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Celebrating HSI Week: Advancing Latine Success

National HSI Week is Sept. 9 - 15

September 06, 2024

Dear Campus Community,

Welcome to the 2024 academic year! As a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), we are excited to celebrate National Hispanic-Serving Institutions Week on September 9-15. We invite the campus community to come together to reflect on our servingness for our Latine students and to celebrate the strides we’ve made in advancing educational equity, cultural inclusivity, and academic achievement. Learn more about what an HSI is through this video created by the UCSC HSI Initiatives team. 

Being an HSI signifies more than just a designation; it embodies our commitment to serving Latiné students and enhancing their educational experience. At UCSC, this means providing targeted resources, creating validating environments, and celebrating the rich cultural heritage that our students bring to our campus. It’s about ensuring that every student has the opportunity to thrive and contribute to our vibrant academic community. We’re thrilled to present a few highlights:

  • Last March as part of our Cultivamos Excelencia programs, we welcomed prospective community college students and families to the 7th Annual Dia de la Familia bilingual program. UCSC staff, faculty, and students extended a warm welcome to students and their families, sharing what UCSC has to offer and affirming that UCSC is a place where they can thrive. The Cultivamos Excelencia Research Scholars designed for transfer students, expands graduate pathways by offering paid research experience and mentoring support ensuring the talents and strengths of our current transfer students are cultivated and nourished. The applications will open this fall for the winter 2025 cohort.  
  • The Cultivamos Excelencia team continues a strong partnership with the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) and has developed a Transfer Student Success Workshop for academic departments, online resources, and this year TLC fellows will engage in the theme of the transfer student experience. Faculty can learn more in this month's TLC newsletter. Services to Transfer, Re-Entry and Resilient Scholar (STARRS), home to the Cultivamos Excelencia work, will host its second Transfer Champion for Racial Equity, a workshop series open to staff to develop actionable steps they can take to build a transfer-receptive culture within their departments. This year’s application will be released in Winter 2025.
  • The Collaborative Research for Equity in Action (CREA) Undergraduate Researchers team presented the findings from their participatory action research (PAR) project entitled, “Pathways of (in)validation: Marginalized students navigating resources at a Hispanic-Serving Institution” as part of the HSI Equity Talks. This team of 11 amazing undergraduate researchers examined how universities can build culturally validating pathways by exposing and unraveling the hidden rules of universities that shape student success.

Finally, we’re excited to invite you to explore and connect with the vibrant community at UCSC! Whether you're a new student, a seasoned member of our faculty, or part of our dedicated staff, there are countless ways to make meaningful connections. Let’s come together, support one another, and build lasting connections. Join us at any (or all) of the upcoming events: 

You can stay connected via our Instagram: @ucsc.hsi and @elcentro_ucsc where we regularly share upcoming events and opportunities. 

Wishing you all the best in the new academic year!

Charis Herzon, HSI Initiatives Director 

Xiomara López, El Centro Director and the HSI and El Centro Teams