Examining Faculty Perceptions Moving from an HWI Toward an HSI: Beyond Pedagogy and Platitudes Toward Authentic Servingness

This chapter examined faculty perceptions about what it meant to enact servingness in a Historically White Institution (HWI) that was in the process of moving toward Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) status. The U.S. has seen an exponential growth in the number of higher education institutions seeking the federally designated HSI status. Recent literature has made distinctions between Hispanic enrolling versus Hispanic serving, stressing the importance of ensuring HWIs that aspire to become HSIs authentically serve their growing Latine population. Moreover, as these HWIs move to become HSIs, they tend to retain vestiges of whiteness, which makes it challenging to move beyond platitudes about serving. Garcia et al.’s (Toward a multidimensional conceptual framework for understanding ‘servingness’ in Hispanic-serving institutions: A synthesis of the research. Review of Educational Research, 89(5), 745–784, 2019) concept of “servingness” provided a framework for situating what it means to serve and be responsive to the needs of Latine students and not merely focus on meeting enrollment standards.