American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions Research Articles

Supporting Asian American Multilingual College Students Through Critical Language Awareness Programming

ABSTRACT Critical language awareness (CLA) encourages teachers and students to examine language as social practice and reflect on ideologies and power dynamics embedded within language use. In this article, the authors—both instructors in an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) federal grant project at a university in New York City—describe how we integrated a CLA framework to create an Asian American Studies class that uses culturally sustaining pedagogies to affirm student linguistic identities and demystify academic research practices. Specifically, we analyzed a project where we introduced the term linguistic landscapes (LL) and asked students to visit Asian American ethnic enclaves to examine linguistic signage. While implementations of CLA have been based in K-12 instruction, university writing courses, and teacher education courses, this paper presents a successful example of a project based in CLA used in credit-bearing university courses, specifically, in an Asian American Studies program.

Special Issue on Asian American, Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions

Special Issue on Asian American, Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions

The Power of Ethnic Studies at Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions

The Power of Ethnic Studies at Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs): Serving and Advocating for the Educational Needs of Southeast Asian American Students

The purpose of this article is to highlight how AANAPISI programs can intentionally design their programming to support Southeast Asian American (SEAA) students, and their responsibility in effectively advocating for them at the policy level. In this effort, this article will first provide a background and an overview of the AANAPISI landscape over the past decade. Then it will focus on one exemplary AANAPISI, providing examples of programmatic mechanisms and efforts used to serve SEAA students. This article concludes by providing recommendations and discussing the implications regarding the role of AANAPISIs in effectively serving and advocating for their SEAA students at the policy level.

Being Black in a Sea of Color: A Phenomenological Study Exploring Black Students’ Racial Experiences at an AANAPISI and Emerging HSI

This phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews with 13 Black college students attending a university that is both an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) and emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) to explore their racial experiences using symbolic interaction theory. Findings demonstrate that despite attending a minority-serving institution, Black students felt a cultural mismatch with their Asian and Latinx peers and the values of their campus. Being a minority within a minority-serving institution, they also experienced being invisible and hypervisible simultaneously.

The Effect of Enrolling in Minority Serving Institutions on Earnings Compared to Non-minority Serving Institutions: A College Scorecard Analysis

As policymakers along with students and families demand information related to the return on investment in postsecondary education, it is critical to empirically assess the relationship between enrollment in higher education and future earnings. Previous research into the impact of college attendance on future income mostly focuses on selective institutions. This study contributes to this literature by analyzing the effect of enrolling in a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) on earnings compared to non-MSIs using propensity score matching and logistic regression. Using data derived from the College Scorecard and other sources, we find that those enrolling in some categories of MSIs have higher earnings when compared to those who enroll in non-MSIs. This is particularly true of Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions in most earnings categories as defined by the College Scorecard. Other MSI categories yielded mixed results. We do not find evidence for a negative relationship between MSI enrollment and different levels of future earnings. We conclude that enrollment in MSIs does not inhibit student success as defined by workforce earnings as is often argued by those critical of institutions that tend to be broad access.

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions: The Importance of External Coalition‐Building for Supporting Internal Collaboration

AbstractThis chapter highlights opportunities for Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions to develop and utilize external partnerships to inform the development of internal collaboration between academic and student affairs to better serve targeted student populations.

Conditions that Catalyze the Emergence of Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions

AbstractIncreased knowledge about the conditions that have catalyzed and enabled institutions to seek and effectively acquire federally recognized and supported Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) status can inform the work of potential and emerging AANAPISIs.

AANAPISI Perspectives of Asian American Veterans in College

AbstractAsian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions can align their support systems for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students and veterans to create conditions for AAPI student veterans to thrive in college.

Mission-Centered Engagement with Asian American Student Veterans

This article draws qualitatively on the experiences, reflections, and expressions of Asian American student veterans through Asian American Studies courses and activities the authors have led in the decade between 2006 and 2016, at an urban public research university that is federally designated as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution, and recognized annually among four-year universities as “best for vets.” Beginning with a brief introduction to Asian American military service historically and currently, we note the lack of research and resource materials available nationally that is informed by or responsive to the backgrounds, perspectives, and needs of Asian American student veterans in college. We then provide a synthesis of rich documentary evidence based on Asian American student veterans’ voices, to illustrate the value of Asian American Studies curricular strategies and pedagogical approaches, particularly through digital storytelling, that create integrative contexts for their holistic connections and contributions as Asian Americans, as veterans, and as university students. Beyond the classroom and campus, we also offer concrete examples of community-centered connections through Asian American Studies that enable Asian American student veterans to engage with public sites and local civic organizations that share significant legacies of Asian American veterans’ leadership and service across generations.

(Re)conceptualizing Protests: Activism, Resistance, and AANAPISIs

Though protests on college campuses have captured public attention, far less consideration has been paid to Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs). The Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) population has historically served on the front lines of the Asian American Movement during the Civil Rights Movement influencing the educational experiences of APIA students. While literature documents student activism from APIA students, they are portrayed as an apolitical group. The purpose of this article is to (re)conceptualize the term protest to capture the historical and contemporary forms of activism by researchers, policy makers, community organizers, and students throughout a decade that pushed a legislation forward to create the federal designation for AANAPISIs. We argue that the term protest is limiting in research. Instead, the term activism, should be used in order to encapsulate the ways APIAs have been engaged socially and politically. Additionally, there exists a gap in educational literature discussing how the spatial politics of domination and resistance manifests in representational spaces—in this case institutional structures like AANAPISIs. Influenced by spatial politics and spatial theory we put forth a conceptual argument that the representational existence of AANAPISIs is a site of resistance that needs to be better understood, especially in the era of Trump where anti-immigration and racist rhetoric is ever-present, because of the ways APIAs continue to be racialized and (re)positioned in United States racial discourse and research.

Motivations and Paths to Becoming Faculty at Minority Serving Institutions

Drawing upon 15 qualitative interviews with early- to mid-career faculty (seven men and eight women) at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), this study examines the diverse motivations and paths those faculty members have taken to becoming professors at their respective institutions. The faculty come from a range of MSIs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, and Predominantly Black Institutions) across the country and represent a broad spectrum of disciplines. This study sheds light on factors that guide their choices of discipline and entrance into the faculty ranks at MSIs. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) was used as a lens during qualitative coding and analysis in order to develop the findings, which reveal that (1) teaching, activism, and community uplift were primary motivators to enter the professoriate; (2) supportive environmental factors, including single individuals, proved pivotal in influencing faculty to take these roles; and (3) career transitions into the academy were spurred by learning experiences that revealed disciplinary and teaching interests. The findings suggest that MSIs attract community-oriented individuals to their faculty positions, and that colleges and universities interested in diversifying their faculties should craft such roles in ways that are appealing to the populations that they are trying to recruit and retain.