HSI Conference: Promoting Servingness across CUNY HSIs

Cuny New York City College Of Technology, Brooklyn NY

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, this conference aims to bring together faculty, students, and staff from all City University of New York (CUNY) HSIs to highlight successful HSI initiatives, reflect on CUNY campus HSI identities, develop a plan for formalizing a CUNY HSI network and promote servingness across CUNY. CUNY is the nation’s largest urban public university, made up of 25 colleges throughout New York City. New York ranks fourth in the nation in number of HSIs with a total of 35 HSI colleges and universities. More than one half of CUNY’s colleges are designated as HSIs, however there is no centralized CUNY network. The proposed project is a two-day conference that will bring together representatives from all CUNY HSIs in a call to action to intentionally serve Hispanic/Latinx students through data, practice, and leadership. The conference will improve the understanding of how to effectively measure Hispanic/Latinx student success and the knowledge generated will inform institutions about what supports, and environments are needed to assist Hispanic/Latinx students on their path to degree attainment. This conference will provide the platform for CUNY HSIs to define and promote servingness at their campuses and foster a discussion on collaboration and establishment of centralized resources and support across CUNY. The conference speakers and workshop leaders will share their extensive experience with promoting servingness across HSIs and guide the conference participants through working sessions designed to produce the content of a white paper on the state of CUNY HSIs. The participants will represent faculty, students, staff, and administrators across CUNY HSIs. Results of this project will be published in peer-reviewed journals, disseminated at conferences, and shared in white papers with the HSI Community. The project will provide models of Best Practices at HSIs that may be adapted, adopted, and replicated by colleges and universities across the nation that seek to increase recruitment, retention, and graduation rates for Hispanic/Latinx students. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.