Home / About / Vision

Vision

UCSC will graduate Latinx and low-income students to support racial equity goals and open academic and career pathways to achieve holistic student success, including a 90% undergraduate graduation rate for native frosh and transfer with a 3.0 or higher grade point average, achieving parity for graduate student outcomes and increasing opportunities for high-level professional careers. As an HSI developing educational interventions, student-centered practices, and investments for student success, UCSC will conduct an ongoing inquiry on practices and policies that advance this vision and contribute the resulting knowledge to scholarly work on educational equity.

Principles

  • Frame all our efforts within three areas: building student success for all, improving educational practice, and changing and strengthening institutional structures.
  • Move from successful admission of racially diverse undergraduate students (our strength) to racial equity in experiences and outcomes, including for transfer and graduate students (our challenge).
  • Raise awareness and build consensus by using disaggregated data (by race and other identities) on educational opportunities and outcomes.
  • Embrace racial equity in our everyday work and identify and address racial inequities wherever they exist to inform our practices.
  • Improve academic performance and inclusion and campus climate by redesigning key gateway courses and training faculty, teaching assistants, and staff to meet the needs of all students.
  • Introduce, in collaboration with campus partners, innovations in teaching and learning practices that are socially and culturally informed.
  • Acknowledge challenges uncovered in the inquiry process and build on successes in our practice to make a sustainable and positive institutional change.
  • Empower institutional agents and equity champions who work across campus silos to develop productive partnerships inside and beyond UCSC.
  • Redefine holistic success to include navigating academic, social-emotional, family, community, financial, and career pathways and outcomes.
  • Extend the equity framework to prepare students for successful pathways from their undergraduate years to their professional futures by providing clear pathways to high-demand careers, post-graduate opportunities, and the professoriate.
  • Prioritize minimizing educational debt and accelerating social mobility.
  • Honor the public and R-1 nature of UCSC by continuously enhancing servingness* and success in practice and research, achieving equity, and promoting social mobility.

 

 

* Garcia, G. A. Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs, (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2020).

Bhattacharya, N., Sánchez Ordaz, A., Mosqueda, E., & Cooper, C. R. Redesigning the gateway college Algebra course with inclusive and asset-based pedagogy: Rethinking “servingness” at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. (pp. 97-116). 

Cooper, C. R., Reguerín, P. G., Herzon, C., Sánchez Ordaz, A., Gonzalez, E., & Rocha-Ruiz, Unifying equity practice, research, and policies at a Hispanic-Serving Research Institution for systemic servingness. (pp. 175-193). 

Covarrubias, R., Vazquez, A., Moreno, R., Estrada, J., Valle, I., & Zuniga. K. Engaging families to foster holistic success of low-income, Latinx first-generation students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. (pp. 313-336).

Reguerín, P. G., Poblete, J., Cooper, C. R., Sánchez Ordaz, A., & Moreno, R. (2020). Becoming a racially just Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI): A case study of the University of California, Santa Cruz. (pp. 41-59). 

Sanchez Ordaz, A., Reguerín, P. G., & Sanchez, S. E. Using interactive theater to strengthen holistic advising at a Hispanic-Serving Institution: Messages of belonging and affirmation. (pp. 79-95).