The College Fix

Professor wants to ‘provide a liberatory and empowering education to Latine students’

The University of California Berkeley just hired a new “Latinx” faculty director to help the institution become an officially recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution.

Gina Ann Garcia, (pictured) an education professor and researcher, recently became the first faculty director of the university’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives, The Daily Californian reports.

The goal of the program is for UC Berkeley to be designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by 2028, according to its website.

For that to happen, the university “must have enrollment of 25 percent or more Latinx/Hispanic students” and must be eligible for certain federal grants, the University of California website states. Last year, Hispanic enrollment was about 20 percent.

Garcia said she is excited to use her extensive research on HSIs to help UC Berkeley achieve its goal.

“HSIs have potential to provide a liberatory and empowering education to Latine students, but they have to be intentional,” Garcia told the campus newspaper in an email.

“Enrolling 25% Latine students and getting Title V and Title III grants does not make you an HSI. There are intentional processes that campuses must take to transform the institution’s curriculum and co-curriculum, and policies and practices,” she said.

Garcia is an expert on the issue, according to the report:

According to Garcia, she is a leading scholar of HSIs and has written guidebooks for campuses across the country to guide their HSI work. In 2022, she was recognized with the Martin Luther King Jr. Creating a Just Community Award at the University of Pittsburgh for her leadership on campus with the Latine community.

As inaugural faculty director, Garcia plans to co-chair two HSI and [Latinx Thriving Initiatives] campus committees to be launched this year, as well as launch HSI and LTI learning sessions, facilitating the conversations about HSIs at UC Berkeley.

“This appointment is a significant step for UC Berkeley, highlighting the university’s commitment to fostering an inclusive environment …” acting Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Fabrizio Mejia stated in a news release. “Dr. Garcia’s work has consistently focused on operationalizing equity and justice in higher education, particularly in the context of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).”

The UC Berkeley website says achieving HSI status is “not an end goal but a continual space to develop ‘servingness.’”

This involves “center[ing] Latinx ways of knowing and being, with the goal of providing transformative experiences that lead to both academic and non-academic outcomes,” according to the website.

The Latinx Thriving Initiatives website also includes a note of gratitude to “lxs activistxs,” saying their “contributions and dedication throughout history have guided us here.”

Currently, five of the nine UC campuses are federally-recognized HSI, but “within a few years, university leadership aims to attain HSI status at every UC campus,” the UC website states.

MORE: Hispanic professors: ‘Latinx’-serving colleges actually ‘elevate whiteness’

IMAGE: UC Berkeley Latinx Thriving Initiatives

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