From El Plan De Santa Barbara to an HSI, What it Means to Serve Chicano/Latino Students Across Time and Place

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Our Presence Is Not Inevitable: Reflecting on Chicana/o Interventions at The University of California

Abstract

The author will reflect on the approach of defining HSIs, recovering and reclaiming the counter origin story of a Hispanic Serving Research Institution (HSRI). El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education (1969) serves as the foundation for understanding the concept of serving Chicano/Latino students in higher education. At UC Riverside, a grassroots HSI (Doran & Medina, 2017), Chicana/o activists worked tirelessly to create change in the 1960s-1970s, implementing many of the steps outlined in El Plan. As a result, they created the conditions for UCR to emerge as a top-performing Hispanic Serving Research Institution with one of the highest undergraduate enrollment and degree attainment rates for Chicano/Latinos in the UC system. This student participatory action research project, guided by Critical Race Theory and Chicana Feminist Theory, traced the origins of serving Chicano/Latino students at the University of California, Riverside alongside 12 Chicano/Latino undergraduate co-researchers.

The study centered the critical voices and experiences of Chicano students and considered some of the impact of this historical recovery on the co-researcher undergraduates. In this presentation, the panelist will highlight remarks from three UCR Chicano elders of the 1960s-1970s, reflecting on the challenges and interventions in the creation of institutionalized structures of support for Chicano students on campus. This presentation focuses on the methods and practices of a historian as a curandera (Levins Morales, 1998) and the role of counterstorytelling (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), documenting the past to restore connections to our sense of self, community, and opportunity. The elders reflected on their path to consciousness, community building, advocacy, and transformational change with the goal of education as a tool for liberation. One participant reflected on their experience as a student in the 1970s, stating, “There were only a few of us, but we started to understand the power we possessed and what we could achieve within the community" (Cano Matute, 2023). The co-researcher’s reflection on listening and engaging with the elders' testimonios led to a deeper understanding of the past, as well as the ways in which serving has been at the forefront of campus-wide initiatives created and led by Chicano student activists, faculty, and staff.

Author

• Arlene Cano Matute, University of California - Riverside