Community leader Patrick Vigil said that education is the “great leveler” and thanked the College for the HSI initiative.

Patrick Vigil, a leader and activist in Denver’s Latino community, thanked the College after hearing the recommendations for programs and processes that Metro State should use as it works to attain the federal designation of Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).

“It’s so important what you’re doing,” Vigil said during the feedback session of the Nov. 30 public meeting of the HSI Task Force.

“Think about it. We’re spending more than $100,000 to keep a kid locked up in juvenile detention. It makes a whole lot of sense to spend that money on education instead,” said the former executive director of the Greater Auraria Neighborhood of Associated Services (GANAS), who has spent many years working with youth.

Vigil attended the meeting along with approximately 20 Metro State community members from the faculty, admissions, Alumni Relations, Development Office and others.

A snapshot of the recommendations
Vigil’s statement followed the presentation of more than 60 recommendations from the task force’s six subcommittees: Assessment; Recruitment, Retention and Student Development; Public Relations; Campus Climate; Faculty and Staff Development/Grantsmanship; and Curriculum Development.

Faculty and staff from across the College attended the public meeting.

The thrust of the Assessment Subcommittee was that the College must create self-sustaining systems in order to make evidence-based decisions on all HSI-related activities and to share the data among all College programs to benefit all students.

Among the numerous recommendations of the Recruitment, Retention and Student Development Subcommittee were the development and implementation of a pre-collegiate summer program and expansion of the Excel Outreach Program to put full-time Metro State staff in schools four days each week. “By 2012-13 we think the program should be full-blown in the junior high schools, high schools and with parents,” said subcommittee Co-chair Elena Sandoval-Lucero.

The Campus Climate Subcommittee is suggesting that a new name for the initiative be created, “HSI gives the impression that we’re seeking to serve only the Latino community,” said subcommittee member Joshua Anderson of Alumni Relations. Anderson said the term HSI is confusing people who don’t understand the term means having a 25 percent Latino student population.

Alumni Relations Assistant Director Joshua Anderson talked about the Campus Climate Subcommittee’s recommendation to create a new name for the initiative.

The focus of the Faculty and Staff Development/Grantsmanship Subcommittee’s recommendations is on creating an inclusive learning environment by developing multicultural awareness training and certification in multicultural competence with ongoing assessment of measureable outcomes.

The Curriculum Development subcommittee included among its recommendations a college-wide policy for the enforcement of prerequisites and the reform of state and institutional policies with regard to remedial coursework. “If we want better retention of our first- and second-year students, we need to have control over the remedial process,” said subcommittee member Tat Sang So.

Assistant Professor of English Tat Sang So presented the Curriculum Committee’s recommendations.

The Public Relations Subcommittee is still in the process of performing marketing research and is awaiting executive summaries of three focus group sessions with Latino alumni, Latino parents, and faculty and staff as well as of one-on-one interviews with top Latino leaders. The subcommittee plans to also conduct an online survey of current students this spring. As Co-chair Cathy Lucas said, “We’re putting the cart before the horse if we don’t complete the market research before formulating our recommendations.”

The subcommittee reported on the two meetings with leaders from the Latino community that were held following the controversy surrounding in-state tuition for children who are U.S. citizens whose parents are undocumented workers ( to read more go to http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/tuition_twv5081207.shtml.) Co-chair Ramon Del Castillo reported that while the first meeting was “tough,” the second meeting, which President Jordan was able to attend, built “bridges of understanding and demonstrates how a university should relate to the community.”

What’s next
According to task force Co-chair Judi Diaz Bonacquisti the next step will be for the task force to prioritize the recommendations at the January meeting and then submit their report to Jordan.

The HSI task force will be making presentations to the various college constituencies once the report is final. The report is scheduled to be presented to the trustees at the February board meeting.

Several of the power point presentations from the subcommittees are on the HSI Web site at http://www.mscd.edu/president/hsi/documents.shtml. The others will be posted within the week.