The six subcommittees of the Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Task Force have developed and voted on 55 recommendations of ways to achieve the federal HSI designation (25 percent of the student population being Latino).

Those recommendations and voting results are with President Stephen Jordan for his review. In addition, Task Force Co-chairs Luis Torres, interim associate dean of School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Judi Diaz Bonacquisti, associate vice president for enrollment services, presented the recommendations to the President’s Cabinet Feb. 4. The recommendations are posted on the HSI Web site at http://www.mscd.edu/president/hsi/documents.shtml. The results of the voting will be posted after further analysis is complete that will better allow the recommendations to be prioritized.

“I’m proud of the work the committee did,” said Diaz Bonaquisti. “Now the College has its work cut out. We need to weave this initiative into serving all of our students the best we can.”

According to Torres, most of the recommendations are for changes in the basic structure at the College “Making these fundamental, major changes would benefit all students, Latinos in particular,” he said.

Torres related the example of one recommendation from the Recruitment, Retention and Student Development Subcommittee to expand the Excel Outreach Program by building long-term relationships and developing admission services onsite at the College’s feeder high schools.

“We learned on our site visits that HSI universities have admissions counselors at the high schools,” Torres said. (To read more about those visits to HSIs go to http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/hsi_twv5110707.shtml.)

In his role as co-chair, Torres obtained from Institutional Research a listing of the top feeder high schools from 2001 to 2006. Only one, South High School, was a Denver Public School, in spite of the fact that North and West high schools are within walking distance of the campus. “There were only a total of 33 students in 2005 from DPS’s predominantly Latino high schools: North, West, Manual and Lincoln. If we can’t recruit more from these schools, we’re simply not going to reach HSI status,” he said.

With the demographics showing an ever-increasing Latino population, Torres said, “What we’re really aiming at is: what do we need to do to better serve the College’s mandated geographical area?”

The second question is, Where do we go from here? or as Diaz Bonacquisti said, “How do we own it?”

First, though, Jordan will complete his assessment of the final report and determine when and how it should be presented to the Board of Trustees. The higher priority recommendations will need budget requests submitted to Natalie Lutes, vice president of administration and finance, for the next budget cycle. Watch @Metro for information about the initiative's next steps.