Reimagining Culturally-Affirming Spaces at Hispanic Serving Institutions by Building on Students’ Ventajas y Conocimientos

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 1:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Beyond Metrics: Servingness, Linguistic Justice, and Culturally Rooted Praxis in Higher Education

Abstract

Scholars have critiqued the “servingness” of HSIs, drawing attention to the ways HSIs often emphasize enrollment numbers without fully addressing the institutional practices, resources, and environments necessary to truly serve Latinx students (Garcia, 2019; Garcia et al., 2019). Grounded in Rendón et al.’s (2014) asset-based ventajas y conocimientos framework, this qualitative Chicana feminist single-case study reimagines capacity-building to better serve diverse Latinx students. I employed pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) and letter-writing methodology (Escobedo, 2024) with 10 working-class, first-generation Latinx students at an HSRI to learn how cultural spaces and representation could be improved. Two main findings draw on students’ voices by identifying a) ventajas in culturally relevant spaces and b) capacity-building rooted in students’ conocimientos.

Author

• Lupita Romo-González, University of California - Santa Barbara