Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Educational Policy and Leadership
First Advisor
Gabriel Velez
Abstract
Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) educate disproportionately large percentages of Latinx and other underrepresented minority (URM) postsecondary students. But as most HSIs are also Historically White Colleges, whiteness permeates their campus structures, cultures, and practices. This study bridges gaps in our understanding around how legacies of historical whiteness on campuses that have recently become or are emerging as HSIs affect their efforts to serve Latinx/URM students. The project focuses on the perspectives of those faculty, staff, and administrators most intimately involved in “servingness” work on these campuses: HSI specialists. Employing a critical qualitative approach and guided by Critical Whiteness Studies and Omi and Winant’s formulation of racial projects, this study examines how HSI specialists encounter and counter whiteness. Through interviews and Community of Practice discussions, HSI specialists across a range of institutional types in an “emerging” HSI region shared their understandings of institutional whiteness, how they perceived whiteness interfering with their ability to adopt a race-conscious model for servingness, and the strategies they employed to disrupt it. Findings of this study expand upon definitions of “servingness” at recently designated and emerging HSIs. Additionally, situating participants’ insights within an ecological framework, this research established that whiteness manifests in a variety of forms at these campuses, as HSI specialists were confronted with individual racialized understandings, interpersonal, spatial, and organizational instantiations of whiteness, and sociopolitical currents that worked against race-conscious efforts. Far from being passive participants in these systems of whiteness, however, HSI specialists shared ways that they engaged in authentic and strategic leadership and compassionate engagement with their colleagues to fight the institutional current. This study highlights HSI specialists as powerful catalysts for change as well as underscores the collective responsibility of all campus stakeholders to engage in counterhegemonic practices. HSI specialists, campus leaders, and all who are interested in transforming historically white colleges into Hispanic-Serving Institutions may draw lessons from participants for how to navigate institutional whiteness and contribute to meaningful change on their own campuses. Finally, this study points to Communities of Practice as a potential tool for cultivating a shared servingness identity and a source of mutual support for HSI specialists.