Chevron Auditorium
12:10 - 1:45pm Lunch & Keynote Address
Speaker: Dr. Gina Ann Garcia, Professor in the Berkeley School of Education
Keynote: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Becoming Sites of Liberation
Description: Hispanic-Serving Institutions are colleges and universities that enroll at least 25% Latine students, making them eligible for federal funding to build the institution's capacity to support and educate students. Yet most people agree, to enroll a critical mass of Latine students does not mean you serve them. The servingness framework is a way to rethink and redesign the university environment while centering the identities and lived realities of Latine students. Pedagogy and curriculum are core dimensions of the framework, with Dr. Garcia arguing for a complete transformation of classroom spaces at HSIs. Drawing on liberation theory and engaged pedagogies, Dr. Garcia discusses liberation as praxis within the classroom, offering ideas and metrics for advancing and assessing educational liberation.
Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on understanding how Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) embrace and enact an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She explores the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff at HSIs and the outcomes of students attending these institutions. As an equity-minded scholar, she tends to the ways that race and racism have shaped institutions of higher education.
Dr. Garcia is the author of Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities and Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice. She is also the editor of the book Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs and created and co-authored the workbook Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice: A Practitioner’s Workbook.
She has delivered over 300 public lectures and workshops across the country and consults directly with HSIs to work towards organizational transformation. She is also the host of the popular podcast ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?
Dr. Garcia graduated from California State University, Northridge with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, the University of Maryland, College Park with a master’s degree in college student personnel, and the University of California, Los Angeles with a Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change. She is a proud alumna of a HSI and was a Title V Coordinator at CalState University, Fullerton which drives and motivates her research and praxis.