Dr. Gina Ann Garcia
Through fictionalized narratives that show the work that could help achieve servingness — as well as the obstacles that can hinder progress — Garcia explores anecdotal what-ifs that she hopes will put institutions in greater positions to serve the growing Hispanic student populations across the country as they enter higher education space.
Garcia sees this as the thriving era for HSIs. As the country’s demographics shift, the institution leaders should be “unwavering in their commitment to enrolling, serving, educating and empowering Latine students,” she writes.
The EDU Ledger: There’s a frustration that comes out in this latest book. How did it guide your approach to writing the book and what you included?
I think all of my work is grounded in the frustration with the HSI as being a federal designation, federal-funding, grant-seeking only versus what it could be if we really wanted to dream beyond the metric of the federal policy. All my work is dealing with that sort of tension of which way are we gonna go? This community either can just choose to get grants and we just implement grants, or we dream outside the box and envision something different. I think that absolutely is there and me saying you don’t have to have those grants to do HSI work while also … acknowledging the grants are really important. I don’t want it to come off like I’m saying the grants are not needed because they are, and the fight to get them back is on right now. A lot of it is balancing tension throughout the book.
The EDU Ledger: Let’s talk about the use of the fictionalized counterstories, which feel like eavesdropping on behind-the-scenes conversations?
I will honor and give shoutout to the late Derrick Bell, critical race theorist. I think that’s his book. Faces at the bottom of the well. After I read that book, I was inspired. He writes these narratives … that are very much grounded in truth and history. LIke, traveling back in time to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And telling that story again like “This is what was really going on” and telling an alternative sort of narrative to that. I think that’s where that comes from. It takes something very academic and theoretical and makes it accessible … while still grounded in empirical evidence.
The EDU Ledger: You discuss the idea of an unapologetic HSI — one with a central distinct and enduring identity — as a unicorn seen so far in the landscape. What will it take?
I’m probably not gonna see this ideal HSI, but it doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try. I think we’ve got a long way to go. Colleges and universities are grounded in their ways, and to think differently is hard. It’s hard to get people to do different things. I compare the development of HSIs to this place of sort of understanding at a broad level to HBCUs. HBCUs are a part of American culture at this point. Like, they are as American as Apple Pie. They’re that mainstream. You see them depicted in movies. You see them depicted in TV shows.. We have the reboot of A Different World that puts it back on the screen 40 years later after many of us watched it 40 years ago. It’s just part of mainstream culture and understanding. HSIs are not. They’re not understood by the general public. Not even students. Students are starting to understand a lot more. It’s starting to get a little bit more known, but I think until we get to that point of saturation, of understanding of HSIs.
The EDU Ledger: Is there an institution on the verge?
No, I don’t think anybody’s close. I think a lot of people are trying. I think a lot of people are doing good things, but I think a lot of people have a lot of work to do still. I’d say our campus is like that. We’re doing good work, we’re doing good things, but then you ask students and they’re like “no.”
The EDU Ledger: Back to the counterstories. Are we just at that point in the servingness process where institutional leaders have to see how others are getting it right, even if those narratives aren’t clearly happening yet?
I think people need to see that, and some of it is just the modeling, where we can model others and it makes sense. One of the people on my podcast who came on to talk about the book, he gave an example of how when he was working as an HSI director, he launched an HSI Fellows program (a yearlong program where faculty and staff on campus learn about HSI and develop HSI-based projects). He got the idea from Dr. Marla Frankel at Arizona State (University). Anybody who launched an HSI Fellows, they borrowed it from Marla Frankel. The HSI Fellows is catching on and people are doing it. And so we can sort of practice at the small what we want to see big. When you teach other people and you get them to do the work, then it moves faster than if just one person is doing the work.
The EDU Ledger: You note that while keeping tabs on traditional benchmarks such as graduation rates and labor market outcomes, leaders must buy into the organizational change that’s needed to truly achieve servingness. How has this held institutions back previously?
One of the first things I lay out is leadership. The leaders have to be on board, or this isn’t gonna happen. I argue that, but I’m also arguing in the book that the HSI movement is happening from the grassroots and leading from the middle. It’s not the high-level leadership, but I do say yes, we need the high-level leadership support. I do think the leadership matters. But when I say leadership, I think those middle-level managers and grassroots (people) are also leaders. Strong leadership does matter, and I think strong leadership from the middle can and is driving change. Another thing I double down on is the fact that we’re doing this in racialized systems. Race is always gonna come into play. Acknowledging things like racism and discrimination and microaggressions slows down this work as well.
The EDU Ledger: Something stood out in the presentations from Victoria and Paulina, in chapter 2. Many of the things we heard implemented were to make the Hispanic experience stand out, not to be implemented as part of the whole. It seems to run counter to the inclusion discussed for achieving servingness, but necessary at the same time?
I think that’s where in the book I talk about it being an organizational approach. And in the previous book (Transforming HSIs). It’s an organizational change framework. We do it with the particular students in mind, because it’s equity-focused work. The answer is organizational change. The organizational approach, then, therefore affects everybody. We are thinking Latino students, what do Latino students need, specifically around these dimensions or maybe they’re experiencing inequities and building up the campus to better respond to them without that building up the campus being exclusionary. The federal government grants fund the campus. It doesn’t fund schools and it doesn’t fund individual researchers. These are capacity-building institutional grants. And anything they create is for the benefit of the whole campus. You can do that through the lens of equity for Latino students while not being exclusionary.
The EDU Ledger: What’s next for HSIs? How do they take the baton at this moment to better serve?
I think right now, in particular, because another round of federal grants have been canceled and reprogrammed, the organizational change I’m talking about, the time is now. This is the time to pause and say “What is our mission for this work? Are we committed to this work? What is our identity as an HSI because if your HSI identity was all wrapped up in your grant work, then you’re gonna need to rethink that. That’s not the answer anymore. Rethinking the mission, the vision, the purpose, the identity and also the way we’re gonna still drive initiatives. How do we do this work embedded into some of the work we already do?
