HSI Research Initiative
Overview
On March 1, 2022, the United States Department of Education notified Texas A&M University – College Station that it has been designated as Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) under Title III and/or Title V of the Higher Education Act of 1965, amended by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. Read memo.
In recognition of this new status as an HSI, more departments and programs need to form partnerships and collaborations to conduct HSI-relevant research to better serve our students and community and fulfill our ethical obligations as a federally-designated HSI. Crucially, Texas A&M University has an opportunity to be a national leader for research-intensive HSIs because we spend more on research than any other research-intensive HSI in the country.
RESI’s HSI Research Initiative
The Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Research Initiative has been formed in recognition of the opportunity we have to create transformative and translational research opportunities for students and faculty at Texas A&M University. We aim to be the hub for HSI-oriented research both in the College of Arts & Sciences and across the university. For its first year (2023-2024), RESI expects to spend about two-thirds of its research support funds on HSI connected research projects. Check out our current funding opportunities for more information. If you're interested in external funding, please check out the Research Development Services' Hispanic-Serving Institutions Funding Opportunities page. As of the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, HSI Initiative projects include the following:
The Anti-DEI Legislation Impact Study at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (ADLIS-HSI)
ADLIS-HSI is a project that seeks to measure the impact of recent legislative efforts across the country (including, but not limited to, Texas and Florida) to defund DEI programs, practices, and infrastructure in public four-year (particularly research-intensive) HSIs. ADLIS-HSI asks, how do these contemporary legislative efforts aimed at public higher education institutions affect faculty perceptions of their job security, their job satisfaction, and their decision-making processes about their employment? And for faculty who decide to leave their institutions, ADLIS-HSI asks what are the actual or potential economic impacts of those decisions? The ADLIS-HSI study is under preparation for submission to the IRB and external funders, and we hope to begin data collection as soon as possible.
The Emerging Visions of Learning, Voices, & Equity at HSIs (EVOLVE HSIs) Study
EVOLVE HSIs is a study initially funded by a 2022 RESI Interdisciplinary Faculty Seed Grant and is led by co-PIs Darrel Wanzer-Serrano and Ishara Casellas Connors, joined by co-investigator Mariana Rodriguez. This project uses a discourse tracing method to analyze the communications of three emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions (eHSI) in the University of Texas System: UT Austin, UT Dallas, and UT Tyler. This research draws from institutional websites, personal correspondence, and constituent interviews to frame this research. Focused on the relationship between macro-discursive, meso-discursive, and micro-discursive utterances, researchers examine how these eHSIs craft intentionality and servingness in the context of racialized organizations.