The Role of Student Organizations in Fostering Servingness for Central American Undergraduates at HSIs

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Latina/o/x Cultural Assets, Resilience, and Advocacy (Table 14)

Abstract

This paper proposes how student organizations function as “counter-spaces” (Solórzano et al., 2000) that advance racial consciousness, foster ethnic identity development, and strengthen sense of belonging for Central American undergraduates enrolled in a four-year, selective Hispanic Serving Institution. This paper addresses how student organizations are counter-spaces that in turn become a critical structure for “servingness” (Garcia, 2019), and therefore, proposes an expansion of Garcia et al.’s (2019) Multidimensional Conceptual Framework for Servingness. Consequently, this paper problematizes how while student organizations are an important structure for creating and fostering “servingness”, this is a problematic practice that positions students as the drivers of institutional transformation rather than the institutions themselves. This paper highlights those tensions and presents recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

Author

• Audrey D. Paredes, California State University - San Marcos