Pueden encontrar la versión en españolaquí.
Several Utah colleges hope to one day earn the federal designation of being a Hispanic-Serving Institution.
Weber State University and Salt Lake Community College are working toward the status. Officials with each school say the state’s new anti-DEI law, which takes effect July 1, won’t prevent them from becoming an HSI.
To become an HSI, as defined in federal law, a school needs to be a nonprofit and at least 25% of its full-time undergraduate students need to be Hispanic.
Six hundred schools meet the criteria nationwide, but none are in Utah. SLCC became the first Utah college to become an “emerging HSI,” when its Hispanic/Latino enrollment reached at least 15%.
Obtaining the designation opens the door for colleges to apply for more federal funding. Utah’s recently passed anti-DEI law carves out an exception for federal grants and programs. Interestingly, schools that receive the grant money aren’t required to use it to improve things specifically for Latino students, noted Iowa State University professor Erin Doran, whose research includes Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
Historically Black colleges and universities, for example, are considered mission-driven institutions, Doran said, and HSIs are enrollment-driven. For schools that get HSI money, Doran said often “what they’re doing is trying to beef up the practices and programs that end up benefiting everyone” on campus.
Executive director of HSI Initiatives at Weber State, Yudi Lewis, and director of Hispanic Serving Initiatives at SLCC, Tranquilino “Kino” Hurtado, both said HB261 won’t stop their schools from earning the federal designation.
“Everything we design is not racially exclusive to Hispanic/Latinx students. It’s actually designed to serve all students,” Hurtado said.
“The federal government does have this emphasis on intentionally serving Latinx students, Hispanic students. But we don't apply it with such rigid intentions. It's a broad, broad swath for all students,” he said.
Lewis said Weber State, and other Utah schools, are waiting on guidance from the Utah System of Higher Education to understand how the DEI law “impacts the way we connect with students, with all students.”
However, “HB261 has not changed my fundamental goal of helping students,” Lewis stated.
As far as its effect on Utah colleges' specific efforts to better recruit and retain Latino students, that remains unclear. After they get the guidance, Lewis said, it’ll be an “opportunity to reframe the way we serve all students at Weber State” and go back to the drawing board to figure out the best way to do that.
One of the biggest criticisms from some scholars about the HSI program, Doran said, is that there are not enough accountability measures to make sure that the money benefits Hispanic and Latino students, even though the schools are getting the “racialized money” because they’re enrolling more students of that demographic.
While Doran said some of the language about HSI money might set off someone who is anti-DEI, she said “the outcomes and the on-the-ground uses of this money aren't as explicitly racialized as I think people think when they hear about Title V [HSI] funding.”
Weber State has a goal of becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the fall of 2025. The University of Utah has also said it wants to become an HSI.
