Cal State Long Beach was recently afforded a wonderful opportunity to enhance services to its growing Latino student population. The university’s designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) has come as a result of considerable effort on the part of several key faculty and other members of the university community. The campus will receive a $570,000 annual planning grant for five years that will allow a steering committee to further refine the guiding principles, activities and key initiatives to be implemented during the next five years.
More specifically, the resources will allow the university to initiate a number of important activities for Latino students including the enhancement of academic advising and mentoring opportunities, professional development for faculty and staff to develop more culturally relevant advising and instructional strategies, and institutional research assistance to better measure and follow Latino student academic progress.
Securing the HSI planning grant for the university comes at a point when key indicators suggest that CSULB is making important progress in serving its Latino student population. There has been a steady increase in the enrollment of Latino undergraduate students, growing from 6,323 in 2001 to 7,496 in 2005. The one-year retention rates for both first-time freshmen and transfer Latino students also improved to 80 percent and 91.3 percent respectively.
Furthermore, the six-year graduation rates for first-time Latino freshmen and four-year graduation rates for transfer Latino students improved by 15 percent and 12.5 percent respectively during the five-year period that began in 1999. In fact, these increases have helped CSULB’s graduation rates for Latino students exceed that of the national average for public universities.
While these indicators suggest that the university is making remarkable progress in the provision of quality services to many students, more focused efforts directed toward improvements to the university’s infrastructure should yield even greater results. Additionally, the university is constantly looking to improve these trends for all traditionally underrepresented students.
From a different perspective, however, the university must carefully develop its HSI activities to ensure that we do not compromise the values and principles inherent in the mission of a great public university. At its roots, CSULB remains a diverse comprehensive, university that seeks ways in its methods and practices that promote inclusion for each unique population we serve. To that end, the various sets of programs developed under the aegis of the HSI grant will seek to be inclusive and will not embrace exclusionary practices that may be deemed impractical for a public higher education institution such as ours.
“The separate but equal” mandate that was struck down by the United States Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision came as a result of a failed experiment in our nation from which we have yet to fully recover. We have learned much from this and other lessons throughout the history of our nation which demonstrated that neo-Conservative ideals that segregate societies should be avoided at all costs.
This is the inception of a grant that we hope will lead to improve retention services, innovative classrooms and other campus life experiences, campus internships and employment opportunities and continuous improvement in the building of a campus culture that remains focused on student success. Finally, these initiatives will provide the university community with increased chances to work together to build a more welcoming environment for Latino and other students throughout the university.
F. King Alexander is the president of Cal State Long Beach.
