More than the Minimum: Culturally Responsive Evaluation in the Pursuit of Racial Justice at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

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Abstract

The role of an external evaluator on federal grants is often limited to ensuring that activities were implemented on time and at scope. Restricting the evaluation to these basic responsibilities might be enough to satisfy the funder, but it does little to generate new knowledge that could prove useful in guiding changes to implementation or informing how university-wide institutionalization might look. This paper explains how a culturally responsive evaluation framework (CRE) provided space for discussions between the principal investigator and evaluator that accounted for campus climate, sociopolitical dynamics, and dominant narratives and helped to explain some of the variations in expected outcomes. Implications for the pursuit of racial justice at Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSIs) are discussed.

Authors

• Rick Sperling, St. Mary's University (TX)

• Daniel Cheshire, Our Lady of the Lake University