Collaborative STEM Servingness: Advancing Student Success at Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges

Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges (HSCCs) are imperative in addressing the institutional policies and practices necessary to enhance support for Latine and other minoritized students’ successful pursuit of STEM degrees and careers. HSCCs are especially important given that both community colleges and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) provide underrepresented students with key access to STEM higher education. Informed by theories of Latine servingness and communities of practice, this chapter underscores the prominence of collaborations in advancing STEM servingness or intentional efforts to support Latine students in STEM. Gleaning insights from faculty and staff at HSCCs in the US/Mexico border region of Southern California, findings illuminate the collaborative efforts of academic and student support services as an act of servingness. Unified STEM servingness communities, especially those sustained by designated institutional or external resources, bolstered support for STEM success among Latine and other minoritized students via equity-minded initiatives addressing their academic, career, and holistic needs. With the potential to advance STEM programming at HSIs, the chapter discusses implications for policy and practice to boost collaborative STEM servingness.