Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice ed. by Anne-Marie Núñez, Sylvia Hurtado, & Emily Calderón Galdeano (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice ed. by Anne-Marie Núñez, Sylvia Hurtado, & Emily Calderón Galdeano Deryl K. Hatch Anne-Marie Núñez, Sylvia Hurtado, & Emily Calderón Galdeano (Eds.). Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015. 228 pp. Paper: $47.95. ISBN-10: 1138814318. Institutions, just as the people who create them, inevitably change. What we believe describes and drives that change and what it means for everyone involved depends largely on our values and points of reference. In this edited volume, Núñez, Hurtado, and Calderón Galdeano invite readers to question prevailing ontological and epistemological assumptions regarding one of the most widespread, but least understood, institutional changes in higher education in the United States: a proliferation in the number of colleges and universities designated by the federal government as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) that has coincided with the remarkable growth in the Hispanic population. In contrast to fellow Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs; e.g., Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities), HSIs were not founded—with only a few exceptions—to serve any particular group at all. Rather, all not-for-profit institutions of higher education can receive a federal HSI designation when they cross the threshold of 25% Latina/os among enrolled students, regardless of whether or not they choose to embrace that designation. This process is playing out among all sectors, sizes, and types of postsecondary institutions throughout the United States. Núñez, Hurtado, and Calderón Galdeano report that the 370 current HSIs represent 11% of all U.S. colleges and enroll 18% of all college students, a number set to increase with another 277 emerging HSIs (colleges with between 15% and 24% Latina/o student enrollment) that researchers have identified (Calderón Galdeano & Santiago, 2014). Yet their numerical growth and ubiquity, the authors of this book contend, contrasts sharply with how little we know of their diversity and potential to transform the national higher education landscape. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that HSIs are too often studied as a monolithic block despite their institutional diversity and that limitations to data completeness and reliability [End Page 312] complicate the ability to sufficiently identify and describe HSIs, not the least of which is a lack of any official list. Relatively low persistence and graduation rates have led to “questions about the extent to which HSIs are actually serving versus merely enrolling Latina/o students” (p. 66, emphasis in the original); this despite the “possibility that, rather than inhibiting student success, HSIs are actually doing ‘more with less’” (p. 67). In response to such critiques and limitations among others, the book synthesizes the research literature to date and aims to “advance the study of HSIs as complex organizations as they undergo change and respond to external pressures, including demographic change, increased institutional accountability, and resource constraints” (pp. 2–3), phenomena that are observably shared by higher education institutions everywhere. Following an introductory chapter by the editors in which they provide a historical, socio-political, and theoretical context for the development and study of HSIs, the book is divided into three parts: (1) “Contextualizing the Culture, Structure, and Identity of Hispanic-Serving Institutions,” (2) “Framing Institutional Actors and Experiences Within Hispanic-Serving Institutions,” and (3) “Building Capacity and Accountability in Hispanic-Serving Institutions.” These division titles are broad-reaching, and so it takes time browsing the chapters to get a good sense of the relationship among them. An important key to understanding the book’s organization and approach is that all its chapters primarily “use an organizational lens to understand HSIs, gaining insights from constituencies (students, faculty, and leaders) within them” (p. 13). In this light, the three parts correspond essentially to concerns of institutional identity (the what), experiences (the who), and capacity/impact (the how). In addition to an organizational lens, the book is designed to bring to bear transformative paradigms that go beyond familiar post-positivist, constructivist, and pragmatic paradigms in order to question the “dominant research narrative, based on selective, four-year institutions, and the transference of unquestioned assumptions about definitions of institutional ‘success’ and the...