkit for Increasing Latina and Latino STEM Baccalaureates that has been produced through CUE's study. The report was authored by CUE co-directors and Rossier School of Education professors Estela Mara Bensimon and Alicia C. Dowd with Rossier doctoral students Megan M. Chase, Misty Sawatzky, Linda Taing Shieh, Raquel M. Rall, and Tiffany Jones.
The report emphasizes the importance of inquiry for creating Hispanic serving institutional cultures. In order to create the changes necessary to allow the population of Latina and Latino students currently enrolled in community colleges to go on to STEM baccalaureate and graduate degrees, the HSI STEM transfer and articulation funds should be used to support inquiry by faculty and administrators. Performance, diagnostic, and process benchmarking strategies that promote inquiry are outlined in the report. In particular, regular monitoring of disaggregated data by race and ethnicity is necessary as part of inquiry and as part of grant evaluation to effectively assess Latino student participation and outcomes.
Findings from the case study include the key roles community college faculty play for Latina and Latino students in STEM. The study found that "color-blindness" is a barrier to student success. Color blindness--"treating all my students the same"--stops institutions from creating a Hispanic-serving culture by discouraging monitoring or acknowledgement of Latino student participation and performance in STEM. Faculty development is needed to provide "color conscious" competencies that will create inclusive STEM learning environments.
Download and read the report here.
