In Fall 2022, Dra. Gina Ann Garcia launched the podcast “¿Qué Pasa, HSIs?” which focuses on Hispanic-Serving Institutions. HSIs are federally-designated colleges and universities that have at least 25% Hispanic/Latinx undergraduate enrollment. (Click here for more information from the U.S. Department of Education).
We’re taking you on a Back in the Day Replay of La Profesora’s conversation with Dra. Gina Garcia in this Bonus Episode (published January 9, 2023). If you’d like to listen to the original version that includes a conversation with Dr. Andrés Castro Samayoa, please check out Episode 10 Beyond the HSI Designation (published February 3, 2020).
Read the Full Transcript
Here’s the transcript from our conversation. To cite please use the following:
Espino, M. M. (Host). (2023, January 9). Back in the day replay: Dra. Gina Garcia (Bonus) [Audio podcast episode]. In Latinx Intelligentsia. https://latinxintelligentsia.libsyn.com/back-in-the-day-replay-dra-gina-garcia
A Shoutout! [Timestamp: 00:02:47]
So as I prepare for our next season, I wanted to give a special shout out to two Mujeres who are holding it down in the podcasting world, Dra. Gina Garcia and Dra. Melissa Abeyta. Both doctoras started a podcast last fall and I have appreciated learning so much from their guests.
I was fortunate to interview both Mujeres for the podcast and I’m really excited to share these bonus episodes to remind y’all that there are fierce academics out there who are doing meaningful work and are now in the podcasting world. I hope you’ll support ¿Qué Pasa, HSIs? with Dra. Garcia and The Scholar Homies podcast con Dra. Abeyta.
Introducing Dra. Gina Ann Garcia! [Timestamp: 00:03:38]
It is my pleasure to introduce to you Dra. Gina Ann Garcia. Dra. Garcia is an associate professor in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in higher education and student affairs. She is a scholar activist, committed to disrupting the status quo of post-secondary education by bringing attention to the ways higher education has historically been committed to whiteness and regularly reinforces white narratives and white standards.
Her research primarily focuses on conceptualizing, servingness in HSIs with an emphasis on what it means to move from Latinx-enrolling to Latinx-serving. Dra. Garcia’s work has been recognized by major organizations and foundations. She was the recipient of a Ford Foundation postdoctoral Fellowship in 2016 and a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017. She is the author of Becoming Hispanic Serving Institutions Opportunities for Colleges and Universities by Johns Hopkins University Press. She graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a PhD in higher education and Organizational Change, and from the University of Maryland, College Park with a master’s degree in college student personnel. Dra. Garcia is the product of an HSI, California State University Northridge, and is a sister of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Incorporated.
Michelle: Dr. Garcia, thank you so much for being part of this episode.
Gina: Thank you for having me. I’m excited.
Michelle: There really is so much we can talk about, but one of the things I wanted to focus on for this episode was thinking about HSI. I went to an HSI. I was talking to one of my friends, that at St. Mary’s [University], we were 75%. I had no idea we were an HSI. And it wasn’t until I was in my doctoral program at Arizona that I started thinking about what was it about that culture? What did it mean to be Hispanic-serving so can you tell me a little bit about how did you get interested in studying HSIs?
Why Study Hispanic-Serving Institutions? [Timestamp: 00:05:37]
Gina: When I give talks about HSI and I visit HSIs, I always do my positionality statement. I don’t wanna seem like the researcher coming in from big, predominantly white institution in Pittsburgh doing research on HSIs. And so I talk about where does my passion come from? And it’s cuz I am a product of an HSI as well. I graduated from Cal State University Northridge, which is an HSI– been an HSI for a long time, probably at least 20 years. And same thing. Didn’t know it was an HSI, I didn’t think about it until my master’s program. I am alum of University of Maryland. Hey! that was when I first really came in contact with the word. I remember thinking about it for the first time there, but also not extensively. I wasn’t really thinking big picture, organizational level, yet, but came in contact with the word for the first time, and then I got a job as a Title V coordinator when I graduated from Maryland. I went back home to California and I worked at Cal State University Fullerton, and they had a five year Title V grant, and it was the end of their first year when they hired me and my job was to implement the grant and that’s when I really got into thinking, what the heck is this HSI thing? They’ve done a lot of work since I was there to really think about their HSI identity and they were involved in HACU [Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities] at the time. The president was very involved. He was on the board.
What it meant to attend a HSI. [Timestamp: 00:06:51]
I loved my undergrad experience and felt like my undergraduate experience was transformative. I connected a lot of it to the ways in which I got to explore my own identity. I grew up, Chicana, born and raised here, in California, but I grew up in a predominantly white city, and so all of a sudden I went to undergrad and it was the opposite. I got to explore who I was and what that meant to be Chicana so I knew that my undergraduate experience had something special. Maybe it was HSI and maybe it wasn’t, I don’t know, but it was special.
Michelle: What’s interesting about these Title V grants is, once you get the federal designation of the 25%, then technically you could apply for Title V grant and that’s for laboratories and for academic space. And my argument has always been, okay, you get this extra funding and if you hit the threshold of 25%, that means that 75% of the people you’re serving aren’t Latinx and therefore are still benefiting, from a grant that was dedicated to enhancing academic development or support. So that was my critique of this certain number, what are your thoughts about this?
Critiquing the HSI Qualifications [Timestamp: 00:07:48]
Gina: I think it’s complicated. It could be that only 25% is Latinx, but like you said in your undergraduate, it could be that 75% are right. It’s such a range.
It looks so different in so many places. The institution I’m working with right now, where I’m, doing some research in Chicago, they’re 54%. They’re like, “we’ve never thought about this cuz it’s just the students. That’s just who’s here. We never thought about whether or not we’re serving them”. Without really thinking structurally they haven’t really started serving them.
And so it’s complicated. Spending a lot of time in California and being from a California institution, they really don’t wanna embrace because of Proposition 209 anti- affirmative action sentiments make them be like, “we can’t do anything for one group” despite the fact that it’s a federal designation. My argument is like, yes, but it’s a designation connected to the racial/ethnic identity of your students.
So if you have a conversation minus race and ethnicity, then you’re not actually an HSI because you’re only an HSI because of the racial/ethnic identity. It’s a good reason to say we have to talk about race and ethnicity, and I believe that HSI should be having conversations about the inequities of Black students on their campus, the racial experiences of their Black students, the anti-blackness at an HSI, that’s huge, right? The erasure of indigenous students, those conversations should absolutely be happening as well. I like to think about it as a reason to talk about racial/ ethnic inequities and Latinx is one of those important ones, but there’s other minoritized groups that also there should be conversations about. When I say that to people at HSIs, they feel a little better.
We need to recognize that white people are still benefiting and there is still white structures. So we’re not gonna center whiteness, but we need to center race and race is complicated and encompasses a lot of groups.
Michelle: It’s so interesting because you are doing this consulting work, and I know that you write a report for folks. So, an HSI contacts you saying we want your expertise, you negotiate a contract with them, do you tier what you do for them? How long does it usually take to do a consultation?
Creating a Consulting Firm about HSIs [Timestamp: 00:09:34]
Gina: It’s not something I had originally thought was ever going to happen. It’s completely taking all the onus off of students. It’s actually about you as an HSI, as an institution, as a college or university, what are you gonna do? And so I have found myself in this position where people are like, “we need help and you seem to be doing the work. Can you help us?”
It’s continuing to grow. Last year I launched a website, and the website was really my envisioning of what if I had unlimited money and I could do consultation work? And I had a whole center? I’m just an N of one. But I started dreaming that eventually I’ll get to this place where I can do a lot more beyond me as an N of one cause I can’t do it all. And thinking, what are these different things that folks want? They started out wanting me to do keynotes. And I don’t love that because I think a 90-minute keynote doesn’t change the organization.
This institution I’m working with, it’s an 18 month engagement and I’m collecting data along the way. I’m doing workshops, I’m doing book clubs, I’m doing a keynote for Latinx Heritage Month, but I’m gonna already have had a lot of contact with them in other ways to get them thinking about what it means to be an HSI.
Organizational change: it has to be long term. And that’s how people are starting to reach out and so that’s what it’s starting to become, this consulting work of being much longer engagement rather than just come in and do a talk and go away. I don’t like to go away and good luck. I want you to collect data and to really look at what this actually means.
But the reality is the empirical work that I’ve done and the typology that I’m proposing, helping people just think about it, right? We gotta think about outcomes, but we gotta think about culture too. And oftentimes they’ve never thought about the environmental.
They spend so much time focused on graduation, but what does it feel like? Are people leaving and they feel like they experience racism? Do they experience microaggressions in the classroom? Because that’s what the literature says. I have at least three or four articles I can pull that say this is about an HSI where students experience microaggressions in the classroom and where students are experiencing microaggressions from other peers.
If those things are happening are you an HSI? I don’t care if you’re graduating every single Latinx person, if they’re facing racism, then you’re probably not an HSI. So it’s complicating it that graduation always gonna be important, but it can’t be the sole indicator of servingness.
Michelle: It’s like you’re saying they survived so that they could graduate. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a success.
Gina: Right. So that’s what I spend a lot of time with faculty and staff and administrators. This really is driven at these very high levels. When folks bring me in, it’s chancellors and provost. It’s that level. The folks on the ground doing the work, they are already committed to doing this, and they’re like, “oh, thank goodness. Finally, somebody got access to Dr. Garcia’s work and we’re gonna bring her in because those are the people who need to do the work, those high level administrators who are often white.
Michelle: This is making me think, we need a whole episode about what is it to be a consultant because just thinking about that long-term engagement, how do you manage that while also managing the requirements of tenure? And obviously you did that. This is all rooted from your dissertation, and then additional work that you’ve done?
Dra. Garcia’s Research [00:12:19]
Gina: The book was a whole new project. I collected data with three institutions in Chicago.
So the cool thing is I keep building the work, but the reality is I do case study work and so it is long term, it does take a long time to collect a lot of data, but when you’re studying organizations methodologically, it’s the best approach to really understand an organization because you collect multiple data points.
And that’s what I’m doing with this current study is there’s a survey and there’s interviews and I’m gonna have a student Participatory Action Research (PAR) project on the ground, students collecting data and the engagement workshops and so it’s all kind of different data points in a case study, which is what I like.
Michelle: That was one of my questions is you’re taking this kind of org level, but like you said, it’s just so essential. We know a lot about student engagement, but not necessarily the decisions that are being made at this kind of higher level, the senior leadership level about really embracing what it is to be Hispanic-serving versus Hispanic-enrolling.
So many of these institutions are about that. Do you see it differently or, maybe, I’m a little bit jaded about.
Gina: The last three years I’ve had the opportunity to do a workshop called HSI 101 at the Alliance of HSI Educators. They’re 10 years old, I think this is their 11th conference. They’re very administrator driven and they’re very focused on grant getting, and they’re very focused on what I call the white normative outcomes, which is why I love that they’ve brought me in because I come in and I bring critical frameworks and it’s flipping them all upside down. This HSI 101 workshop that I’ve done the past couple years, it usually has about a hundred people. And it really is people who have never thought about this, but then now they’re an HSI and it’s 101 stuff. And I have them go through an exercise where they get to place themselves in the typology.
I really put it on them. I’m like, I’m not gonna tell you you’re Latinx-enrolling. You can tell yourselves that. So I think there’s a collective, “Yes. We’re only enrolling”. And that’s folks who are in HSIs that’s those of us who are critical scholars, we know that’s the case and people are brave and put themselves out in other parts of the typology. And then I ask them to justify them. Tell me more. Why do you you’re there? Why do you think you’re [Latinx-]producing?
And they’re like, “We have equitable outcomes for our Latinx students”. I’m like, awesome. What is your environment like? What kind of classes do they take? Do they get to explore their identity? Do they know who they are as Latinx people when they leave? Are they going out and serving their Latinx community when they’re done? Are they committed to uplifting their communities? Those are all values that I talk about as far as HSI values, and that’s where they often, “well, no, we got work to do in that area”. And so it gives ’em a way to think about what they should focus on cuz it’s not always graduation rates that they need to focus on.
We know it’s already been determined when students get there. Selectivity determines whether or not students are gonna graduate. And so they obviously can do work to make sure they can improve graduation rates, but a lot of those that are already there, it’s cuz a lot more selective institutions are becoming HSIs and those are the ones that are able to then spend more time thinking, “are we enhancing Latinx culture? Are we committed to the Latinx community? Are we going out and serving our local communities?” Cuz HSIs do reflect their local communities.
Michelle: Was that from your dissertation or was that from this additional work that you’ve done?
Gina: Yeah, the typology did come from my dissertation and it was post-analysis and just came to this idea that what if you can move? And that really does come from my work at Maryland in really getting to know student development theory. That was where I was always thinking what if your identity could change or really your understanding of your identity. Your consciousness changes connection to your identity changes.
And so that’s how I always thought about what if that was at the organizational level? What would that look like to move? Cause then you could go from being Hispanic-enrolling or predominantly white institution to being Hispanic-serving. Or they want that corner to be Hispanic-thriving. That’s where really my thinking had always been, is that if I’m doing identity work, which is how I’ve always framed this HSI work, that an organization’s identity can change. There are org theories that talk about that.
And so I published this article with the data actually from the Midwest study about having a transitional identity. Higher ed people have called it Mission Drift, but mission drift is seen as negative in some ways.
And so I don’t want the HSI changing of identity to be seen as negative. I want becoming HSI to be seen as a positive thing, that it’s actually good to go from your mission of a hundred years old, that’s outdated. If you’re committed to serving those groups, then you gotta really think, what does that look to serve them? So I think about transitional identity as being a positive thing. Your identity is becoming enhanced.
Michelle: That’s fantastic. Going through the tenure process is really incredibly challenging in itself. And then a seed was planted to think about doing postdoc and not only to do one postdoc you know, you did two postdocs and the Ford foundation postdoc, and then a Spencer, and both of them require you to be able to have a mentor that you work with.
So just tell me about that process, because at the time, it sounds, at least from the book, that you didn’t really think about writing the book as part of this postdoc. Tell me a little bit about how that all evolved.
Earning the Post-Doctoral Fellowships [00:16:48]
Gina: In education, there’s not that many. Spencer’s the big one, but obviously Ford and you as being a former Ford [Foundation] fellow also shout out to the Ford family, know that Ford is for minoritized groups. I knew about Ford, from folks like you who have gotten it and looked into it and was like, okay, these are my two chances to do a postdoc.
Let me go for it. I applied and sought out mentors. For Ford, I had to have my mentor before I applied. For Spencer, I didn’t. My all time organizational theorist hero is Adriana Kezar, I just adore her work. She writes so well, so prolifically and so clear. I had never met her except that we are in the same scholar family. So my advisor, Sylvia Hurtado, is her advisor. Actually, Adriana was Sylvia’s first.
And so I was like, “Sylvia, you’ve got to connect me with Adriana. That is who I want to be my mentor, and you are the connection”. And so she sent her an email and Adriana was like, yes, absolutely. Told her what I was doing and immediately she had questions and she had ideas of how I could rethink it, and she signed on to be my mentor, and I don’t think either of us really thought I was gonna get it. I didn’t!
Michelle: Oh my God. You can’t say that. Come on.
Gina: And then I got it in my first try. And then I got Spencer in my first try, and so I was like, what the heck?
Michelle: Is that at the same time? Did you apply to both of them?
Gina: Actually, it was. So the only other person I knew had it at the same time was Uma. And so Uma Jayakumar was also somebody who I reached out to. So you’re not allowed to help both. That’s the thing. Can’t have both at the same time. And so Uma gave me a lot of guidance cuz she had done it too. And so luckily they didn’t overlap. Ford started me early and then ended early. And then Spencer started me the latest that they possibly, cuz Spencer gives you two options for a one year or two year. So the funding never overlapped. So that’s how that happened.
That was really powerful. But also the feeling. Now people are gonna be like, who the heck is she? How did she get these postdocs?
Michelle: That’s a lot of pressure.
Gina: It was a lot of pressure all of a sudden. I wanted to go under a rock. The imposter syndrome was off the chart. I was like, I don’t deserve this. People actually told me to not say I was lucky cause as a woman of color, you can never say you got lucky. You worked your butt off. I am fortunate that it happened, that the world aligned and also I have a good research idea. It was definitely stressful. I did want to retreat and not talk to anybody. I actually asked my institution not to say anything immediately.
I was like, can you let me process? They wanted to do press releases all of a sudden and I was like, can you just hold off for a second? I need to tell my people. I need to consider the people who I know who applied. Really overwhelming and also exciting news.
So yes, it was a great time for me. And yeah, the book came at that point because I almost felt the pressure that I can’t be gone for two years and not produce something really good. The book isn’t that big.
It’s less than 200 pages. So it’s just to write length for administrators. I had so much support. We can’t ever discount the fact that people believed in me and helped to make this happen.
Michelle: Oh gosh. It’s so fascinating. How did you go about the writing process for that? Because writing anything, is a lonely process even when you’re co-authoring and you’re in your mind a lot, and so what was your writing strategy?
Dra. Garcia’s Writing Strategy [00:19:49]
Gina: I was so focused at that time on writing that I laid out the book. The book was six chapters, and I was like, I’m gonna write it in one year. I was still collecting data, so there was that. It was gonna be an empirical book, but I still was collecting data.
Chapter one was the hardest and also most fulfilling chapter to write ’cause I got to really think, what am I trying to say? And theoretically how do I bring it in? And now I’m gonna shout out Marc Johnston Guerrero, who is an amazing thinker and really helped me think through chapter one a lot. He’s my scholar best friend. I sent him the chapter and he texted me one day and was like, “I need time to try to figure out, what are you saying cuz it’s so complex but so good and I wanna make sure I give you really good feedback”.
And so I gave myself one month to write chapter one and I basically wrote every day, but I was in the middle of these postdocs. And so I’d just wake up, take my kids to school, and then I would write all day and then pick my kids up from school and do it again the next day. And I had the time and the luxury. Those postdocs absolutely were necessary, but also was super committed because I will say the postdocs sort of saved me. I was in an environment that was racially charged. I was having a lot of bad experiences. My dean now is amazing and has changed the culture a lot at Pitt. We are just an amazing place now, just in the last couple years.
But at the time, postdocs saved me cause I didn’t have to go to campus. And I was like, thank goodness cuz I can’t experience the invisibility anymore. That’s what I was experiencing more than anything other than racialized aggressions, but it was a lot of invisibility. Nobody knew anything about Latinas/ Latinxs. Pittsburgh is super black and white, and so there was just a lot of erasing of my identity. I was othered a lot.
And so the book has been a way that actually brings a lot of knowledge creation to the University of Pittsburgh. Now, people know who I am. They’re contacting me, they value my work now, and it’s like I’m seen now, but we know white spaces have a way of erasing you.
And so there was this drive like I’ve got to survive. And writing was my escape. And so I loved it. The daily writing for me was so fulfilling. It was easy enough to grind every single day and write every single day.
But after the chapter one, I had to take a break for the next month cause I was so exhausted. Cause there’s that too, no matter how fulfilling it is and how much it’s saving you, how therapeutic or whatever it may be. It’s also exhausting. So I took a month off and then I got back into it.
Chapter two actually became really hard to write as well. The chapter that it became wasn’t the original chapter. I completely started from scratch and then I collected data in the summer and that’s when I just wrote three, four, and five cuz I was in the middle of data collection. My brain was in it. I was in Chicago for long periods of time and I was just writing and collecting data, all doing that simultaneously and then moved into the final chapter in November and was like, I gotta finish this book. I gave myself one year, gotta finish it and submitted it to my editor on the day before Thanksgiving.
It was a very fulfilling process. I just got to retreat and write. That was really powerful. I don’t know that I could do that again, I don’t think I could with the level of responsibilities I have now.
Michelle: We don’t talk about writing as a way to heal, but I think that’s probably what kept you going because I’m amazed at folks who are managing families and caregiving because from nine to three o’clock, this is the time that I have, and after that I’m gonna be with my family, and then start up all over again the next day.
You’ve been talking about the urgency of doing this kind of work, of trying to push the agenda past the individual students to more about the organizational structures, all of those things, I think, that keeps you inspired. I’m sure that’s what kept you going through this process.
Gina: Absolutely. You’re right, there’s so many different inspirations and I wanted to tell my story and thank you for letting me tell that story cuz I don’t tell it often and I am in a space of, it’s therapeutic now to talk about it ’cause there was a lot of trauma. We experienced a lot of trauma in white spaces. Yes. And so it was healing and I’m still healing from it. And so talking about it, I appreciate you giving me the space to talk about it cuz it is healing to even to talk about it and say, writing saved me in a lot of ways.
And so there are a lot of reasons why we turn to writing and reasons why we use writing. But yeah, the motivation to get this stuff out and to really think about how this could help people is also really super powerful, which is what it’s become. When people read the book, they’re not like, “oh, this was a healing book for Dr. Garcia. This book is awesome, and if you’re becoming an HSI, you should read it!” So it’s become an important book for people, I see people posting about it on social media. A lot of times the message is if you’re becoming an HSI, you need to start with this.
But there’s a lot of reasons I think why we write and there’s lots of motivations. And you’re right, my kids were one of them. My family is one of ’em. They keep me motivated and I gotta do this cuz there’s people that rely on me.
Michelle: It’s challenging the way that, dominant narratives about what success really looks like, and what you’ve been able to do has been great and very inspiring. So I just appreciate the time that you’ve taken to share. Everybody needs to get this book and one day I’m gonna teach my minority serving institutions class and I’m gonna assign this book.
I encourage all of our colleagues out there to do the same, to think about that as well. Any shout outs that you’d like to give?
Gina: I do appreciate this time and space to talk about my work, so thank you. I will do a plug, cause you talk about the book.
I do have a second edited book written by practitioners. Every single checker is written by a Title V or Title III [grantee]. I ended up getting a lot of Title III and it’s all their directors.
It’s people on the ground that are actually doing the work. Most of ’em have terminal degrees. Most of ’em have faculty positions, but their job right now is really administrative and a lot of their job is to implement these grants. I’m excited about that cuz that kind of flips upside down. And that came about because I didn’t see a lot of evaluation of Title V and Title III grants.
And I felt there was a big gap there. And so I was like, okay, I’m gonna edit a book and I’m going to do a call for people that are implementing grants who have data. I’m excited about that cuz it’s a different way and different knowledge. When you’re a practitioner on the ground and thinking back to when I was implementing a Title V grant, you don’t have that time to read a 30 page article ’cause you’re trying to figure out how in the heck are you gonna meet the requirements of the grant on a daily basis. how are you gonna get your institution to buy into this HSI thing?
Michelle: Thank you so much for taking time and just so inspiring. Y’all read her book, read her work. Dra. Gina Garcia.
[End 00:25:31
