Hispanic Serving Institutions now make up 20% of US colleges and universities and enroll over 60% of all Latine college students, yet they continue to strive for a unique identity as Minority Serving Institutions. The question remains: What does it mean to serve Latine students beyond enrollment, federal eligibility, and grant-seeking and -getting? The HSI Movement answers this question, offering solutions and ideas through the lens of emergent strategy and abolitionist ideologies.
The HSI Movement is about the educators and leaders who drive institutional change from within. It’s about using federal grants to advance student success and develop innovative solutions to serve the increasingly diverse student population entering colleges and universities. The book defines new concepts like “HSIs in the transitional era,” “HSI-minded,” and “servingness processes,” which are practices that change agents use to drive change, even when they don’t have grant funding. It elevates the voices of practitioners who are actively reshaping their campuses, in collaboration and through an equity-minded approach.
Through detailed accounts of institutional change, the book shows how leaders and educators interpret their HSI identity in practice by embedding it in strategic planning, staffing decisions, student services, mental health support, and relationships with families and communities. These efforts reveal the labor, resistance, and persistence required to move institutions beyond symbolic recognition. The book also confronts the structural obstacles facing HSIs, including administrative pushback, governing board resistance, and broader political attacks on equity-focused initiatives. Recent federal challenges to HSI funding underscore the urgency of this work, as institutions continue to enroll growing numbers of Latine students regardless of anti-DEI state and federal legislation.
The HSI Movement offers concrete strategies for campuses seeking transformation. It speaks directly to students, faculty, staff, administrators, and policymakers at HSIs, emerging HSIs, and institutions nearing eligibility. Other enrollment-based MSIs can also find motivation from this book including Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) and Black Serving Institutions (BSIs). At a moment of political uncertainty and institutional strain, the book insists that justice-oriented change is possible—and already underway. The book resembles a love letter to HSI educators and leaders, with Garcia saying, “You got this! Keep going! ¡Dale! ¡Que viva el movimiento!”
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction: Hispanic Serving Institutions in Transition
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Organizational [Identity] Change
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HSI Grants as Levers of Change
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Processes of Servingness
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Leading for Change from the Middle
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Barriers and Resistance to Change
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Envisioning the HSI Thriving Era
References
Other Books
