A symposium of professionals in higher education came together Friday morning, Sept. 18, in Salinas to put their brains together over how to serve Latino students after federal funding cuts last year led to a reduction in services they are still grappling with.
College administrators and faculty from Hispanic-Serving Institutions including Monterey Peninsula College, Hartnell College and Gavilan College, came to One Main Street in Salinas to celebrate Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) week.
The date also aligned with the completion of the first year of the cancellation of HSI funds, which were abruptly cut off a year ago by the Trump administration.
Hispanic-Serving Institutions are colleges where at least 25 percent of the undergraduate population is Hispanic. Colleges granted the HSI designation can then apply to federal grants—but the Department of Education chose not to fund HSIs, saying it violated the constitution by calling for racial quotas.
“There is power in this room to do more than just react to somebody who is ignorant and to a current government that is agnostic at best, if not actively racist and belligerent to who and what we are,” said Deborah Santiago, the CEO of Excelencia in Education, which seeks to support Latino student success in higher education.
In Monterey County, Hartnell, CSU Monterey Bay, and Monterey Peninsula College are all HSIs, and they all had representatives at the symposium.
The impact on Hartnell College in Salinas was a loss of about $2 million in federal funding last year, which left them unable to conduct some college tours, provide professional development to faculty and students, and other challenges. It also reduced the capacity of their tutoring center, the Panther Learning Lab, Hartnell College president Michael Gutierrez says.
According to Gutierrez, seven employees who were partially funded by HSI grants were able to be absorbed in other ways, and the school has worked on shuffling around money from other funds and grants to help offset the loss.
One of the ways Hartnell emphasized a pathway into college is dual enrollment, in which high school students are able to take college courses alongside their classes. Part of the importance of bringing students into the classroom is to allow them to see how it would look and feel to be in college. Hartnell's capacity to promote dual enrollment programs has decreased.
Presenters at the symposium emphasized that funds available as a result of Hispanic student enrollment didn't just serve Hispanic students, but the entire student body at their colleges.
Eighty-nine percent of dual enrollment students were Hispanic or Latino, according to a Hartnell College presentation.
With the HSI designation based on enrollment, something many administrators took issue with was that funding didn't require an attention to retention and job prospects after college.
Now going into another year with a lack of HSI funding, they hope to focus on not just the enrollment of students, but their goals on how to retain them.