Keynote Session: UC and UCSC as Ecosystem for HSI

We address the historical and structural conditions that signal the challenges UC and UCSC face as high level Hispanic Serving Research Institutions (HSRI). We then connect those challenges with the concept of supporting educational ecosystems. In this session, you will also hear practical solutions that are currently in progress and some that are proposed shared strategies.

• Ebonée Williams, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success and Equity

• Juan Poblete, Professor of Literature

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Round 1 Breakout Sessions (9:35 - 10:20 am)

• 1. Rethinking single variable Calculus for Life Sciences for advancing equity

  Calculus with Applications in the Life Sciences (Biocalculus) is an impactful and required course for all STEM majors at our institution, a large public university. A disproportionately high percentage of Latinx and low-income students (EOP) earn failing grades in this course. We found that the inclusive course structure provided minoritized students with a supportive environment and positively impacted their learning. We believe our specific implementation can be helpful to many large public universities with diverse student populations and relatively limited resources.

  Presented by: 
  • Nandini Bhattacharya, Continuing Lecturer, Mathematics
  • Malachi Alexander, Graduate Student Researcher
  • Sophie Aiken, Graduate Student Researcher
  • Jennifer Guerrero, Graduate Student Researcher

• 2. Sustainable Futures: Creating and Measuring Sustainable Graduate Programming for Equitable Success and Belonging

  Housed in the UCSC Center for Reimagining Leadership (CRL), the “Bridging Analysis and Action in Diversity, Equity, and Sustainability” Collective Lab is a team of Graduate Student Researchers and faculty and staff mentors who use participatory methods and empowerment frameworks to reimagine what accurate measurements of success look like for graduate students, and how effectively programs support that success. The team created a replicable model for the evaluation of programs supporting graduate students from marginalized communities, so that practitioners can reimagine and evaluate their metrics of success of these programs. The program evaluations that make up the foundation of this proposal were focused on two holistic support programs for marginalized students: the Cota Robles/Doris Duke (CR/DD) Program and the Graduating and Advancing New American Scholars (GANAS) Doctoral Summer Bridge (DSB) Program.
  
  In our presentation, we will walk participants through the CRL incubator model and our innovative evaluation process that centers the identities of participants and researchers, uplifting perspectives that have historically been excluded from program evaluation; describe the “Pillars of Success” evaluation model we created based on this process; and make the argument of how to center graduate student voices, especially those from marginalized communities, in the development and evaluation of holistic support programming.

  Presented by: 
  • Lorato Anderson, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Graduate Studies
  • Jada Cheek, Graduate Student Researcher
  • Stephanie Hertel, Graduate Student Researcher
  • Katherine Quinteros, Graduate Student Researcher
  • Ashlee Brown, Graduate Student Intern

• 3. Write On! (Supporting Student Writing Needs)

  This presentation will begin with a brief description of the UCSC Writing Center's services available to students in need of individual or group writing support. The panel facilitator will introduce a grad student writing group mentor, and an individual tutor, and they will discuss the ways in which they support students, fortify their writing skills, help them connect with information and resources that can be helpful to them. A Q&A after the panel discussion will give participants the opportunity to ask for more information or clarification.

  Presented by: Jaime Cortez, Associate Director of the Writing Center

• 4. Redesigning Systems For Success: Supporting Diverse Students at UCSC

  GANAS Career Internship Program has been an essential part of our efforts to prepare students for their career. Since we are at our last grant year with our program, I want to take this opportunity for us to reassess our approach and seek innovative ways to continue fostering career readiness in our students.

  Presented by: Eliana Duran, GANAS Career Internship Coordinator

• 5. Cultivating Transfer Excellence at UC Santa Cruz

  This session will feature a dynamic panel that explores how students, staff and faculty are contributing to building a transfer receptive culture at UC Santa Cruz. Panelists will also discuss how they have been personally and professionally impacted by their participation in initiatives funded through the Cultivamos Excelencia HSI Title V grant. The learning goal for participants is to build awareness of the diversity of transfer-oriented initiatives happening across campus, and gain inspiration for how they can also take action within their departments to center and serve transfer students of color. 

  Presented by:
  • Panel Moderator: David Gordon Ph.D, Associate Director of Transfer Partnerships
  • Alejandra Guardado, Transfer Scholar Pathways program participant (Undergraduate)
  • Karina Davila, Summer Transition Program participant (Undergraduate)
  • Francia Cruz Silva, Community College Partnership Program Coordinator (Staff)
  • Itzel Arias, Lead Mentor, Community College Partnership Program (Undergraduate)
  • Autumn Johnson, AARRC Director, Transfer Champions for Racial Equity Professional Development participant (Staff)
  • Alan Christy, History Department, Transfer Coherence participant (Faculty)
  • Estrella Arteaga Organiz, Graduate Pathways Coordinator, CE Research Scholars (Grad Student)
  • Scarlett OrtegaVelez, CE Research Scholars Participant (Undergraduate)
  • Valeria Alonso Blanco, Transfer Coherence Analyst (Grad Student)

• 6. Servingness through Supplemental Instruction

  We will share the perspectives from our student SI Leaders and Mentors and how their work directly impacts Latinx student academic success. At Learning Support Services, we have implemented our accredited Supplemental Instruction (SI) program in courses with high equity gaps or DFW rates and have seen increased passing rates for EOP students and nearly eliminated equity gaps for students who attend SI. Our student leaders receive robust professional development and training to create equitable, safe learning environments for our Latinx students. In a panel, we will present the successes of our programs and allow student leaders to share their experiences in their roles.

  Presented by: 
  • Natalie Davis, Supplemental Instruction (SI) Coordinator 
  • Lexie Tapke, Assistant Director of Learning Support Services 
  • Izaiah Lozano (LSS SI Mentor)
  • Vanessa Biruetta-Hernandez (LSS SI Mentor)
  • Nat Gonzalez (LSS SI Leader)

• 7. GANAS Doctoral Summer Bridge Program panel

  GANAS DSB Graduate Students will join this panel and discuss the impact the program has had across 3 cohorts.

  Presented by: Angel Dominguez, GANAS Graduate Program Director

• 8. Moving Toward Systemic Change in the Engineering Experience

  At Baskin Engineering, we embrace our unique position of training a high proportion of underrepresented, first-generation, and low-income students- allowing us the opportunity to nurture talent, and contribute to a diverse workforce. We understand that the answers to our most pressing and complex problems can only be discovered by leveraging the multitude of experiences, built knowledge, and creativity of our diverse student body. We also know that in order to build a learning environment that supports these students, faculty and staff must have the necessary support, resources, and professional development to understand and adjust to a student body with rapidly changing needs. In this presentation, we share the various efforts undertaken in Baskin Engineering to move towards systemic change for a more inclusive education that is also adaptive to the changing world.

  Presented by:
  • Lynell Spencer, Director of Student Success, Baskin School of Engineering
  • Marcella Gomez, Associate Dean for DEI-Baskin Engineering

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Round 2 Breakout Sessions (10:30 - 11:15 am)

• 1. Invisible Struggles of First-Generation Students: A Holistic Investigation of the Hidden Curriculum within a Hispanic-serving Institution

  On behalf of a team of 11 undergraduate researchers, we plan to present our research findings focused on how first-generation college students navigate the hidden curriculum and campus resources. The hidden curriculum refers to the unspoken norms, values, and expectations students learn in educational settings that aren't explicitly taught, such as how to talk to professors or get involved with the university. Scarce research has examined how the hidden curriculum operates within HSRIs. Integrating both the multidimensional servingness framework and the ecological validation model, our research unveils institutional factors that contribute to the hidden curriculum. We also detail how pathways of servingness can unravel the hidden curriculum, especially with the support of validating agents across multiple domains of students’ lives. We plan to use a PowerPoint presentation to support and enhance our discussion of the research project during our 30-minute talk.

  Presented by: 
  • Amanda Sevilla, Undergraduate, Psychology major
  • Lucas Alonzo, Alumni, B.A in Psychology
  • Michelle Barajas, Alumni, B.A in Psychology

• 2. UC Immigrant Legal Services Center: Know Your Rights

  The presentation will cover the services of the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center, potential immigration benefits for students and their families, and "know your rights" in case of immigration enforcement.

  Presented by: Ritu Goswamy, UCSC Staff Attorney with the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center

• 3. GANAS Graduate Counseling: Holistic Toolkit

  The GANAS Graduate Counseling Holistic Toolkit Workshop will provide attendees with an overview of the resources, strategies, and approaches the GANAS GSC position developed over the lifetime of the grant. This workshop will be interactive with the aim of providing interested student-facing attendees with a practical, holistic, student-centered "toolkit" to be utilized in student-facing interactions/work.

  Presented by: Angel Dominguez, GANAS Graduate Program Director

• 4. First Gen Grad Experience Panel

  The Cultivamos Excelencia Research Scholars team is hosting a panel presentation and an open discussion on the program that we are leading this academic year as Latiné identifying first-generation graduate students.

  Presented by:
  • Estrella Arteaga Organiz, Graduate Pathways Coordinator
  • Daniel Arias, CE Research Scholars Mentor
  • Brian Rivera, CE Research Scholars Mentor
  • Carina Villegas, CE Research Scholars Mentor
  • Ulises Jaime-Yepez, CE Research Scholars Mentor

• 5. UCSC's HSI-DDI Grants: Enhancing Graduate Student Success Across the Disciplines

  This panel will share brief outlines of the three HSI-DDI grants currently held at UCSC which represent a spectrum of possibilities for how this funding can be utilized to support our graduate students.

  Presented by:
  • Holly Unruh, Executive Director, Arts Research Institute
  • Patricia Pinho, Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies
  • Shaheen Sikander, Assistant Professor of MCD Biology
  • Lindsay Hinck, Distinguished Professor of MCD Biology

• 6. Community Engaged Research as Equity Work: Youth and Undergraduate Transformation to Harness Community Change (YOUTH C-2)

  This will be a collaborative presentation made by several faculty members involved in the YOUTH-C2 (Youth and Undergraduate Transformation to Harness Community Change) project. We have developed YOUTH-C2 as a strengths-based and culturally inclusive approach to promote youth’s and undergraduates’ views of themselves as knowledge producers and changemakers through actionable research. Our theory of action posits that individual and structural inequalities impede young people’s success, resulting in disparities in college-going rates for low-income Latinx youth, and in graduate school enrollment rates for first-gen Latinx undergraduates. The partnership uses youth participatory action research (yPAR) and community-initiated student-engaged research (CISER)—a model developed at UCSC—to engage youth and undergraduates together to conduct community-engaged and actionable research. In this collaboration, we are measuring the extent to which community-engaged research reduces inequalities in educational, empowerment, and leadership outcomes for middle and high school youth as well as for undergraduate students. We'll share the conceptual foundations for this work, describe how some of the courses operate, and provide some preliminary findings regarding outcomes for undergraduate students.

  Presented by: 
  • Jessica Taft, Professor of Latin American & Latino Studies
  • Rebecca London, Professor of Sociology
  • Regina Langhout, Professor of Psychology
  • Amy Argenal, Assistant Teaching Professor of Sociology
  • Saskias Casanova, Associate Professor of Psychology
  • Steve McKay, Professor of Sociology