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Embedding and embodying a Hispanic-serving consciousness: a phenomenological case study of faculty hiring experiences
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Embedding and embodying a Hispanic-serving consciousness: a phenomenological case study of faculty hiring experiences
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Copyright 2020 Cynthia Diana Villarreal
EMBEDDING AND EMBODYING A HISPANIC-SERVING CONSCIOUSNESS:
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL CASE STUDY OF FACULTY HIRING EXPERIENCES
by
Cynthia Diana Villarreal
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
URBAN EDUCATION POLICY
December 2020
i
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to all the mamischolars navigating the borderlands of
academia and motherhood.
And to Dianita. We did it!
ii
Acknowledgments
In my research, I often share that I am a product of my border subjectivity and identity. I
am a product of my experiences and upbringing. I inject my identity into my research because it
informs my way of seeing the world. I can’t stake claim to my identity without also recognizing
the people who have taught me the ways of negotiating and being in the world. My mama, my
dad, my sisters, my husband whom I’ve known since I was 12 years old, and everyone else in my
familia that has helped shape the scholar and educator I am today. Here, I share stories from my
life, interactions with the people that have shaped who I am and informed how I approach my
work. These stories are merely microtestimonios that illustrate the impacts they’ve had on my
upbringing; but it is my goal with this manuscript to honor my familia for the ways in which they
have informed my scholar identity.
To Mama: Thank you for your cariño.
I sat at the dining table after dinner. I lifted the placemat from its permanent position and
replaced it with my laptop. The house was quiet except for the sound of white noise coming from
the bedroom where Dianita was asleep. Buela was in her room asleep. I was visiting home from
California but not on vacation. It was the first time Dianita had been to visit since she was born,
a mere 9 months before. Everyone was dying to see her. So, I lined up babysitters each day so
they could spend time with her while I snuck away for a few hours to work on my dissertation.
You were on the sofa watching a movie in the dark. The light from the dining room
where I sat illuminated you laterally. From where I worked, I could see you move every so often
behind my laptop screen. You were snuggling with Max, the canoso chihuahua, and watching a
movie before going to sleep for the night. You claimed that you weren’t waiting for me but I
know you were– something I remember you saying even back when I took AP classes in high
iii
school. I hadn’t noticed that the movie ended, the screen now dark. “Goodnight mija” you said
glancing at my laptop screen. “You’re a good student and a good mom. I am proud of you.” You
kissed my right temple and rubbed my shoulder before walking down the dark hallway to your
bed.
Thank you, mama, for all the nights like this where you’ve supported me literally by my
side, over my shoulder, or on the sofa waiting for me to finish before going off to bed. It is
because of you that I am a good mom and a good student. I learned by watching you all the time.
The care that you put into your work and into people is something I learned from you. I see your
lessons in my approach to research and teaching. You were my first teacher and because of you,
I am here. Te amo.
To Dad: Thank you for your ejemplo.
I was in the fourth grade. I came home from school and sat at the dining table to do my
math homework. As I made my way through the problems, I skipped one that I didn’t
understand. I waited for you to come home to ask for your help. You sat next to me at the table
after having washed off the day’s labor and exhaustion in the shower. You smelled like Irish
Spring soap and I could still feel the heat that radiated off your body from the hot shower. I sat
next to you as you looked at the problem intently. You started asking me questions to try to get
me to solve the problem on my own. I gave you an answer and waited for your validation. You
stayed quiet. I looked down at the paper to avoid the embarrassment of getting it wrong only to
find out I hadn’t done it wrong. “You just did algebra!” You told me with a grin and your
Rodriguez chuckle. I had a moment of shock, followed by elation. I thought, if this is algebra,
and I can do algebra, then I can do anything.
iv
After that boost to my confidence, we ate dinner, I took a shower, you watched ESPN on
the couch to unwind, and I said goodnight with a kiss on your cheek. As I walked to my
bedroom, I saw you: eyes on the TV taking a swig of your sweet iced tea and mumbling some
statistic about a player on the screen. You pulled your backpack up to your lap, zipped it open
and pulled out a textbook. This act marked the start of your night study session. You did this for
eight years from the time I was 5 until I was 13.
I always knew you worked hard for your family. I always saw the long hours on your
face in the evening, the bar of Lava Soap in the shower that you’d use to take off the oil and
smell of exhaust from your hands. I have always expressed to everyone around me how much
seeing your example as a kid meant to me. Because of your role modeling and belief in my
ability, I will soon have a Ph.D. Did you ever think that would happen? And because of your
scholar-parent identity, I am doing it while Dianita is watching. She may not grow up to
remember the sweet moments I nursed her while typing away on my laptop, but I hope that she
knows how lucky she is to come from generations of hard-working and educated Mexican-
Americans. I love you, pops.
To Crystal: Thank you for your fuerza.
Do not read until you get out of El Paso. This was written across a folded piece of paper and
handed to me moments before I would leave our home at the age of 18. Dad was driving me to
Waco and I was leaving in the white 2001 Chevy Silverado. Leaving for the first time to live in a
different city. Terrified but excited. The first one in a long line of Rodriguez and Sandoval to
ever leave El Paso to go to college. You handed me this letter with tears in your eyes, but in
typical Crystal fashion, you said something to make us laugh and forget our devastation.
v
I read the letter in the truck sitting next to dad. Crying softly, not wanting him to hear. You were
proud of me for being brave. If I was brave in that moment, it was because of your support. Since
as long as I could remember, you were the brave one. You were the one who stepped up to ask a
stranger at Big 8 where the milk was when I was too shy. You were the one who threatened to
beat kids up for making fun of me. You were the one who acted the part of the big sister even
though I was two years older than you. You were and still are the one that gives me confidence
when I doubt myself. You make difficult tasks look incredibly easy to accomplish.
All of this is because I learned from your strength. Thank you.
To Tina: Thank you for your perseverancia.
“Put it in the book.” We used to say this making fun of all the nonsensical things you’d
say as a kid. Stampler. Human Bean. Definition Book. But as we got older, your book became a
tale of your own heroic journey. The tale where you overcome everything life throws at you. I
won’t share a part of your journey here because it’s your story to tell, but I hope someday you
will write that book. Thank you for teaching me how to keep going, little sister. I’m always
simultaneously rooting for you and inspired by you.
To Elias: Thank you for your amor.
Elias, none of this would be possible without you. Your love and support and unrelenting
belief in me is what got me through all the times I wanted to quit. You recently pointed to a
picture of me: I was 13, all bones, wearing my Clarke cross country uniform. You said “that’s
the girl I fell in love with.” And walked away. And that image of you in that very moment is the
reason I love you. You’re the one who says everything with such certainty, so sure and confident
and wholeheartedly yourself. You inspire me to be unapologetically me. There is no one like you
in the world and I am grateful to have you by my side.
vi
To Dianita: Thank you for your esperanza.
I was doing my usual desk chair dance trying to find a comfortable position to work. The
desk chair moved too much, the dining table chair was too stiff, and the couch was too soft, but I
had to push through because I had a deadline. It was after midnight and your dad was asleep.
Pepino was staring at me with those eyes that begged me to go to sleep soon so he could retreat
to his cocoon. My guard chihuahua was on extra high alert since he had been guarding the two of
us now.
Every time I got into a writing groove, you kicked my rib, sat on my bladder, punched
my lungs. I would get distracted just seeing you dance. Giddy that it was a sign of what kind of
hobbies you’d have in the future: a guitar player, a folklorico dancer, a gymnast. I swear, it felt
like the only time you moved this much was late at night. This made it challenging to fall asleep
on most nights. But this night, I had to keep working.
Then, I recognized that these little earthquakes you were creating were snapshots I could
hold on to forever. This moment, working on my dissertation proposal in the living room was
now a memory capsule of a time where you eclipsed everything else in my life. Everything I had
done up until this point had been for you, so that you could have more than me or your dad. I
thanked you for this. I still thank you for this. This whole thing, all of it, is for you, mi amorcito
corazon.
To Grandma: Thank you for your teaching how to conduct research and tell stories. I miss you
so much.
Para Buelo: Gracias por enseñarme como ser estudiante y tener fe. Te extraño mucho.
vii
To Grandpa: Thank you for teaching me to be proud of my community and make connections
with people of all backgrounds. And for all the check-in calls and the visits while I was on this
journey.
Para Buela: Gracias por enseñarme como ser aventurera y artista. Y por todos los oraciones y
textos que me mandaste cada día apoyándome.
I love you all. Los quiero mucho.
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ—
I also want to thank so many others in my family for supporting me all the years I’ve
been on the journey to be the person and scholar I am today. I am honored to have you all in my
life and indebted to the kindness and support you’ve given me. To my Brady Bunch: Andrea,
Alex, Victor, and Nico – I hope I make you as proud as you all make me. Your drive and
courage are inspiring and grounding. My Rodriguez family, the Rodrigirls, Familia Sandoval, all
my cousins, the Brabo’s, Valdivia’s, Villarreal’s, Garcia’s, Muñoz’s, Barajas’. My suegra, Alma
Rosa Villarreal who has given so much to my family. I’ll never forget that you nursed me back
to health when I had my gallbladder removed and how you come all the way from El Paso to
take care of Dianita every time Elias and I need your help. Angel, Ezra, Gia, AJ, and Sebastian –
thank you for always cheering for me. I will always be cheering you on too. I love you all.
Thank you to my scholar familia. Thank you for lifting me up while you were also
climbing. Arely and Marissiko, I could not have gone through this journey without your
friendship and our sisterhood. Las quiero mucho, hermanas. Josh, thank you for being my friend
and showing me how to be unapologetically myself throughout this journey. Thank you to the
Latinx Colectiva for being my familia. Together, we are changing the face of the academy in
honoring our cultura. Thank you to my scholar family in Slaughterhouse and the API Collective
viii
– you all make me so excited about the future of the academy. Yianna, thank you for your
friendship and for being an example of how to bring joy, feminism, and artistry this journey. To
my PhD Mamas -- Lizette and Jihye-- I cannot imagine what this mamischolar journey would
have looked like without you. Our sisterhood as moms working on our dissertations together
truly was divine intervention. Thank you to my Latina PhD sisterhood. Thank you for motivating
me, holding me accountable, inspiring me creatively, but mostly for your commitment to social
justice and equity. In the past year of working alongside you fierce mujeres, I’ve become a better
scholar activist and organizer. To Estee, Josie, Jenesis, and Berenice – for showing me how it’s
done. I’m blessed to have met you and learned from you about how to write a dissertation that is
authentic and honoring of our cultura. To my AAHHE Grad fellows familia, and the early
morning writing crew, and the HSI scholars group. You all have given me strength, support
when I needed it, structure, accountability for writing, and lots of laughs. I love you all.
Special thanks to Laura Romero and Alex Atashi in the program office for all your
guidance especially when I navigated the parental leave process and dissertation journey. Thank
you for always having your door open to me and for accepting me as my whole self. I am
indebted to you for your kindness and support. Thank you the PRT group – Steve, Román,
Theresa, Aireale, Deborah, Lauren, Maria. I am so inspired by all of you and will always have
your backs. Thank you for demonstrating love, support, compassion, but mostly for modeling
how to be critical, liberatory, and decolonial in theory and in practice. I am the scholar and
person I am because of the education I got from my PRT familia. And of course, I would like to
thank friends I made while working with the Center for Urban Education and the Pullias Center.
The OG’s -- Lindsey, Paloma, Cheryl, Román, and Adrián --- thank you for making me your
family since day one. Thank you for the chisme, the laughs, the cries, the support, and the
ix
unending belief in me. Being a part of this group gave me life and I’m eternally grateful for you.
I also need to thank my therapist, Clara and my occupational therapist, Emma. You both have
been my lifeline and have helped me heal through this journey. Thank you from the bottom of
my heart.
This study would not be possible without the faculty members from BHSI and MHSI.
Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. Last but certainly not least, I thank my
committee members. Estela, thank you for taking me under your wing in the early years of my
doctoral studies. I am eternally grateful to you for the education I received while working at
CUE. To Lanita, thank you for helping me nurture my scholar voice and for always believing in
me. Thank you for being a beacon of light while I navigated the doctoral journey. Your beautiful
soul gives me hope for what the academy could be. And to Julie, thank you for recognizing
potential in me since our first meeting. Even before you were my official advisor, I felt your
encouragement, support and validation. Thank you for taking me in when I was overly
emotional, very stressed, and newly pregnant. But mostly, thank you for letting me be me. Your
support with writing and research has been invaluable but your faith in me to thrive as a mom, a
fronteriza, and a scholar is something I will never be able to repay you for. You always say this
to me but it’s how I've always felt about you too: I'm always in your corner.
x
Table of Contents
Dedication ............................................................................................................................ i
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 3
Purpose ............................................................................................................................ 6
Study Objectives ............................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................. 9
Hispanic Serving Institutions ........................................................................................ 10
HSIs as Racialized Institutions ..................................................................................... 12
Faculty at HSIs .............................................................................................................. 14
Faculty hiring and cultural formation ........................................................................... 17
Questions unanswered .................................................................................................. 20
Chapter 3: Theoretical framework .................................................................................... 22
Advancing Cultural Studies in Higher Education with an Integrated Framework ....... 22
Chapter 4: Methodology ................................................................................................... 38
A Phenomenological Approach to Study Faculty Hiring at HSIs ................................ 39
My Phenomenological Attitude as an Entry to the Study of HSIs ............................... 39
Phenomenological case study ....................................................................................... 41
Site Selection ................................................................................................................ 42
Data analysis ................................................................................................................. 51
Trustworthiness and Limitations .................................................................................. 55
Chapter 5: The Phenomenological Reduction .................................................................. 57
Bracketing the Self in the Epoché ................................................................................. 58
Suspending Judgment to Get To The Things Themselves ........................................... 64
Chapter 6: An Environmental Description of Cases and Findings ................................... 68
Case Study 1: Metropolitan Hispanic-serving Institution (MHSI) ............................... 69
Case Study 2: Border Hispanic-serving Institution (BHSI) .......................................... 75
xi
Comparing Cases .......................................................................................................... 81
Chapter 7: Uncovering HSI Organizational Cultural and Consciousness Through Faculty Hiring
........................................................................................................................................... 82
Case Study 1: MHSI Faculty Hiring and Organizational Culture ................................ 83
Case Study 2: BHSI Faculty Hiring and Organizational Culture ............................... 101
A Framework for Embodying HSI Consciousness: Lighting the universes of meaning ........ 125
Coyolxauhqui Process of Defining HSI Consciousness ............................................. 127
Chapter 8: Discussion and Implications ......................................................................... 130
How does Faculty Hiring Create and Reflect the Organizational Culture at HSIs? ... 131
What is HSI Consciousness and How is it Expressed in Hiring? ............................... 134
Implications ................................................................................................................ 138
References ....................................................................................................................... 142
Appendix A ..................................................................................................................... 153
Appendix B ..................................................................................................................... 154
Appendix C ..................................................................................................................... 155
xii
List of Tables
Table 1. Latinx Student and Faculty Percentages of HSIs in States that Border Mexico. 46
Table 2. Interview Participants across Disciplines. 49
Table 3. Faculty Participant Characteristics. 50
Table 4. A Phenomenological Case Study Approach to Qualitative Analysis. 53
xiii
List of Figures
Figure 1. Schein’s Three Levels of Culture 26
Figure 2. Crosswalk between Organizational Culture and Borderlands Theory 35
Figure 3. Hispanic Serving Institution Typology based on Latinx population 45
1
Abstract
Scholars of culture and evaluation recognize that evaluation and selection processes, such
as those inherent in hiring, draw out embedded values and assumptions. In the case of Hispanic-
serving institutions (HSIs), we have an opportunity to learn more about HSI’s and how members
of the faculty think about their mission of serving Latinx students. Drawing on both
organizational culture (Schein, 1990) and Borderlands theory (Anzaldúa, 1987), the objectives of
this study are to contribute to the broader conversations around what it means to serve Latinx
students at HSIs, as well as to add to the body of research on hiring racially minoritized faculty.
A majority of the research on HSIs from a cultural perspective either looks at Latinx
culture broadly or at the culturally-relevant classroom spaces; newer approaches to the question
of Latinx-servingness considered culture a matter of organizational identity (Garcia, 2017).
However, scholarship has not yet investigated how the practice of faculty hiring at HSIs is rooted
in white traditions of predominantly white institutions (PWIs), but enacted to maintain HSI
status—however, actors conceptualize that status. In this sense, though hiring faculty at HSIs can
be seen as a process informed by and informing of culture, it is not yet clear how the culture
embodies or contributes to the Latinx-servingness of the organization.
In this study, I examine how 17 faculty search chairs at two HSI’s enact an HSI- and
Latinx-serving consciousness into their faculty hiring processes. I employ a phenomenological
(van Manen, 2007) case study approach taking into account both a meso- and micro-level
perspective to contend with individuals’ consciousness, subjectivities, and experiences to a
phenomenon that is telling of the broader organizational culture. I foreground a Borderlands
theory lens to provide disciplinary and identity nuance to the role of organizational culture while
interrogating the Westernized notions of higher education that are rooted in Whiteness. Through
2
analysis of faculty interviews, I argue that a Latinx-serving culture is one that rejects dualities
and embodies the liminality of nepantla ㅡ a symbolic space that is considered being neither here
nor there embracing the contradictions that exist in a borderland (Anzaldúa, 1987). I demonstrate
that even as faculty search chairs were provided direction from Equal Opportunity Offices on
their respective campuses, they were upholding cultural norms and values enacted primarily by
their discipline and departmental cultures. This confirmed that faculty search chairs paid varying
levels of attention to the HSI-identity when evaluating candidates for hire and enacted their
agency based on their lived experiences and borderland subjectivities when it came to ranking
and scoring applicants. Overall, the findings of this study illuminate how faculty hiring
committees can be aware of the role organizational culture plays in their hiring decisions while
highlighting the agency they have in shifting and transforming that same organizational culture.
3
Chapter 1: Introduction
Although the number of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) steadily increases each
year, higher education administrators and educators still lack an understanding of how to truly
serve Latinx
1
students (Garcia, et al., 2016). While these institutions are notably aiding in the
increase of access to higher education for Latinx students, they are often criticized for being
merely “Hispanic-enrolling” (Garcia, 2016; Núñez, Hurtado, & Calderón Galdeano, 2015). This
criticism comes as a result of research that has shown gaps in outcomes for Latinx students when
compared to other student populations (Contreras, Malcom, & Bensimon, 2008; Gasman, 2008;
Santiago, 2012). More recently, many scholars have begun to interrogate what Hispanic-serving
means for the education of Latinx students at HSIs. This contribution to the study of HSIs helps
to question assumptions those in the HSI community may have about the role HSIs play in
educational equity for Latinx students.
Recent scholarship has thus called for more rigorous and transformative research to
understand how to authentically serve Latinx students. To serve Latinx students authentically,
however, is difficult to operationalize. First, scholars have called for research to reveal the
complex realities in which HSIs are situated (Núñez, 2017; Núñez, Hurtado, & Calderón
Galdeano, 2015). These complex realities can be difficult to name precisely given that Latinx
college students represent a range of experiences and are not all alike. However, the research
illustrates that Latinx students are more likely to be considered non-traditional or post-
traditional
2
; are more likely to choose attending colleges close to home, which makes them in
1
I use the term “Hispanic” only to refer to the federal designation of Hispanic-Serving Institutions and if used as a
term in a study I cite. Otherwise, I use Latinx as a personal preference. Latinx is a gender-neutral term used to
describe individuals from the community inclusive of gender identity.
2
The term post-traditional here is used to describe students that are not considered to be within the traditional age
range of college students (18-22).
4
need of assistance with commuting; are more likely to care for dependents, which makes them in
need of childcare; and are more likely to work at least part-time, which makes them in need of
support and classes that are open after the typical business day ends (Solórzano, Villapando &
Osegura, 2005; Huber, 2017; Villalpando, 2004; Contreras, 2011). Second, because HSIs tend to
celebrate the superficial accomplishments of HSIs without critically addressing the limitations
HSIs can pose on Latinx students (Núñez, 2017), scholars have called a need for more liberatory,
decolonial (Garcia, 2017), critical (Espino, 2015), and transformative research of practice
(Núñez, et al., 2015) and evaluation criteria when discussing HSIs. While posturing the slightest
achievement outcomes as equity successes, HSIs often operate with little regard for the specific
cultural and racial experiences their Latinx students bring with them to higher education (Garcia,
2017).
Recent scholarship has thus called for more rigorous and transformative research to
understand how to authentically serve Latinx students. To serve Latinx students authentically,
however, is difficult to operationalize. First, scholars have called for research to reveal the
complex realities in which HSIs are situated (Núñez, 2017; Núñez, et al., 2015). These complex
realities can be difficult to name precisely given that Latinx college students represent a range of
experiences and are not all alike. However, the research illustrates that Latinx students are more
likely to be considered non-traditional or post-traditional
3
; are more likely to choose attending
colleges close to home, which makes them in need of assistance with commuting; are more likely
to care for dependents, which makes them in need of childcare; and are more likely to work at
least part-time, which makes them in need of support and classes that are open after the typical
3
The term post-traditional here is used to describe students that are not considered to be within the traditional age
range of college students (18-22).
5
business day ends (Solórzano, Villapando & Osegura, 2005; Huber, 2017; Villalpando, 2004;
Contreras, 2011). Second, because HSIs tend to celebrate the superficial accomplishments of
HSIs without critically addressing the limitations HSIs can pose on Latinx students (Núñez,
2017), scholars have called a need for more liberatory, decolonial (Garcia, 2017), critical
(Espino, 2015), and transformative research of practice (Núñez, et al., 2015) and evaluation
criteria when discussing HSIs. While posturing the slightest achievement outcomes as equity
successes, HSIs often operate with little regard for the specific cultural and racial experiences
their Latinx students bring with them to higher education (Garcia, 2017).
Examining faculty hiring at HSIs highlights how HSI cultures - which cannot be
presumed to be homogenous - are created and enacted. Scholars of culture and evaluation
recognize that organizational processes of evaluation and selection, such as those inherent in
hiring, draw out otherwise embedded values and assumptions (Posset, et al., 2020). In this case,
we have an opportunity to learn more about HSI’s and how their members think about their
mission of educating Latinx students.
Drawing on both organizational culture and Borderlands theory, I question what is means
to faculty to serve Latinx students. To date, there is no evidence about whether or how HSI status
and/or composition of students and faculty is linked to different mindsets about who should be
hired, and on what basis. In adopting a Borderlands theory approach in combination with
organizational culture, I aim to capture a view of HSIs and faculty at HSIs that spans many
borders, both figuratively and symbolically, such as geographic borders with Mexico or state
borders, the borders between public versus selective HSI status, between teaching and research
HSIs, as well as the borders between legitimized faculty work and social justice-oriented faculty
work to name a few. Imagining higher education borderlands, particularly the Hispanic-serving
6
identity as a borderland, helps us move beyond Westernized conceptualizations of higher
education that constrict to dualistic thinking and shift toward scholarship that embraces
complexities and ambiguities.
To capture how the Borderlands perspective elicits a Mestiza consciousness, and how it is
enacted in hiring committees, I investigated the faculty hiring process at HSIs across two levels
of analysis. The study of the faculty hiring process at an individual faculty (i.e., micro) level of
analysis illuminated the essential qualities of mindsets that create justifications for some
candidates and not others, some hiring priorities and not others. Further, the study at the meso
level described the cultural elements and conditions, at the hiring committee level, from which
the individual experience arises. Together, the aspects of this study were intentionally designed
to illustrate the importance of examining both the organizational structure as well as the behavior
of actors within the organization when engaged in cultural explorations.
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to examine how HSIs serve Latinx students through an
activity that all institutions take part in: faculty hiring. This purpose contributes to ongoing
discussions of the notion of “servingness,” or what it means for HSIs to serve students (Garcia, et
al., 2019). Garcia (2017) argued that servingness should be analyzed at the organizational rather
than the individual level and proposed that new scholarship advance the study of HSI as an
exploration in culture. The study of organizations, however, is incomplete if it does not include
an exploration of how individuals act and behavior within and according to the organizational
culture (Schein, 2010). With this research, I emphasized that a study of servingness required an
examination of both the organization and the individual as well as an investigation of how
cultural aspects inform individual actions and mindsets. Though HSI scholarship has begun to
7
interrogate faculty attitudes at HSIs (Garcia, et al., 2020; Ching, 2019) scholarship has not yet
investigated how the practice of faculty hiring at HSIs is rooted in white traditions of
predominantly white institutions
4
(PWIs) or enacted to maintain HSI status—however actors
conceptualize that status. Although hiring faculty at HSIs is a process informed by and informing
of organizational culture, an investigation of their hiring structures is also revealing of
servingness. With this study, I interrogated the extent to which two HSIs evoke a Latinx-serving
consciousness when hiring faculty. I conducted an exploration of faculty hiring because hiring is
described as a mechanism in which leaders embed and transmit culture (Schein, 2010); the ways
new members are brought into an organization is illuminated the ways in which cultural values
and norms are institutionalized.
Study Objectives
While the number of racially minoritized faculty doubled nationally over the last 20
years, from 12 percent in 1991 to 21 percent in 2011, the demographic nature of tenure track
positions continue to be overwhelmingly white (Martinez, Chang, & Welton, 2017). Within
minority serving institutions (MSIs), faculty composition reflects the national trends; however,
there is a growing conversation around the need for more racially minoritized faculty in MSI’s
among students, scholars, and senior level administrators. Greater diversity among faculty is
linked to providing access to mentorship from diverse viewpoints ( Hurtado, et al., 2015;
Umbach, 2006; Turner, 2015), intentionally-driven racial and cultural mentoring and classroom
experiences (Lopez Figueroa & Rodriguez, 2015), and through supporting students with
culturally-relevant course content and pedagogies (Hurtado, 2001). Although scholarship has
shown that faculty diversity contributes to access to diversity in mentoring, and culturally
4
The term “white” is intentionally written in lowercase letters in this paper as a way of decentering whiteness.
8
relevant course content (Hurtado, et al., 2015; Umbach, 2006; Turner, 2015; Hurtado, 2001) , the
numbers continue to reflect a predominantly white professoriate (Finkelstein, Conley, &
Schuster, 2016). Arguably, institutions – particularly Minority-serving institutions (MSIs)– have
not yet made the changes required to adequately transform the demographics of the professoriate
to more accurately reflect the growing diverse student population. Building off of this research,
this study will contribute to the ongoing conversation about how faculty hiring practices can
result in more diversity and equity.
This project has broad implications and potential contributions: First, examining the
faculty hiring processes at HSIs will illuminate the role organizational culture plays in attracting,
recruiting, matriculating, and retaining racially minoritized faculty. This project will also reveal
the embedded assumptions and values faculty uphold in their hiring practices that indicate a
shared attitude toward how to serve Latinx students. I anticipate that the findings to come out of
this study will illuminate the ways in which HSI cultures can be shifted or strengthened to ensure
that the education of Latinx students is central to the organization. Outside of HSIs, this study
will contribute to the developing literature on equitable faculty hiring, which in recent years has
begun to center questions of racial equity (Liera, 2019; White Lewis, 2020). Specifically, by
illustrating search committee members’ experiences of faculty hiring at MSIs, this study will
provide a window into how search committees and their members can more purposefully hire
faculty with their student populations in mind.
9
Chapter 2: Literature Review
The impetus for the Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) designation is documented to have
begun as far back as 1979 when the Hispanic Higher Education Coalition (HHEC) began
providing testimony during the Higher Education Act (HEA) Reauthorization hearings (Valdez,
2015). The HHEC was comprised of Latinx advocacy organizations such as ASPIRA of
America, El Congreso Nacional de Asuntos Colegiales, League of United Latin American
Citizens, MALDEF, National Association for Equal Educational Opportunities, National Council
of La Raza, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the U.S. Catholic Conference
(Valdez, 2015). Together, these groups advocated for additional funding from Title III of HEA
(1965) – a pot of government funds given to strengthen developing institutions (Valdez, 2015).
Aided by the support of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) , these
advocates took their testimonies to Congress in the late 1980s. Then, in 1992, President George
H. W. Bush signed into law amendments to the 1965 HEA to recognize HSIs as institutions that
enrolled at least 25% Latinx students under Title III (Calderón Galdeano, Flores, & Moder,
2012). This federal recognition meant that HSIs were eligible for funds under Title III to serve
their Latinx population of students; however, funds were not appropriated until fiscal year 1995
(Calderón Galdeano, et al., 2012).
Much like the origins of the HSI designation intended to support institutions in their
development, research on HSIs is also developing. Only recently has scholarship begun to
critique HSIs as racially white institutions (Garcia, 2019). Contemporary HSI scholarship has
criticized the white normative standards used to measure success at HSIs (Garcia, 2019), the
colorblind white logics that govern racialized funding policies and practices (Vargas & Villa-
Palomino, 2018; Bonilla-Silva, 2006), and antiblackness within athletics at HSIs (Albrica, et al.,
10
2020). With this study, I follow the lead of these scholars to advance a critique of HSIs and how
they are serving Latinx students. In the section below, I review the aspects of the literature most
relevant to my project: HSIs, faculty at HSIs, and faculty hiring as it pertains to culture.
Hispanic Serving Institutions
Organizational examinations of HSIs are few but varied. Most offer insights into cultural
aspects by examining student outcomes or culture (Garcia, 2017). Below, I review the literature
and identify where cultural explanations of HSIs are limited due to the theoretical lenses chosen
to evaluate them. Then, I identify gaps in the literature that support my study purpose: to
understand how faculty hiring at HSIs is a process revealing of both organizational culture and a
serving consciousness.
The Current State of HSIs
HSIs serve a diverse population of students across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The majority
of HSIs are located in Puerto Rico (37%) while another 33% are located in the southern region of
the U.S., 21% are located in the West, and fewer than 10% are located in the Central (Midwest),
Eastern, or Rocky Mountain region (Núñez, Crisp, & Elizondo, 2016). In 2016, 492 institutions
met the federal designation criteria enrolling over 2 million Latinx students (Excelencia in
Education, 2018; Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, 2018); though this only
amounts to 15% of all higher education institutions, HSIs educate 65% of all Latinx
undergraduate students (Excelencia in Education, 2018). Additionally, there are 333 emerging
HSIs in the current pipeline; to be considered emerging, these institutions currently enroll
between 15% and 24% Latinx students (Excelencia in Education, 2018). Despite the number of
institutions intended to serve Latinx students, scholars have questioned whether HSIs are
“anything more than the mere presence” of Latinx students on campus (Greene & Oesterreich,
11
2012, p. 169). Indeed, HSIs serve Latinx students in increasing access to higher education,
however understanding the role HSIs play in serving Latinx students once they are enrolled
indicates that more research is needed to interrogate who is serving students in these contexts.
A recent analysis of the literature on HSIs revealed that HSI scholarship tends to fall into
four categories: organizational outcomes, student experiences, internal organizational
dimensions, and external influences (Garcia, et al., 2019). This illustrates that in the past decade,
scholarship on HSIs has expanded to include studies wherein organizational aspects of HSIs
were interrogated (i.e. organizational identity, mission, leadership, culture); however, these
studies are limited in number and often do not critically look at the social realities within which
HSIs are situated (Ledesma & Burciaga, 2015; Núñez, 2017) such as racial, geopolitical, and
legislative contexts. Despite recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of recognizing HSI
diversity in institutional clusters – rural dispersed, urban enclave, big system four-year
universities, community college enclaves, Puerto Rican institutions, and health science schools
(Núñez,et al., 2016) – more research is needed to show how HSIs are a product of the
communities in which they are situated. Similarly, like Cortez (2015) I also argue that research,
scholarship and practice should consider the diverse economic, cultural, and social conditions
HSIs inhabit. I expand on this argument to suggest that future research be mindful of the multiple
and intersecting borders to which HSIs are up against geopolitical, cultural, ecological, racial,
and colonial. In the sections that follow, I examine the literature for scholarship that describes
the racialization of HSIs, faculty diversity at HSIs, and faculty hiring at four-year institutions. I
conclude this review by putting the literature on faculty hiring in conversation with cultural
formation and pose research questions that I investigated in this study.
12
HSIs as Racialized Institutions
An increasingly important topic among higher education scholars is how studies should
be designed to view institutions as racialized organizations (Ray, 2019). Much like Historically
Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), HSIs operate within primarily white structures that
control resources, power, agency, and legitimacy (Ray, 2019). Despite the federal designation
indicating that HSIs serve Latinx students, most of these colleges and universities operate as
racially white institutions (Garcia, 2019). In fact, there is little evidence to show that HSIs have
widely adopted a Hispanic- or Latinx- serving agenda (Hurtado, et al., 2015). According to
Garcia (2019), even at HSIs whiteness is valued and validated through traditional and
uncontested measures of success (i.e. graduation rates, retention, ranking, etc). Whiteness is
recreated, institutionalized, and passed on as legitimate sources of knowledge with little
resistance. HSIs are criticized for operating like white institutions, teaching a white curriculum,
employing primarily white faculty, and for fostering discrimination in ways that are similar to
racially white institutions (Garcia, 2019). In this section, I present some of these empirical
criticisms of HSIs.
Evaluating HSIs based on racialized white measures such as graduation, persistence,
time-to-degree, and transfer (Garcia, 2019) normalizes the notion that white institutions are
superior, the standard, and that minority serving institutions are unable to keep up. Because of
this, HSIs often do not operate with their Latinx population in mind but are rather striving to
complete criteria and standards based on white institutions. For these reasons and more Garcia
(2019) refers to HSIs as Racially White Institutions (RWIs) when they maintain operation as
white institutions; this looks like teaching white curriculum, employing a majority white faculty
and administration, and maintaining and fostering racist practices and discrimination in ways
13
similar to predominantly white institutions (PWIs) or RWIs. This maintenance of racial order at
HSIs is enforced through federal as well as institutional policies, organizational structures
(Garcia, 2019), and shaped by the interests of the dominant, white majority (Gillborn, 2014). As
Contreras, et al. (2008) first suggested, for changes in engagement and outcomes to occur, the
organizational identity as informed by the campus mission must explicitly focus on educating
Latinx students at HSIs.
As stated above, the maintenance of racial order at HSIs is enforced through policy.
Recent HSI scholarship documenting race-neutral or colorblind approaches to HSI policies and
communications show a continued interest in serving the white majority at HSIs.Vargas and
Villa-Palomino (2018) explored the policy structure by analyzing the language in Title V HSI
grant proposal abstracts. They found that in evaluating HSI grant proposal abstracts across a time
period of four years, 85% did not center Latinx students in their proposed programmatic efforts.
Instead, the funds most often were proposed to be used for all students. This suggests that
although Latinx student enrollment and the HSI designation is a powerful mechanism for
receiving grant funding, most HSIs use a colorblind approach when determining the best use of
the grant funds. Similarly, Serrano, et al. (2018) conducted a critical policy analysis of university
email correspondence to students at HSIs about sanctuary campus policies. In this study, they
found that universities act as politically neutral government authorities resulting in racist nativist
ideals which suggests that some Latinx immigrants are deserving of support while others are
burdens on society (Perez Huber, 2009). While these two studies document the use of colorblind
and race neutral framing of institutional policies, Abrica and colleagues (2020) argue that since
funding of HSIs is tied to Latina/o/x student demographic enrollment, Latinx students are placed
as a “racial wedge” driving in antiblackness (p. 67). In a study on the Black male collegiate
14
experience at a Hispanic-serving community college (HSCC), Abrica, et al. (2020) found that
hyper visibility/invisibility, a rejection and appropriation of Black intellect, and anti-Black
violence were experienced by Black men in a Hispanic-serving context. Citing Ray, et al. (2017),
Abrica and colleagues (2020) suggest that a “people of color blindness” which hides how non-
Black minorities reproduce anti-Blackness, might be explained by the idea that HSI funding from
the government gives permission to enact anti-Blackness at HSIs.
In addition to scholarship explaining the ways in which HSIs are racialized to serve the
dominant white majority, other research also explains how HSIs provide a racialized sense of
home for Latinx students. Serrano (2020) introduces the concept of campus racial microclimates
as places that foster a sense of community from interviews with Black and Latino men at a HSI.
The men in this study described places on campus where they coped with an otherwise harmful
racial microclimate. Citing spaces like the Pan-African Studies department, the Latin American
Studies department, and student organizations for racially minoritized groups as homeplaces, this
study affirms that HSI campuses can be racially toxic spaces save for a few corners where Black
and Latinx students feel at home. The findings from this study also reinforce the pervasive
argument for more racially minoritized faculty at HSIs. In the next section, I summarize some of
the literature on faculty at HSIs.
Faculty at HSIs
Recently, Garcia (2017) called for the decolonization of HSIs, or rather the undoing of
practices and policies at HSIs that have upheld and contributed to the racialization of Raza
5
students at HSIs. She provided an organizational framework providing nine ways in which it can
5
Garcia (2017) uses the term Raza instead of “Latina/o/x” or “Hispanic” to refer to people who have indigenous
roots in México, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. The term recognizes that this racial/ethnic group
evolved as a result of colonization, rape, and subjugation of indigenous peoples.
15
be accomplished over time. By altering the purpose, mission, membership, technology,
governance, community standards, justice and accountability, incentive structure, and external
boundary management, HSIs can begin to truly serve students in a liberatory way (Garcia, 2017).
When discussing the ways HSIs can decolonize membership, she argues that the people hired to
work at HSIs must be committed to the ideals of decolonization and antiracism; however,
research has yet to uncover exactly how faculty as leaders at HSIs view racism or a commitment
to anti-racist, liberatory practices. To date, few studies identify the specific attitudes or beliefs
faculty have of their role as Latinx-serving educators (Ching, 2019; Garcia, et al., 2020; Hubbard
& Stage, 2005).
Collectively, this literature indicates that until HSIs contend with their predominantly
white institutional cultures, they will be complicit in executing practices that advantage white
students—the essence of white privilege, at an organizational level. Much of the scholarship on
HSIs examining attitudes of educators and administrators thus discusses a need for culturally-
sensitive leadership and teaching (Cortez, 2015) or asset-based pedagogy (Rendon et al., 2015).
Among these studies of instruction, the level of analysis is again on individual action, removed
from the larger cultural challenges of the institution. Separating the two levels of analyses or
simply making a blanket statement that context matters is insufficient to advance a conversation
toward racial equity for Latinx students at HSIs. Although these studies may provide individual
faculty or leaders with models for how to be liberatory in their own teaching or work, the
transformative shifts being called for among HSIs will not happen without examining how the
current organizational culture impacts individual efforts to adopt practices that explicitly serve
Hispanic student needs and interests. Rendon, et al. (2015) claim that when deficit perspectives
of Latinx students go unchallenged they become normalized across the institution. When faculty
16
hold these deficit-minded beliefs of students, it impacts their actions (Ching, 2019). So, until
HSIs contend with their predominantly white institutional cultures, they will be complicit in
executing practices that advantage white students while disadvantaging Latinx students. A
cultural shift at the institutional level is needed.
To create a cultural shift will require institutional change agents: individuals within an
organization that overcome resistance from colleagues with the goal of encouraging them to
adopt new practices (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). Because of the heterogeneity of HSIs, there is
no one-size-fits-all model of what these new practices should be; yet, discussions on how to
make these cultural shifts treat HSIs and Latinx students as a monolith. HSIs should be working
to identify their unique student community to be able to better adopt practices to meet their
needs. For example, HSIs in rural and urban areas should have different practices with regards to
transportation assistance. Determining the needs of the students requires engagement within the
student community on behalf of faculty and administrators, or institutional agents, but shifting
the culture and transforming policies requires change agents (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012) that go
beyond merely assisting or mentoring a few students. Scholarship however has yet to examine
the role of institutional change agents at HSIs in shifting or transforming HSIs to better serve
Latinx students. While change agents have not exclusively been studied at HSIs, I use this term
because I find that it sets the expectation that HSIs need these types of individuals committed to
the transformation of HSIs to create a shift in culture.
Studies on the role of HSI faculty as institutional agents or mentors provide an
understanding for how individuals at the HSI are providing support to Latinx students. In most
cases, faculty seemed to only influence a small subset of students either in the roles of mentoring
students and other faculty or in teaching. While these practices adhere to the assumption that
17
faculty only have the power to shape what happens in their classrooms, other scholarship
suggests that faculty have a strong collective governing power (Ledesma & Burciaga, 2015) that
I would argue is underutilized when it comes to strengthening a Latinx-serving culture at their
campuses. Today, the only studies that examine how institutional change takes place at HSIs are
with regards to campuses striving for Tier One status (Doran, 2015; Gonzales & Pacheco, 2010)
or on improving other traditional measures of success such as access, transfer and graduation
rates (Medina & Posadas, 2012; Núñez et al, 2015; Núñez et al., 2011; Rodríguez, 2016). With
the exception of a few studies (Garcia, 2017; Liera, 2019; Villarreal et al., 2019), empirical data
in the literature describing how HSIs can shift the values and assumptions of their organizational
culture to be more Latinx-serving is missing from scholarship on HSIs. One practice that is often
overlooked for its potential to reshape culture is faculty hiring.
Faculty hiring and cultural formation
Although there has been a decrease in the proportion of white tenure-track faculty
between 1993 (80.7%) to 2013 (66.2%), the number of Asian-American faculty in tenured and
tenure-track positions has doubled (Finkelstein, Conley, & Schuster, 2016). During this same
time, the numbers of African-American, Latino, and Native American faculty in tenured and
tenure-track positions for the same time period grew at slower rates of 60.9% and 30.1%,
respectively, while “mushrooming in numbers of nontenure-track full-time (142.9% growth) and
part-time appointments (229.8% growth),” (Finklestein et al. 2016, p. 8). These numbers indicate
that although there has been an increase in the number of racially minoritized faculty in
academia over the last twenty years, the majority are nontenure-track and part-time
appointments. Since professional status is a marker of legitimacy in the highly-stratified
professoriate (Rhoads, 2015), individuals with nontenure-track and part-time appointments are
18
more likely to be exposed to poor working conditions, lack organizational support (Maxey and
Kezar, 2015), and succumb to high turnover (Moreno, Smith, Clayton-Pedersen, Parker, &
Teraguchi, 2006). These working conditions also often mean that contingent faculty are less
likely to mentor graduate students; an unintended consequence of this is that incoming
generations of scholars may miss opportunities to absorb skills and practices of racially
minoritized faculty.
A diverse faculty body both indicates and creates an institution’s climate (Contreras &
Contreras, 2015). Racially minoritized faculty need to be present specifically at HSIs in order to
serve as mentors to students of color—in the classroom, by integrating them into research
projects, and for the purposes of academic and career advising (Milem, 2003). Latinx students
perceive the presence of Latinx faculty and mentors to be most important in their success as
college students (Medina & Posadas, 2012). However, the argument that racially minoritized
faculty are important because they mentor students of color can also be seen as problematic
insofar as it implies the responsibility of mentoring students of color should be lifted off the
shoulders of white faculty. Hiring more racially minoritized faculty should be a priority not only
because of the work they do supporting racially minoritized students through racialized white
institutions. First, the composition of the faculty shapes the norms of the community; therefore,
to advance a Hispanic-Serving mission is to disrupt the status quo that reflects institutionalized
whiteness in these racialized academic spaces. For example, racially minoritized faculty
contribute to increasing the diversity of ideas and pedagogy.
Leaders who use faculty recruiting and hiring strategies that were not designed to address
their campus history with race could fall short in meeting their goals. Hiring procedures have
historically been constructed based on traditional conceptions of merit that tend to be racialized
19
as white (Delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). A small number of
researchers have focused on the role of organizational and personal values in faculty hiring
(Smith & Mamiseishvili, 2016; Twombly, 2005; Liera, 2019). These studies highlight the ways
organizational artifacts such as mission and policies informed the valued characteristics of
faculty candidates. Twombly (2005) found that community college faculty search committee
members’ valued faculty candidates who demonstrated a capacity to teach multiple lower-
division introductory courses and expressed a desire to teach students with different career goals
and learning styles. The manifestation of these values among search committee members implies
that the community college prioritizes teaching and diversity of student interests. These values
are informed by the college’s mission as well as the campus’s history with the local community
of students, culture, and history. Smith and Mamiseishvili (2016) studied the ways the history of
evangelicalism promoted or deterred the hiring of faculty of color at Christian colleges and
universities in the South. They found that several faculty and administrators across three
Southern Christian colleges promoted racial and ethnic diversity in attempts to correct past
wrongs. The rationale to re-write their campus historical legacy with U.S. slavery is of interest
because it is rarely stated by educators as the motivation to engage in diversity work. The values
intertwined within predominantly white institutions’ missions and policies are historically
informed by white and male sociocultural norms. As such, faculty candidate characteristics that
faculty hiring search committees’ value could be informed by white and male sociocultural
norms. Even if university leaders publicly support and promote racial diversity on their faculty
bodies, the organization’s sociocultural processes could prevent faculty hiring search committees
from minimizing their biases in their decision-making. Liera (2020) investigated faculty hiring at
a campus focused on enacting equity in hiring new faculty. Faculty members valued equity-
20
mindedness as a cultural value in hiring and in the decision-making process. This led to equity
being embedded across many of the steps involved in the hiring process. As student
demographics in higher education are shifting, the approach to hiring should shift as well.
Overall, my search found that literature on faculty hiring and diversity has paid little attention to
the sociocultural processes that shape the creation and implementation of faculty recruiting and
hiring strategies.
Questions unanswered
Although studies of faculty at HSIs are sparse, a review of existing scholarship suggests
that a more comprehensive understanding of the role that faculty hiring plays in creating and
reflecting the cultures of HSIs is the next logical step in research. This type of analysis will
require interrogating how institutional histories, including their histories of racism, impact
contemporary organizational culture, and how HSIs are necessary to understand how faculty,
specifically those from racially minoritized groups, are (or more frequently, are not) hired into
and allowed to operate within these institutionalized white spaces. To add to the existing body
of literature, I interrogate the hiring of new faculty at HSIs, with a focus on the role of HSI
consciousness. I examine how faculty at HSIs describe their experiences on hiring committees
which I conceptualize as a force in organizational cultural formation. The research questions I
address with this study are:
1. How does faculty hiring create and reflect the organizational cultures at HSIs?
a. How are the observable, collective aspects of the organizational culture at HSIs
informing of faculty hiring?
b. How do internal, individually interpreted elements of the organizational culture at
HSIs inform faculty hiring?
21
2. What is HSI consciousness and how is it expressed in hiring?
Question 1 derives directly from the potential for faculty hiring to serve as a tool of
cultural formation and a window into the organizational cultures of HSIs, which are expected to
vary according to the composition of the faculty and students, as well as their histories and
geographic locations. Questions 1a and 1b reflect the importance of capturing both collective and
individual dimensions of hiring—that it is carried out through an institutionalized process led by
a committee of individuals. Question 2 addresses the ways faculty think about their institution as
an HSI – their HSI consciousness—and what this consciousness does in hiring decisions.
22
Chapter 3: Theoretical framework
A framework that considers the cultural context is well-suited to capture the nuances of
how decision-making impacts and is impacted by policies and practices. Geertz (1973) posited
that our ideas, values, behaviors and emotions are cultural products; therefore, everything from
outward actions and behaviors to internal beliefs and assumptions are both products of culture in
addition to producers of culture. Further, Harris (1994) claimed that individuals within an
organization utilize a schema – or dynamic knowledge structure – influenced by culture.
Inherently, he argued that individual level sensemaking is culturally influenced. This suggests
that organizational decisions like those involved in hiring are influenced by culture. The
underlying values and assumptions of an individual are indeed reflections of their positions and
social locations within a culture. However, cultures do not exist in a vacuum nor are people
participants in only one culture at a time. Individuals can occupy cultures and subcultures at
multiple intersections and matrices of domination (Du Bois, 1995; Crenshaw, 1989; Anzaldúa,
1987; Hill Collins, 1989). In this section, I examine two theoretical approaches for the study of
individuals as cultural actors: organizational culture (Schein, 1990) and borderlands (Anzaldúa,
1987). I then provide an argument for an integrated conceptual framework that is both evaluative
and critical of cultural studies of higher education organizations.
Advancing Cultural Studies in Higher Education with an Integrated Framework
Tierney (1988) explained that a college or university is an interconnected web of the
organization’s structure and the actors’ interpretations of historic and symbolic forms. The
impact of these forms has implications for the decision-making contexts of colleges and
universities (Tierney, 1988). This argument confirms that faculty need a “full, nuanced
understanding of the organization’s culture” to make decisions with broader impact (Tierney
23
1988, p. 5); however, I expand on this statement to argue that to achieve this, we must also
understand how individuals within the organization experience political and racial structures
across time. Because organizational culture includes both individual- and group-level
phenomena (Louis, 1985; Harris, 1994), I investigated across two levels of analysis for this
study: the meso and the micro. In presenting and combining organizational culture (meso) and
borderlands theory (micro and macro) to evaluate both units of analysis, I assert HSIs and the
faculty within them often exist within a liminal space between mainstream, white-serving and
emergent, minority-serving institutions. Faculty members make up an organization; therefore,
the study of the experience of hiring at an HSI requires a deep look at the context of the
organizational culture in addition to a way of understanding how individual agents or subjects
behave within the structures of organizational culture(s). Within my descriptions below, I have
provided a look at the shortcomings of the theories and articulated why integrating them makes
sense for a study of faculty hiring at HSIs.
Organizational culture
Organizational culture is defined as the patterns of basic underlying assumptions that an
organization has created as a response to organizational problems; these assumptions have
developed over time, are deeply embedded in the values and behaviors of its members, and are
held as truth (Schein, 1990). In understanding an organization’s culture, members can begin to
explain behavior, norms, reactions, and beliefs, among other things (Bess & Dee, 2008; Schein,
1990). An understanding of how and why members of an organization behave in different ways
can be helpful particularly when understanding what the institution stands for (Bess & Dee,
2008). In hiring, for example, an understanding of organizational culture can illuminate which
values an organization prioritizes when vetting candidates for entrance to their institution. In the
24
practice of admitting new members to the organization, hiring committees use certain boundaries
and markers of identity to allow or deny entrance to the organization. The committee decision
making process allows for debates among committee members to ensue; however, certain
institutionalized norms around behaviors such as collegiality and being race neutral may mask
biases thus allowing them to creep into this supposed objective process. In articulating why a
candidate is or is not fit for the institution, they assert whatever cultural values have been
imposed upon them as they themselves have come to understand and interpret their
organization’s culture.
A number of scholars have contributed to the ways in which we study organizational
culture in higher education (Tierney, 1988; Birnbaum, 1988; Schein, 1990; Bergquist, 1992;
Berquist & Pawlak, 2008; Kezar & Eckel, 2002; Marion & Gonzales, 2013); these scholars have
provided myriad ways of defining and understanding the mechanisms that transmit culture and
normalize behavior. Most often, definitions of culture include ways of understanding the
physical space, structure, and symbols in conjunction with the rituals and routines of daily life
(Bess & Dee, 2008). Essentially, the symbols and structures given attention to by an institution
communicate deeper cultural values and assumptions (Schein, 1990).
When we use an organizational culture lens, we want to uncover the values and
assumptions that inform behavior within an organization in addition to understanding the
underlying mechanisms of group and individual behavior informed by these conventions
(Marion & Gonzales, 2013). Within higher education, a lens on organizational culture can help
researchers evaluate a college or university's character, what the institution stands for, in addition
to how and why members behave the ways they do (Bess & Dee, 2008). Often times, scholars
turn to formalized documents, philosophies, or mission statements to describe an organization;
25
this approach however, stays on the surface of culture and how a culture is performed but does
not get into how the history of the organization and its values have become taken-for-granted
among members. Missions indeed are mechanisms for understanding culture, but they are
secondary (Schein, 2010).
We can understand organizational culture like a pyramid. According to Schein (2010),
both the Mayans and the Egyptians built highly visible pyramids, however each culture built
them for a different reason – temples and tombs, respectively. One might look at these two
pyramids from the outside expecting them to be the same, but a look inside would prove
otherwise. I find that a pyramid is also a useful metaphor for visualizing organizational culture.
To Schein (2010), organizational culture manifests in three levels where a level refers to the
“degree to which the cultural phenomenon is visible to the observer” (p. 23). If we consider a
pyramid as a metaphor for organizational culture, we might imagine the innermost core of the
pyramid as the basic underlying assumptions of an organization, then a set of interior structures
and scaffolding as an organization’s espoused beliefs and values, and the external and outer
walls as artifacts (see Figure 1). At the core of how culture visibly manifests are the taken-for-
granted underlying assumptions that dictate everything from how members are expected to
behave, to rewards, sanctions, and layout of physical spaces. These assumptions are often hard to
uncover because they reside at an unconscious and internalized level. The assumptions of an
organization influence the next level of culture which outwardly manifest as an organization’s
espoused values. Espoused values inform what organization members declare to be good and
bad. They are more public than underlying assumptions and are often prescribed in terms of a
mission or values statement. Some values, however, start as simple beliefs but undergo
transformation through the process of social validation; as others validate a belief as good, it
26
becomes an institutionalized value. Finally, at the outermost level of organizational culture are
artifacts. Although artifacts usually manifest in the form of language, symbols, and structure,
they are often difficult to decipher accurately because these tangible manifestations of culture do
not give insight into how members respond to them (Schein, 1990).
Figure 1.
Schein’s Three Levels of Culture
1. Artifacts Visible structures and processes
Observed behavior
2. Espoused Beliefs
and Values
Ideals, goals, values, aspirations
Ideologies
Rationalizations
3. Basic Underlying
Assumptions
Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs and values
The theory of organizational culture is not without its limitations. First and foremost, it is
impossible for an organization to uphold and transmit a single culture. Rather, there are many
subcultures within an organization based on the differing identities and activities of its members.
These subcultures operate within the organization differently just as the individuals within these
subcultures can operate in manners that are inconsistent across subcultures. Another limitation of
existing theory organizational culture is that it creates an illusion that organizations operate
independently, with little accord for how it is influenced by the environment, powers, structures,
etc. In framing organizations this way, this theory deprives agency of the people for whom and
by whom the culture exists.
Faculty Hiring as a Window into Organizational Culture. Within the theory of
organizational culture, Schein (2010) outlines primary and secondary mechanisms leaders use to
embed and transmit culture. Empirical studies of organizational culture often focus on artifacts
27
such as mission statements or philosophies to uncover a cultural essence. Such a focus on
artifacts is indeed a way of studying culture, however, it does not easily and visibly account for
the underlying assumptions and values upon which these missions and philosophies were
founded. These type of formal statements about an organization are in fact, secondary
mechanisms for embedding and transmitting culture. The six primary mechanisms as defined by
Schein (2010, p. 236) are: what leaders pay attention to, measure and control on a regular basis;
how leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises; how leaders allocate resources;
deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching; how leaders allocate rewards and status; and
how leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate members. While a study on
organizational culture at HSIs could incorporate all six of the primary mechanisms into data
collection, I focus on the hiring of new faculty because it is a strand of organizational culture in
higher education research that is missing from the literature. I also aim to contribute to the
scholarship by focusing on what I believe is the first part of building an organization that is often
overlooked when describing culture: recruitment, selection, and hiring of new members.
Additionally, Schein (2010) argues that the ways in which leaders select members is one of the
most subtle yet most potent ways through which cultural assumptions are embedded in an
organization. He states that the subtlety exists because within most organizations, this process
operates unconsciously. Leaders tend to hire candidates that most often resemble current
members in “style, assumptions, values, and beliefs,” (p. 249). Members use both implicit and
explicit criteria on which to base these decisions.
The process of hiring faculty varies by institutional type but consistently relies on
individuals within the organization to act as gatekeepers and decision makers. That the process is
internal and based on implicit criteria may help explain why inequities persist; there is almost no
28
accountability for who is hired or how the process occurs. At most institutions of higher
education, these are not decisions made by single leaders, but enacted by multiple members of
the institution either through screening and evaluative measures established by committees or by
passing through the hands of many individuals at different stages of the process (i.e. Human
resources, committees, chairs, deans, etc). What is known from this process is simple: decisions
are made by people who operate as representatives of their institution who carry underlying
assumptions, values, and beliefs about what is acceptable for admission of new members. What
is not known by Schein’s research, however, is how histories of institutionalized racism,
oppression, uneven power dynamics, and educational inequity operate within the core of these
underlying assumptions, values, and belief systems. In short, it explains what organizational
culture is, without attending to mechanisms through which culture embeds inequity and
exclusion-- or might be transformed or shifted.
Thus, other theories that are more attuned to realities and mechanisms of power,
oppression, and transformation are required to capture the processes by which exclusion is
institutionalized in hiring. Below, I define Borderlands theory and describe why it is an
appropriate way to capture both the nuance required to understand HSIs as organizations, and the
organizational consciousness of their members.
Borderlands Theory
To redress the absence of a critical perspective within theory of organizational culture, I
turned to Chicana feminist epistemologies for an intersectional approach, which I could use to
study faculty hiring as HSIs. Here, I argue that Borderlands as a theoretical frame is appropriate
for examining the phenomena of hiring because it interrogates political, cultural, linguistic,
geographical, spiritual, and symbolic borders and boundaries that exist at HSIs. In this section, I
29
first describe key terms to provide context for understanding Borderlands theory, then I provide a
rationale for why it is appropriate for my intended study of HSIs.
A borderland “is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an
unnatural boundary,” (p. 25). The concept of borderlands was introduced by Gloria Anzaldúa
(1987), a scholar of feminist, queer, and ethnic studies. Borderlands describes the visible and
invisible borders that marginalized and minoritized individuals must traverse to occupy the
dominant culture in addition to maintaining their own identities. The concept of a borderland can
be structural, psychological, and symbolic (i.e. borders may be geographic, sexual, spiritual,
linguistic, etc). Borderlands are in constant transition. Anzaldúa argues that borderlands can also
be violent spaces. The term itself may evoke the image of the U.S./Mexico border. Anzaldúa,
however, does not prescribe to the notion that the borders are violent because of criminal activity
south of the border as the media coverage on bordertowns might lead one to believe. Instead,
Anzaldúa talks about the violence of the borderlands as being inflicted upon the people crossed
by the border; she describes this violence of being crossed as atravesado. The people that inhabit
the borderlands are los atravesados, the crossed over, and are seen as being neither from here nor
there but in the contradictions that exist in a middle space. Anzaldúa argues that a borderland can
be its own entity: a liminal space full of contradictions and ambiguities (1987). This liminal
space is called nepantla, the Nahuatl word for “in the middle.” This state of occupying with
intention a space that is neither here nor there is in itself an act of rebellion and resistance. When
individuals knowingly occupy this liminal space, they are inherently stating that they are
comfortable being different, contradictory, ambivalent, etc. It is my belief that this perspective is
one that is poignant for the study of HSIs, which can embrace being neither here nor there. More
specifically, I believe that HSIs can and should embrace a new identity or consciousness rather
30
than trying to fit into a prescribed notion of how higher education is meant to educate all
students.
Attempting to navigate the opposing sides of the border can result in both an intimate
terrorism and a choque. Choque refers to the cultural collision that people in the borderlands
experience being sandwiched between two cultures. “The coming together of two self-consistent
but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision,” (p. 100,
original emphasis). The intimate terrorism is the feeling of life in the borderlands that is
acceptance from neither side of the border and results in a fear of engaging fully, immobility,
being an “alien” on both sides. “Alienated from her mother culture, ‘alien’ in the dominant
culture, the woman of color does not feel safe within the inner life of her Self. Petrified, she can’t
respond, her face caught between los intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she
inhabits,” (p. 42, original emphasis). Knowing the reality of the borderlands, Anzaldúa argues
that an identity grounded in the indigenous woman’s history of resistance is the way to move
forward from the terrorism and choque of a borderland.
Anzaldúa argues that people in the borderlands move towards a new consciousness which
she refers to as la conciencia mestiza, or the mestiza consciousness. Mestiza is a woman that is
of both indigenous and European ancestry. In her argument, a mestiza consciousness is more
than an ability to have a counterstance in two cultures separated by a border; it is a stance that is
“proudly defiant” in that it rejects the either/or duality (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 100). The new
mestiza consciousness is one that is rebellious in its ability to be ambiguous. It does not require
that we operate in the cultural frames of white versus Other. The critiques of the new mestiza
consciousness however are that it contributes to the erasure of indigeneity and Indigenous Latinx
peoples (Urrieta, Jr., 2012). Urrieta, Jr. (2012) argues that mestizaje (Anzaldúa, 1987) and the
31
concept of border crossing (Giroux, 1992) romanticize Otherness and do not adequately confront
the reality that mestizaje is a result of colonization. Ceceña and Barreda (1998) posit that the
mestizo culture emerged at the expense of Indigenous culture in spite of claims that mestizaje is
embracing its Indigenous roots; by that logic, mestizaje is also embracing its European roots. As
a scholar committed to racial equity with my own evolving decolonial critique of higher
education, I contend with these contradictions while at the same time working to dismantle an
ivory tower system that has roots in capitalism, domination, and racialized myths of merit and
prestige. I assert that existing in a borderland of higher education means understanding all these
contradictions while still working to achieve a new vision for higher education. I aim to
contribute to broader scholarship that envisions a third world university that “defines itself
fundamentally as a decolonial project – as an interdisciplinary, transnational, yet vocational
university that equips its students with skills toward the applied practice of decolonialization,”
(paperson, 2017, p. 36). As a scyborg
6
embedded in a decolonial machine, I assert myself as “an
artist in the un/patterning of relations of power,” (paperson, 2017, p. 65). In these spaces of
contradiction, I work toward dismantling, un/patterning, and decolonial dreaming.
In this study, I use borderlands theory critical of its limitations and contend with Latinx
people’s history with colonization. I also recognize that using organizational culture theory,
which emerged out of management perspectives intended to maximize business profits, are
antithetical to the transformations in higher education that I wish to see. I contend with the fact
that the university is a settler colonial project where land accumulation – that was once Native
land – advances a settler colonial technology which produced and continually reproduces
6
la paperson (2017) articulates a scyborg is not an identity but “an adjective describing a technological condition of
being embedded in an assemblage of machines,” (p. 62).
32
capitalism and whiteness (paperson, 2017). Keeping in mind these criticisms, I want to be
evaluative and critical of higher education organizations in addition to the existing theories that
we use to study them. To this end, I would like to see HSIs begin to adopt a new consciousness,
one in which they are not striving to be like traditional, historically white institutions and in
which the HSI identity is merely an add-on. A new consciousness might propel HSIs to embrace
a new way of enacting higher education rather than trying to fit the mold of what they believe
institutions of higher education should be. I argue that HSIs might purposefully occupy a liminal
space should they be willing to accept the uncertainty and struggle of the borderlands while
simultaneously contending with their histories and broader impacts.
Applying a Borderlands Frame to Study HSIs. As mentioned above, borderlands as a
frame is underutilized in the study of higher education and of HSIs as an organization. Here, I
argue the ways in which a borderlands lens should be used given these unique contexts for
educating Latinx students. First, borderlands is applicable as a theoretical lens regardless of an
HSI’s geographical location, because of the liminal space HSIs inhabit. Whether an HSI is a
recently-designated HSI or has had this term applied unofficially for decades, these institutions
occupy positions on or around both sides of informal and formal borders. One of the ways HSIs
occupy a liminal space is in relation to a threshold for designation, in which 25% Latinx students
must be enrolled for a campus to be considered an HSI. Yet, although HSIs require a quarter of
enrolled undergraduates identify as Latinx, many of these campuses are still majority white when
it comes to student enrollment: they may therefore be occupying a space that is neither here nor
there, nepantla. As an example, when we apply a borderlands lens, HSIs may be neither Latinx-
serving nor white-serving. In situations where majority of students enrolled at an HSI are white,
it could be said that the in-betweenness might be skewed more to serving white students
33
primarily. In these situations, the Latinx students at HSIs themselves may feel the intimate
terrorism of life in the borderlands, choque, which states that the opposing cultures in the
borderlands impair one’s ability to act, move forward, and engage fully (Anzaldúa, 1987, 1999).
This can manifest for students and faculty in several ways. This intimate terrorism might be as
obvious as dropping out because the process of navigating the bureaucracy in the white
institutionalized space is too overwhelming. Intimate terrorism might take a similar form for the
HSI itself— unable to fully claim an identity that values and prioritizes its Latinx students
because of the need to meet standards and evaluative criteria imposed upon them by white
institutionalized metrics of accountability. This inability to move forward that happens to
individuals in the borderlands likely also happens to institutions that are blocked and
immobilized because of the spaces between worlds they inhabit.
Second, borderlands theory allows for us to see how HSIs have adapted to enact a new
consciousness of the borderlands. This concept speaks to the notion of being in a state of
perpetual transition, a state of mental nepantilism (Anzaldúa, 1987, 1999). As stated earlier, the
theory of borderlands indicates that the new mestiza is flexible because it must be; which is how
scholars must begin to view HSIs and how HSIs must begin to view themselves. A nepantla
consciousness develops a tolerance for contradictions, operates pluralistically, and allows
ambivalence to exist and be used as resistance (Anzaldúa, 1987). In using this theory to study
HSIs, we may be able to reframe the conversation away from one of binary or duality toward
recognition that HSIs have the ability and the support to be flexible when it comes to change, and
to hold multiple identities in tension.
34
An Integrated Framework: Organizational culture and Borderlands theory
An integrated conceptual framework of organizational culture (Schein, 1990) and
borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987) therefore offers a helpful frame for understanding how HSI culture
and HSI consciousness are enacted through and by individuals within HSIs—and how hiring
may contribute to this. The new conceptual framework conceives of the organization where
borders are fluid; however, the borders also create a liminal space or third space that is where
contradictions and ambiguity are situated and negotiated.
This integrated framework proposes that the theory of organizational culture, specifically
the ways in which culture is transmitted, is embedded within and related to larger contexts of
white culture as well as Latinx culture and the in-betweenness. Using organizational culture and
borderlands theory to study HSIs can also allow scholars to understand how the manifestation of
power creates borders or boundaries on what is institutionally valued that are likely salient when
hiring new faculty. We can expect these boundaries to manifest in faculty understandings of
what a search committee considered in its deliberations. Taking this perspective a step further, it
is not enough to hire racially minoritized faculty members without considering how the same
borders that affect hiring will manifest in what newly hired individuals will be up against when
they enter the world of their respective organization. The use of borderlands also helps frame the
study to consider other intersecting identities such as race, class, ethnicity, power, etc.
7
Schein’s conceptualization of organizational culture prescribes that culture is made up of
values, assumptions, and artifacts but does not account for social and political histories with
racism, segregation, class, etc. Although borderlands does not explicitly use these terms either, it
7
“Intersectionality” (Crenshaw, 1989) has been used to define this space of multiple intersecting identities, but
because Anzaldúa’s work pre-dated the term, it is not used here.
35
does describe the greater forces (such as tradition, patriarchy, machismo, white culture, etc.) that
impact the borderlands. Given this context and the applicability to the study of HSIs, it brings
greater depth to Schein’s organizational culture. Additionally, organizational culture and
borderlands theory have complementary and contradictory ideas that I illustrate in Figure 2. In
the left column, I provide the three elements of organizational culture as defined by Schein
(artifacts, values, and underlying assumptions); on the right side, I provide what I believe both
borderlands would say about the notions of values, artifacts, and assumptions. This is not to say
that I argue for a clear overlap of theories, but rather I provide an illustration of how their
underlying assumptions are complementary—how organizational culture lacks a discussion of
dominant power structures, dominant frames and ideologies, and individual agency, and how
concepts from borderlands theory can foreground a critical perspective.
Figure 2
Crosswalk between Organizational Culture and Borderlands Theory
Organizational culture (Schein, 1990) is
made up of:
When put in conversation with
organizational culture, borderlands theory
says:
Artifacts
Are surface-level output of values and
assumptions (examples are charters, creeds,
mission, values, handbooks, and other
tangible ways in which culture manifests at
the surface of an organization.)
Living in borderlands is an act of rebellion
and resistance to structures of power; these
structures are artifacts.
Values
manifest in behaviors and actions, informed
by assumptions.
In borderlands, there is a tolerance for
ambiguity, and contradictions. These
ambiguities and contradictions emerge
because of tensions between dominant white
cultural values and values of the Other.
Underlying assumptions
Are deep-level beliefs that inform most of
how culture operates.
Borderlands understands manifestations of
power such as institutionalized religion,
patriarchy, tradition of silence, machismo
36
culture as influencing the Borderlands/worlds
inhabited by people on the margins of the
dominant culture. These manifestations of
power often result in underlying assumptions
about the way things should be.
For this new integrated framework, I argue that Schein’s conceptualization of an
organizational culture is much too simplistic in that it seemingly removes agency from the
individual; therefore, this new framework is comprised of an organization as a world (Lugones,
2003), or community of people and relationships among them, where people are engaged within
it and they are influenced by sociocultural and sociopolitical structures of dominance and power.
The key contribution of this new framework is that in addition to organizations being fluid and
able to occupy liminal spaces, the individuals within the organizations have the agency to
navigate, resist, and traverse borders and boundaries. In studying faculty hiring at HSIs, I want to
view faculty as actively engaged rather than passively influenced by culture.
Enacting my own nepantla consciousness
8
, I created an illustration of the integrated
framework described here (Appendix A). Since a nepantla consciousness requires flexibility in
the face of ambiguity, tolerance for contradictions, and acceptance of struggle, the illustration
nor the framework could be too rigid. For this reason, I opt for a simple visual with an individual
at the center of organization. The borders between the individual and the world are represented
by dotted lines to illustrate that these borders are permeable and allow for traveling to occur.
Although my illustration captures only one individual at the center, multiple individuals can
inhabit this space. Between the individual and the organization, however, exists a liminal space
to illustrate the borderlands that an individual inhabits as a form of resistance. The resistance is
8
For more on my positionality and consciousness, reference the epoché in Chapter 5.
37
illustrated by outward pointing arrows that go against the internal facing arrows represented by
dominant systems and structures of power. This simple visual represents a mere individual in one
organization, however, the concept of world traveling and borderlands mean that an individual
can traverse many borders and travel between many worlds (Lugones, 2003; Anzaldúa, 1987).
To conclude, HSIs operate within a system of higher education that implicitly privileges
whiteness above its Latinx-serving claims. HSIs are a young institutional type within this
landscape, which use enrollment trends of Latinx students to gain access to funding that is often
an indirect result of the institution’s geographic location. By not interrogating the underlying
cultures that uniquely permeate HSIs, which I argue are created in part by faculty hiring and
characterized by a liminal state between US higher education’s white history and the Latinx
students HSIs are supposed to be serving, these institutions will be unable to reconcile efforts
toward diversity and equity with their outcomes. We need to understand how faculty make sense
of HSI status—that is, we need to understand HSI consciousness as a new consciousness —to
strengthen efforts individual agents have already made in order to create an educational
experience for Latinx students at HSIs that is more culturally-responsive, equitable, and socially
just. Until institutions contend with the underlying assumptions mediated by their organizational
culture, they will continue to provide an education for Latinx students that maintains a white
status quo. This matters not only because the erasure of Latinx students on HSI campuses exists,
but also because it has direct implications for how Latinx students are treated in and out of the
classroom. Faculty are for many students the first authentic point of interaction with an
institutional actor; therefore, it makes sense to prioritize students’ educational needs when hiring
faculty. In the section that follows, I outline a qualitative research study that makes use of this
integrated framework.
38
Chapter 4: Methodology
Researchers of HSIs have yet to examine the role of faculty, specifically faculty hiring, in
illuminating aspects of organizational culture. Additionally, race-neutral scholarship on
organizations and organization-invisible scholarship on race contributes to a lack of
understanding on the role race and ethnicity play in organizational structures, processes, (Ray,
2019) and culture. Together, these gaps in the literature contribute to a rather large gap in
understanding HSIs, what it means to have a Latinx-serving culture, and how to create equitable
faculty hiring structures with Latinx students in mind.
In the previous section, I illustrated an integrated conceptual framework of organizational
culture and borderlands theory to study gaps in our understanding while being mindful of the
liminal spaces that HSIs and faculty at HSIs tend to occupy. In this section, I explain my
approach of a phenomenological case study to explore the overarching questions,
1. How does faculty hiring reflect and create the organizational culture at HSIs?
a. How are observable, collective aspects of the organizational culture in HSIs
informing of hiring?
b. How do internal, individually interpreted elements of the organizational
culture in HSIs inform faculty hiring?
2. Given the answers to RQ1a and RQ1b, what is HSI consciousness and how is it
expressed in hiring?
Here, I present my rationale for using phenomenological case study to investigate faculty
hiring at HSIs. I articulate why phenomenology and case study provide an appropriate avenue for
answering these research questions, describing the features of each methodology. Finally, I
39
provide an examination of the limitations of this approach and describe ways that my research
design will alleviate these limitations.
A Phenomenological Approach to Study Faculty Hiring at HSIs
To explore and describe the experience of faculty hiring at Hispanic-serving institutions,
I combined aspects of two qualitative methodologies: phenomenology and case study. I describe
this combined methodology as phenomenological case study. Phenomenological study is the
study of “human experience concerning itself with meaning and the way meaning arises within
the experience of the individual,” (van Manen, 2007). As a methodology, phenomenology is
known as a study of the essence of a particular phenomenon (van Manen, 2017); however, as I
will review in the next section, phenomenology is more than a mere method. It is also an attitude
relying on “perceptiveness, creative insight, interpretive sensitivity, scholarship, and writing
competence of the researcher” (van Manen, 2010, p. 449). This attitude is rooted in a fascination
with the uniqueness of a particular phenomenon or experience (van Manen, 2010). In this
section, I explain my own phenomenological attitude, and how it served as an entry to my
research of faculty hiring in HSIs.
My Phenomenological Attitude as an Entry to the Study of HSIs
For me, this research emerged out of a phenomenological attitude. As a student of three
HSIs in my lifetime, I am more than a product of HSIs -- I am a steadfast advocate of HSIs and
also a critic recognizing the work to be done. Reflecting on my experience at these three HSIs, I
thought about my coursework, the curriculum, and my professors. Despite HSI status, many of
my professors were white; however, one HSI stood out because a majority of my professors were
Latinx. This realization led to a curiosity that began the thought process for this dissertation. I
began questioning: Why did one HSI have more Latinx faculty than the other two? Was one HSI
40
simply more intentional about hiring Latinx faculty to serve the needs of the large Latinx
population? Was one HSI intentional about hiring Latinx faculty because it was part of a
strategic plan or mission or organizational culture? Was one HSI with more Latinx faculty
simply so because of its geographic location? These curiosities about the hiring of faculty at
HSIs revealed my early phenomenological attitude. The questions I kept asking myself were
about a unique phenomenon: faculty hiring at HSIs. But more than the technical process of hiring
itself, I became interested in the individual actors within the hiring process, whether the people
on the hiring committees held a Latinx-serving consciousness or internal priority when defining
what membership to the faculty at their campus should look like.
This research focuses on faculty narratives of the phenomenon of hiring at an HSI as a
lived experience, which I aggregated into case studies of how hiring played out at two HSIs. A
phenomenological design was appropriate for this study in part because it allowed for these
narratives to emerge but also because it accounted for an individual’s “inward perceivedness”
(Husserl, 1964, p.167) with which faculty bring their prior consciousness or primal awareness
(Husserl, 2014). This primal awareness enacts itself when a person brings all prior experiences,
knowledge, and engagements with the world to the phenomenon under examination. For
example, a faculty member in a search committee makes a decision with the following in mind:
their identities; their understanding of disciplines and the ways in which disciplines interact with
each other; awareness of the way they engage in the world; awareness of the way the way the
organization is run and decisions are made. A phenomenological study is useful then for
capturing the essence of a lived experience. Additionally, a phenomenological study with a
borderlands theory frame allowed for the examination of a lived experience with all its
contradictions and ambiguities.
41
Neither phenomenology nor this study is meant to generalize to a larger group of people
than the sample at hand. Rather, this study is meant to do what phenomenology enables: evoke
reflection on practice. Indeed, phenomenology of practice (Heidegger, 1995) tells us that
professional knowledge is pathic (e.g. sympathic, empathic) (van Manen, 2014). The researcher
can expect that experiential stories will be shared in a way that they evoke reflection on practice.
The intention of this study was therefore not to generalize the process of faculty hiring or
illustrate HSIs together as having a single identity. Instead, through the telling of the lived
experience of faculty hiring at HSIs, I suggest this research be used to evoke reflection on the
practice of faculty hiring. The narratives that came from this study are not expected to lead to so-
called best practices or enable prescriptive measures for “doing hiring with diversity in mind.”
Instead, reading this study as a phenomenology is meant to lead to a change in readers’ own
consciousness about hiring, and I envision this may be especially so for those who are,
themselves, engaged in the work of hiring.
Phenomenological case study
In addition to using a phenomenological approach, I incorporated elements of
comparative case study to achieve my research goals and as a strategy to examine a
“contemporary phenomenon in its real-life context” (Yin, 1981). According to Yin (2014), the
desired boundary for a case is around a phenomenon that has some concrete manifestation. This
study compares cases of faculty hiring at two universities, bounded by an academic year in
which faculty hiring decisions were made. I individually examined hiring at two universities that
represent related, but distinctive, academic worlds, I considered disciplines within them as
worlds unto themselves (Clark, 1997) and then, I compare across the two university cases.
42
The qualitative case study approach was appropriate because, according to Stake (2005),
it is a way of answering the question of what can be learned from a single case. Since I am
interested in studying faculty hiring at both the meso and micro level of analysis, the approach
utilizing both case study ㅡ typical in meso level research ㅡ and phenomenology ㅡ typical in
micro level research ㅡ was appropriate. In the tradition of both case study and phenomenology,
I also provided rich, thick descriptions of a phenomenon (Merriam, 1998) with the purpose of
describing the phenomenon of hiring as a lived experience to capture its essence. Descriptive
case studies are often referred to as holistic; this includes incorporating data from several
sources. Though I rely primarily on interview data, I exercised the descriptive aspects of case
study with the goal of providing a holistic portrayal of the phenomenon.
Lastly, but importantly for the intellectual contributions of this work, qualitative case
study is also described as heuristic—that is, it is able to bring about the discovery of new
meaning (Merriam, 1998) and the generation of new theory (Eisenhardt, 1989). With the goal of
describing the phenomenon of faculty hiring at an HSI as a lived experience, the heuristic quality
of a case study can enable a deeper understanding of HSI consciousness and how it may vary
within and across HSIs (Merriam, 1998). Thus, a heuristic quality in this study can evoke
learning through reflection via the phenomenological approach.
Site Selection
The research sites of this study were selected based on prior data collected regarding their
faculty composition. My own personal assumptions based on my experiences at HSIs
9
for both
undergraduate and graduate education led me to hypothesize that HSIs closer in proximity to the
9
My time as a student at three HSIs might be considered an auto phenomenological pilot study in which I developed
this hypothesis based on my lived experience.
43
U.S.-Mexico border have more Latinx faculty than HSIs further from the border. I believed this
to be the case because bordertowns
10
have high Latinx populations, therefore a university
situated on the border is likely to have more Latinx employees than universities in other
geographic locations. Given this hypothesis, I decided to look at data of HSIs with regards to the
numbers of Latinx faculty (both tenure/tenure track and non-tenured). While gathering this data,
I created a typology to help better identify which institutions to use as study sites, given their
composition and anticipated level of consciousness about serving Latinx students. Figure 3
illustrates four different frames within this typology, based on two criteria: enrollment of Latinx
students and demographics of Latinx faculty. I hypothesized that institutions with high numbers
of both Latinx students and faculty would have different attitudes and cultures when compared to
HSIs with lower numbers of Latinx students and faculty.
This typology was designed not to track HSIs into categories based on my own
assumptions but rather to rationalize a process for selecting sites of study. In determining what
would make an ideal site to study, I thought of HSIs in terms of faculty composition. Ideally,
HSIs with the highest percentage of Latinx faculty would become the sites of my study;
however, Latinx student enrollment proves equally important at determining the consciousness
of their HSI status and Latinx-serving identity. Thus, the typology illustrated in Figure 3 is a XY
graph where I use the X axis to represent the spectrum of Latinx student enrollment beginning
with the 25% threshold and going potentially to 100% Latinx student enrollment. I use the Y axis
to represent the spectrum of Latinx faculty beginning at 0 percent. My purpose in creating this
typology was to identify HSIs that would cover a range of attitudes toward Latinx students and
HSI status.
10
The term bordertown for this paper refers to U.S. cities on the border of Mexico.
44
Along with my initial hypotheses that institutions located closer to the geographic border
will have greater percentages of Latinx faculty and students, I also hypothesized that these
institutions place greater value on Latinx culture and the HSI identity more than other HSIs that
may be only conscious of their status or even indifferent to what the HSI designation means.
Although I use the term “conscious” to describe an attitude toward the HSI designation I did not
make an assumption that HSIs with high percentages of Latinx faculty operate with a Latinx-
serving consciousness. Additionally, this typology operates along specific borders marked by
quadrants; visually, it is not representative of a nepantla consciousness that is tolerant of
contradictions or ambiguity. However, as a scholar aware of my tendencies for absolutes based
on my Western education, I state here that the typology is merely a tool for identifying sites and I
choose to enact a nepantla consciousness by employing a flexible use of this typology in my site
selection.
The two axes create quadrants that I named Latinx Indifferent, Latinx Ambivalent, Latinx
Valuing, and Latinx Conscious. These types are a way of operationalizing the potential cultural
attitudes of HSIs based on their Latinx population. Latinx Indifferent HSIs have low percentages
of both Latinx students and faculty. I would expect that with low percentages of both Latinx
students and faculty, the organization would have a culture of indifference toward the Latinx
identity; the HSI status would mean little in day-to-day interactions and decisions. Latinx
Ambivalent HSIs are those with low Latinx student percentage and a high Latinx faculty
percentage; though it may be the case that these HSIs are unlikely, I consider the organizational
cultural attitudes to be more toward ambivalence toward Latinx students given the low
percentage of them. Were there to be a large population of Latinx faculty, but low numbers of
Latinx students, the faculty would not prioritize a Latinx-serving mindset because there would
45
appear little need to do so. Latinx Valuing HSIs are those with high Latinx student percentage
and low ㅡ below 50 percent ㅡ Latinx faculty percentage. HSIs of this type, with high
percentage of Latinx students ㅡ 62.5 percent to 100 percent ㅡ would be conscious of their
Latinx identity and make intentional efforts to serve the Latinx student population. Latinx
Conscious is far less likely to be found in the U.S. mainland; it is represented by high
percentages of both Latinx students and faculty. This type of HSI would likely be found in
Puerto Rico.
Figure 3
Hispanic Serving Institution Typology based on Latinx population
Low Latinx Student %
High Latinx Faculty %
= Latinx Ambivalent
High Latinx Student %
High Latinx Faculty %
= Latinx Valuing
Low Latinx Student %
Low Latinx Faculty %
= Latinx Indifferent
High Latinx Student %
Low Latinx Faculty %
= Latinx Conscious
Because of my informal hypothesis regarding HSIs close to the U.S.-Mexico border, my
site selection process meant to identify HSIs that had high numbers of Latinx students and both
low and high numbers of Latinx faculty. Using my typology, I looked for HSIs that fit into the
categories of Latinx Valuing and Latinx Serving. Using the Hispanic Association of Colleges
and University’s (HACU) list of Hispanic Serving Institutions by state, I limited my search for
sites to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas because these states had proximity to the
international border. I then searched for universities along the border in each of these states and
found five in total. I requested data regarding faculty demographics from each of these sites
shown in Table 1. Pseudonyms are used.
46
Table 1
Latinx Student and Faculty Percentages of HSIs in States that Border Mexico
University Percentage Latinx students Percentage Latinx faculty
Tenured/Tenure track/Non
Tenured
Metropolitan HSI 43% 11%
Inland HSI 61% 11%
Grove HSI 41% 8%
Valley HSI 40% 7%
Border HSI 80% 37%
Desert HSI 39% 16%
South Plains HSI 94% 43%
River Valley HSI 89% 41%
Mountain View HSI Did not provide data Did not provide data
I explored data from four additional universities in Southern California for this site
selection for convenience in data collection and for consistency as a state located on the border
with Mexico. I identified Metropolitan HSI, Inland HSI, Grove HSI, and Valley HSI. These
institutions, although found to be in a geographic region densely populated with Latinx, had
lower percentages of Latinx faculty and students than the other universities along the border.
After identifying the percentages of Latinx faculty and students at all the HSIs identified in my
preliminary search, I visualized the campuses onto the four quadrants in Figure 3. Based on this
typology, none of the HSIs identified on Table 1 are considered Latinx Ambivalent or Latinx
Valuing. Five HSIs are categorized as Latinx Indifferent ㅡ South Plains HSI, Metropolitan HSI,
Inland HSI, Grove HSI, and Valley HSI. The remaining HSIs ㅡ Border HSI, South Plains HSI,
47
and River Valley HSI ㅡ are categorized as Latinx Conscious. As a result of the data gathered, I
selected two sites for comparative case study, one from each of the two types explained above:
Metropolitan HSI and Border HSI.
Data Collection
For data collection, I primarily utilized two common techniques of case study: interviews
and document analysis. Using these approaches together provided a rich backdrop for the story
to be told by the data. In phenomenology, interviews serve as a means to explore a phenomenon
through gathering narratives about one’s experiences with the topic and developing
conversational relationships with participants (vanManen, 1990). Because the goal of
phenomenology is to understand lived experience, I relied on semi-structured interviews (Hays
& Singh, 2012) as my primary source of data and used documents merely to gather information
about the search process and the institution. According to Moustakas (1994), phenomenological
interviews should be informal and interactive processes that uses in-the-moment questioning
depending on the course of the particular interview. I reviewed document information prior to
each interview to illuminate possible areas of discussion and made adjustments to my
questioning wherever I deemed appropriate. For example, after studying the faculty hiring
policies at each institution, I utilized language from the policies to introduce a question during
the interview about the process. I chose to not conduct observations despite the use of
observations in case studies because of my phenomenological approach to case study.
Phenomenology is a way of capturing a lived experience of a phenomenon and is based on the
ego or “consciousness as reflexivity experience,” (Miller, 1986, p. 157 ). Therefore, observations
are not useful in understanding the way an individual experiences a phenomenon.
48
I conducted data collection during the Fall of 2019 and Spring 2020 through interviews
with 17 faculty who either chaired or sat on search committees during the 2017-2018 or 2018-
2019 academic year. The interviews focused on the experiences of those engaged in the process
of hiring as a decisionmaker but also as a member of the organizational culture. To recruit
participants, I did a Google Search for members of the staff on each campus that could provide
information on the process of hiring. I began by searching the provost’s office and did other
searches for “_UNIVERSITY NAME_ Faculty Hiring” and “_UNIVERSITY NAME_ Faculty
Recruitment.” If a person’s title seemed relevant to the study, I sent them a brief email asking for
a meeting to discuss my project or for information on the search chairs for the positions hired in
2018 and 2019. At Metropolitan HSI, I emailed a staff member, Rosemary
11
, who responded and
set up an in-person meeting to discuss the process of hiring. We met later in the week and she put
me in contact with a few of the others whom I had emailed but had not responded. She provided
me with a spreadsheet that had the link to each job announcement in Interfolio
12
where I could
access the name and contact information of each search chair in 2017 and 2018. This information
proved invaluable and made the recruitment of participants from Metropolitan HSI simple.
I emailed several people in similar staff positions at Border HSI but was not given the
same access that I had been given with Rosemary. I connected with Jose, a faculty member with
whom I shared a mutual friend who became an informant at BHSI. We met in-person in the early
fall to discuss the process of faculty recruitment and hiring. Jose suggested I contact the
department chairs of each hiring department, provide information about my study, and request
the names of the search committee members. I reached out to one department chair in the
11
Rosemary and all other participants in this study are referred to by pseudonyms.
12
Interfolio is a free online platform used by faculty to collect application materials like cover letters, letters of
recommendation, transcripts, etc.
49
humanities who had me email Lourdes, an administrative assistant, for support. Lourdes worked
for the College of Arts and Sciences; when I reached out to her she suggested I contact business
affairs to make an open records request for the job announcements. Lourdes’ suggestion to make
an open records request yielded a single PDF with every job announcement for 2017-2018 and
2018-2019. Upon receipt of this PDF, I began contacting the search chairs that were named in
each announcement. In total, I contacted 28 faculty search chairs at Border HSI and 27 at
Metropolitan HSI via recruitment email yielding 8 and 9 interviews, respectively (Table 2). After
each interview with search chairs, I engaged in snowball sampling and asked them to put me in
contact with members of the committee that would consider being interviewed. Despite my
contacting the referrals, I was unable to interview any faculty committee members this way.
Table 2
Interview Participants across Disciplines
Metropolitan HSI Border HSI
Humanities Karen Vega Alma De La Rosa
Gabriel Conroy
STEM Marcos Serrano Sky Weber
Jane Nash Viktor Geller
Charles Allen Liliana Mendoza
Social Sciences Bob Smith Jorge Rosas
Claire Gordon Stephan Sanders
Camila Patterson Laura Martin
David Adler Lucia Alvarez
In addition to snowball sampling, I utilized purposive sampling (Merriam & Tisdale,
2015) to make every attempt to interview faculty who identified as Latinx (Table 3). In doing so,
my aim was to get a sense for how Latinx faculty view hiring in addition to how faculty
generally view hiring at their campuses. I wanted to illuminate differences of lived experiences
50
as much as possible and be able to capture how the Latinx search committee members might
rationalize hiring with the Latinx student population in mind. I interviewed faculty participants
for 60-90 minutes each in the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters and audio recorded each
interview. In total, I conducted 20 hours of interviews with faculty search chairs and had each
interview professionally transcribed using a third-party transcription service. In a few of the
interviews I conduced with Latinx faculty, both English and Spanish were spoken. I personally
transcribed the parts of the interview that were in Spanish because the transcription company I
used did not offer that service and would have instead charged me to translation service at a
higher cost. The bilingual flexibility in these interviews came as a result of me sharing my
positionality while building rapport with the participants. I never asked participants a question in
Spanish, but if they began responding in Spanish, I always gave them response cues in Spanish
indicating that I understood.
Table 3
Faculty Participant Characteristics
Campus Name Title Race/Ethnicity Discipline
Metropolitan
HSI
Karen Vega Associate Professor Latinx/a/o Humanities
Gabriel Conroy Professor White Humanities
Marcos Serrano Professor Latinx/a/o STEM
Jane Nash Professor White STEM
Charles Allen Associate Professor White STEM
Bob Smith Professor White Social Sciences
Claire Gordon Associate Professor Asian-
American
Social Sciences
Camila Patterson Professor White Social Sciences
David Adler Professor White Social Sciences
Border HSI Alma De La Rosa Associate Professor Latinx/a/o Humanities
Sky Weber Associate Professor White STEM
Viktor Geller Professor White STEM
Liliana Mendoza Assistant Professor Latinx/a/o STEM
Jorge Rosas Professor Latinx/a/o Social Sciences
51
Stephen Sanders Professor White Social Sciences
Laura Martin Professor Latinx/a/o Social Sciences
Lucia Alvarez Associate Professor Latinx/a/o Social Sciences
In sum, documents collected for this study were used to inform the semi structured
interviews. I referenced job announcements to determine the language used by the university to
attract candidates. I also reviewed the campus webpages on faculty affairs or faculty hiring at
each institution to determine how they describe their HSI status or identity. I also utilized the
hiring policies from each institution to inform probing and language used in the interviews. In
gathering these documents, my aim was not to analyze and construct my own interpretation, but
simply to use them as a tool informing of the interview dialogue. Consistent with
phenomenology, my goal was to capture the essence of the experience of faculty hiring for the
search committee members; therefore, I relied primarily on interview data. Following interviews
and transcription, I uploaded the transcripts into a project I created in NVivo 12. Each transcript
was uploaded as its own individual file and I created case attributes for each file for department
affiliation, title/rank, campus, and racial/ethnic identity.
Data analysis
At the onset of this project, I wanted to know what was most essential to HSIs and
expected that faculty hiring would illuminate the cultural essences of what and how it means to
serve Latinx students. van Manen (1990) describes research as a caring act. “We want to know
that which is most essential to being,” (van Manen, 1990, p. 5). Therefore, using the vantage
point of faculty hiring to study the essence of HSIs, I engaged in analysis informed by two
primary approaches: first, phenomenological analysis (Giorgi, 2009; Wertz, 2005), and second,
Saldaña’s (2016) approach to coding qualitative data. According to the phenomenological
method, there are four essential steps to protocol analysis: (1) reading for a sense of the whole;
52
(2) differentiating the description into meaning units; (3) reflecting on the psychological
significance of each meaning unit; and (4) clarifying the psychological structure(s) of the
phenomenon (Giorgi, 2009). I compared these two approaches to qualitative analysis in Table 4
to form a hybrid method of analysis that met the requirements of both analytic techniques.
Although Saldaña (2016) does not state that one should read for a sense of the whole, he claims
that a qualitative researcher should engage in a round of precoding and preliminary jottings as a
way of engaging in a heuristic approach to discovery. Heeding to the phenomenological analytic
procedure, I first embarked in the step of reading every individual transcript for a sense of the
whole while engaged in pre-coding, preliminary jottings, and analytic memoing (Saldaña, 2016).
During this pre-coding phase, I engaged in splitting the data into smaller codable moments
(Bernard, 2011). Saldaña (2016) argues that the act of data “splitting generates a more nuanced
analysis from the start,” (p. 24). I used splitting during a pre-coding process to promote a more
trustworthy analysis in which I reduced the likelihood of inputting my own biases into the
analysis (Charmaz, 2008). Following the pre-coding round, I engaged in a first cycle of
descriptive coding or topic coding to identify and link comparable contents of each individual
interview (Saldaña, 2016). Using this type of coding for the first cycle allowed me to see the
nuances of faculty experiences at HSIs and in search committees immediately. Between the pre-
coding and first coding cycles, I created a codebook (Appendix D). I input the pre-codes into a
Google Doc and began to group them into primary codes through the process of code mapping
(Saldaña, 2016). This step allowed me to begin to comb through the codes and map them out into
parent and child nodes to see the development of some early patterns emerge. During and after
this process, I wrote analytic memos to make sense of and process what early patterns and
meaning units I saw.
53
Table 4
A Phenomenological Case Study Approach to Qualitative Analysis.
Phenomenological
Analysis (Giorgi, 2009)
Coding method for qualitative
analysis (Saldaña, 2016)
Combined approach
1. Read for a sense of the
whole.
Engage in pre-coding cycle
and preliminary jottings
Read for a sense of the
whole while pre-coding,
jotting preliminary themes
in reflective analytic
memos. Engage in
splitting technique for pre-
coding.
2. Differentiate the
description into meaning
units.
Engage in first Cycle coding,
Code Mapping, and
Second Cycle coding to
uncover thematic units.
Engage in first cycle of
descriptive coding
followed by
Conceptual coding to
break data up into
meaning units or themes
across transcripts within
each case. Conduct
analytic memoing
throughout.
3. Reflect on the
psychological
significance of each
meaning unit.
Engage in third cycle coding,
if necessary.
Conduct third cycle of
coding in collaboration
with reflective analytic
memoing on the
significance of the themes
to the participants within
each case.
4. Clarify the psychological
structure of the
phenomenon.
Theorize based on codes. Theorize based on codes
to develop framework for
consciousness around this
phenomenon.
Next, I engaged in a second round to “bring meaning, structure, and order to the data”
(Anfara, 2008, p. 932). For this second round, I engaged in theoretical coding or conceptual
coding which uses a grounded theory analytical approach (Saldaña, 2016; Strauss & Corbin,
54
1998). The purpose of theoretical coding is to have the initial descriptive codes begin to take
some shape. This type of second cycle coding aligned with the phenomenological analytic
procedural step of differentiating the data into meaning units. Going through this process of
second cycle coding and memoing, I used the codebook to develop themes from the codes within
each case study. This step was vital in my process because it ensured that I continually put the
data in conversation with theory. At this point in the analysis process, I recalled that Saldaña
(2016) said analysis is not coding but rather re-coding. The cycles of coding and then re-coding
allowed me to recognize connections and patterns that were emerging.
I conducted a third round of analysis and memoing where I ran queries in NVivo across
the attributes I created early in the analysis process. Through this step, I reflected on the
psychological significance of each meaning unit as outlined by the phenomenological analytic
process. Running queries across the differing campuses and then across various racial/ethnic
identity types allowed me to make sense of aspects of hiring and HSI culture that I would not
have seen otherwise. Although this study is not a comparison of Latinx and non-Latinx faculty
experiences at HSIs, differentiating these experiences for a third round of analysis enabled me to
explore the nuances of each individual’s experience with hiring and within the organizational
culture. I wrote reflective and analytic memos and consulted with my dissertation chair to make
sense of it all. Through this last round of analysis and memoing, I returned to the
phenomenological analytic procedure which was about reflecting on the significance of each
meaning unit. After the third cycle of coding and reflecting on the analysis across participant
attributes, I engaged in an additional step of theorizing based on the codes, meaning units,
themes, and reflective memos in order to develop a framework for HSI consciousness informed
55
by the data. This framework as well as the process for developing the framework is explained
thoroughly in Chapter 7.
Trustworthiness and Limitations
Limitations of a phenomenological approach are that, by design, this methodology is not
intended to generalize about a phenomenon. Though this study is not intended to generalize
about HSIs or about faculty hiring in general, I strategically used phenomenology of practice
(van Manen, 2014) in my study design to evoke reflection from readers that enable them to
rethink and alter their own faculty hiring practices. While acknowledging this limitation, I
foregrounded the context of the institution as often as possible in analysis and writing. I used
thick description (Geertz, 1974) in providing the institutional context and when discussing
observable aspects of organizational culture to provide deeper nuance and detail to each case.
Additionally, because I traveled to another state for part of the data collection, there were
interviews I was unable to conduct in-person. For those interviews, I lost essential in-person
rapport-building opportunities as well as the opportunity to observe participants’ in their
element. Knowing this, I planned to spend more time at the beginning of phone interviews
discussing my positionality and motivation for the study. I also made increased efforts to give
verbal signals on the phone that I was engaged while also giving the participant space to fill the
silences.
Another limitation for this study was time. Given that the professors I interviewed all had
full course loads, university service responsibilities, and research projects, I intended to conduct
interviews during the early semester when their time might have been more flexible. However, as
a result of many unforeseen scheduling hurdles, some interviews happened to take place in the
midst of finals or midterms when faculty members were dealing with additions to their already-
56
full work loads. I had two professors (one at each site) tell me they were happy to participate but
could not give me the 60-90 minute window I had requested. In those instances, I graciously
conducted 45-minute interviews, one of which took place over the phone while the faculty
member was between meetings. I recognize that conducting a study of culture requires more time
spent in the field, and although I wish I could have spent more time with faculty members, I used
the phenomenological approach in designing the protocol to ensure that I was capturing their
lived experience with the culture.
Case study research establishes trustworthiness through several strategies including
triangulation, member checks, researcher reflections on positionality, and peer debriefing or
memoing (Creswell, 2007). I used peer debriefing with members of my interdisciplinary women
of color dissertation writing group (whose members are from Sociology, American Studies, and
Higher Education programs) to discuss data and analysis. This process allowed for the co-
construction of findings across multiple realities and interpretations rather than relying on the
interpretations of myself alone that may be informed by my own biases (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
I triangulated the interview data with an analysis of the artifacts I gathered for describing
the institutional context. This important step of triangulation served as a tool for recalibration to
the study context. By checking the interview data against demographic information, university
policies, and historical artifacts found online, I was able to fact check the transcripts before using
pieces of them to craft the larger narrative of this study. My ongoing reflections on positionality
and bias have also been an important contribution to the trustworthiness of this study. In using
phenomenological analysis, I engaged in the epoché process to bracket my identity and describe
the phenomenon itself as free from bias as possible. I describe this process in depth in Chapter 5.
57
Chapter 5: The Phenomenological Reduction
La facultdad
13
is the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper
realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant “sensing,” a quick
perception arrived at without conscious reasoning. It is an acute awareness mediated by
the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols
which are the faces of feelings, that is, behind which feelings reside/hide. The one
possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world….Pain makes us acutely
anxious to avoid more of it, so we hone that radar. It’s a kind of survival tactic that
people, caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate. (Anzaldúa, 2000, p. 60-61)
Phenomenology calls on the researcher to engage in a process of phenomenological
reduction. The phenomenological reduction is a “way to gain access to meaning structures of a
phenomenon” (van Manen, 2014, p. 216). This happens in two steps: (1) engaging in the epoché
which entails removing what obstructs access to the phenomenon in question; and (2) the
reduction or way back to the phenomenon. Husserl describes this process as a way “back to the
things themselves” (2001, p. 168). The phenomenological reduction is expected to lead to a
suspension of belief so that one can get to the essence of a phenomenon without presumptions.
The epoché is often referred to as bracketing because the process is one where the researcher
strives to bracket any presumptions, common understandings, or beliefs in an attempt to get at an
understanding of the phenomenon removing both the objective and subjective. To engage in the
13
Originally, the author italicized this term; however, I intentionally chose not to italicize Spanish terms in my
writing for two reasons: 1. To not center English as the dominant language and 2. To employ and embrace the use of
translanguaging and bilingual flexibility between English and Spanish in this study.
58
epoché and bracket my assumptions, here I offer a reflection on how my positionality and
identity impact my scholarship.
As a Chicana intent on understanding the essence of faculty hiring at Hispanic-serving
institutions, I wonder the extent to which bracketing my experiences is possible. Furthermore, is
my bracketing useful? Or would a more important contribution to scholarship be one that allows
my facultad to emerge? For thirty-three years, my body has existed and resisted in a world that
has experienced racism, patriarchy, and limited access to resources. My intersectional position as
a Chicana residing within a matrix of domination (Hill Collins, 2000) allows me to experience
and execute la facultad. It is this position that informs my perception of the world—including the
world of faculty hiring I have been studying-- and my entire being. With that said, to open
myself up to bracketing presumptions around the phenomenon of hiring is something I must call
to question.
Bracketing the Self in the Epoché
Early phenomenologists’ dominant Western perspectives describe selfhood as an
“allegedly neutral epistemic modern subject” (Ortega, 2016, p. 115). In her evaluation of
Anzaldúa’s and Heidegger’s approaches to understanding selfhood, Ortega critiqued Heidegger’s
view as remaining “relentlessly Eurocentric and thus still tied to what decolonialists call the
modern/colonial matrix of power” (2016, p. 115). In offering a “border thinking” instead, Ortega
reifies a reconfiguring of selfhood and subjectivity. In her reconfiguration, she allows an
understanding of the influence that European tradition and dominant structures have on an
othered, multiplicitous self. I take her recognition of the need for this reconfiguration, this border
thinking, as a way of entering the process of phenomenological reduction. From this perspective,
I engage in the epoché while embracing my facultad. I could use my facultad to be perceptive of
59
understanding the phenomenon in question. In other words, while my presumptions and beliefs
should be bracketed off, the intuition I possess as a Chicana is necessary for this study which
employs a Chicana feminist theoretical framework.
Therefore, to engage in a distinctly Chicana feminist epoché, I borrow a set of questions
from Salis Reyes (2016, 2019) to help with a purposeful and focused approach to bracketing. I
have made modifications to the questions posed by Salis Reyes in her own epoché of an
indigenized phenomenology, and consider the following questions: How do my experiences and
assumptions impact my view of hiring at HSIs? How have they helped me get to a
conceptualization of HSI consciousness? What are the ways in which they raise challenges for
my ability to suspend judgment? And lastly, how have I attempted to work through these
challenges? Like Salis Reyes, “I seek to write my own experiences as phenomenological
descriptions, in experiential terms focusing on particular situations or events,” and following van
Manen’s (1990) rationale:
It is to the extent that my experiences could be our experiences that the phenomenologist
wants to be reflectively aware of certain experiential meanings. To be aware of the
structure of one’s own experience of a phenomenon may provide the researcher with
clues for orienting oneself to the phenomenon and thus to all other stages of
phenomenological research. (p. 57, original emphasis)
As van Manen (1990) suggests, I reflect on my positionality to orient myself to the phenomenon
and the research. In doing so, I am cultivating an awareness of how my own experiences impact
my approach to this study and interpretations of the data. However, in calling attention to this, I
am also expressing that my identity impacts and shapes the way I see the world. My construction
of reality is deeply embedded in my identity as a Chicana and something Anzaldúa (2010) refers
60
to as a borderland subjectivity. In the section that follows, I explain how a borderland
subjectivity informs my scholarship as well as this study.
Foregrounding a Borderland Subjectivity and Identity
I was born and raised in Texas bordertown in a working-class family with two younger
sisters. As the eldest girl of a Mexican-American family, I was raised with traditional Mexican
values even though I was a second-generation Texan. I am the granddaughter of immigrants, but
in a bordertown, that distinction is blurred because I grew up living a transnational existence. It
meant that from a very young age, I crossed the border into Mexico at least once a week (usually
on weekends) to buy groceries, go to family functions, or just go take pan dulce to my Tio Juan
Pablo and Tia Chela. This was the reality for mostly everyone in El Paso, Texas. I spoke English
and Spanish growing up, but neither of them that well. I still have trouble with understanding
certain phrases or idioms in English and a lack of confidence with my pocha, or Americanized,
Spanish. Often, we border dwellers engaged in speaking Spanglish. If I was trying to
communicate something to my Buela in Spanish but did not remember the word, I would say it
in English and she usually knew what I was trying to say. I recall seeing my mom interact with
her brothers and the way they’d switch effortlessly between English and Spanish within a single
sentence was something I can only describe today as magical. Growing up, I always felt ashamed
that I did not have the same comprehension of language - neither English nor Spanish - that they
did; but today, I feel an immense gratitude for being able to enjoy songs, movies, and culture de
los dos lados.
My upbringing on the border meant that I was constantly exposed to Mexican culture.
My teachers, neighbors, crossing guards, grocery store managers, doctors, cafeteria workers at
school, and lifeguards all looked and spoke like my familia. In fact, growing up in El Paso, it’s
61
often said that it has the feeling of a small town because everyone, whether they know each other
or not, greet one another like familia. Being exposed to this type of community from a young age
showed me that these two cultures and countries existed juntos. I wasn’t one or the other, I
wasn’t Texan or Mexican, I was El Pasoan. I didn’t speak English or Spanish, I spoke Spanglish.
I was always in the middle, always in the borderland.
Every experience I have had since the moment I graduated high school and left home has
been compared to this borderland existence. My own borderland subjectivity and border identity
has influenced every experience I’ve had in my adult life. Interactions that I’ve had with
healthcare professionals, experiences that I’ve had in higher education, and even taking trips to
the grocery store are all compared against this backdrop of my border epistemology. As I’ve
gone through higher education and graduate school, my epistemological stance has shifted to one
that is more critical and focused on liberation. I now refer to myself as a Chicana feminist and
use this alongside a borderland subjectivity in my professional and personal interactions.
Cultural Choques and Healing in Higher Education
Like Gloria Anzaldúa, I was the first person in my family to leave the borderland. As the
first one to go away for college, I left with high hopes of becoming a doctor, something all the
Advanced Placement (AP) students aspired to be someday. One thing about being in AP math
and science courses in a Title I
14
school is that we were essentially given two options for career
paths: medicine or engineering. I took pre-engineering classes in high school like Drafting,
Physics, and Computer Science, but when I enrolled for my first year as a freshman in college, I
declared myself a biology/pre-med major. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why I made that
switch without hesitation, but looking back now, I know it is because I wanted a job that would
14
Title I schools have large concentrations of low-income students and receive federal funding supplements.
62
guarantee social mobility and prestige. I wanted to do my familia proud and be someone who
could make a difference in the community when I returned as a college graduate. We were
hardly told that we could make a difference in other jobs outside of medicine or engineering even
though I know differently now.
At a Predominantly white Institution (PWI) in a city in central Texas, I was an eight-hour
drive from home. I did not have a car. I did not have any income. I was a full-time student with a
full scholarship expected to excel in school because it was what I had always done. But the tolls
that homesickness, loneliness, and racial microaggressions took on me were enough for me to
fail a class for the first time in my life: biology. I created a story in my head ㅡ likely inspired by
imposter syndrome, though I did not have that language at the time ㅡ that I was not as good of a
student compared to my classmates because I did not come from a privileged family. I thought
wealth and driving BMW’s meant instant success in college because of access to tutoring and
resources that I did not have. Growing up in a Bordertown bubble where everyone was similar to
me meant that this was my first time being truly othered by my peers. And without a safety net, I
decided to return home. The shame I felt in returning home was more tolerable than the agony of
the cultural choques (Anzaldúa, 1987) and spirit murdering (Williams, 1987) of staying.
I enrolled at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) with the support of my family
and friends. I did not call it a Hispanic-serving institution at the time, but I would have
understood what that meant had someone used the term back then. When I was attending classes
at UTEP, there was no choque even though college coursework was rigorous and challenging.
There was collaboration among peers and faculty. There was the same Spanglish I spoke at home
spoken on campus and even by some of my professors. When I changed my major to
communication studies, my professors encouraged me to write articles and stories about border
63
life. I interviewed pecan farmers in San Elizario about the impact of the border wall on their
yield and production. I felt whole. I had permission to be my authentic self and did not have to
compartmentalize elements of my identity just to avoid being microaggressed. At UTEP, I got to
explore my creative side as well as my intellectual side. I took ballet and Chicano studies,
drawing and political science. It was accepted and encouraged to do both/and as opposed to
either/or. I got to be me again, and it was everything I needed to restore faith in myself and in the
institution of higher education.
Years later, after teaching 6th grade English in a Title I, predominantly Latino school in
San Antonio, Texas, I decided to attend graduate school. I enrolled at the University of Texas at
San Antonio (UTSA), another HSI. Once again, my classes were a space that felt like home.
Even though I was surrounded by more white peers and faculty at UTSA, the prevalence of
Latinidad and cultura on campus once again created conditions where I could thrive. I was
mentored by Chicana faculty who encouraged me to apply to Ph.D. programs, I made friends that
were motivated by social justice for Latinx students, and I was surrounded by models of Latinx
leadership from the university’s president, Ricardo Romo, to the mayor of San Antonio, Julián
Castro.
Now, as an education researcher, I engage with the HSI community to understand the role
these institutions play in educating Latinx students. In previous research, my interactions with
the HSI community were focused on interrogating how faculty hiring practices should be shaped
by the students they intend to serve. From 2016 to 2018, I engaged in participatory action
research intent on enacting organizational change with faculty and administrators at HSIs in
California. This work was deeply personal. In addition to having a lens into how faculty and
administrators at HSIs implemented policies meant for their Latinx students, I recalled the roles
64
that being taught by Latinx faculty played in my development as a scholar. In truth, my
dedication to this research is to improve outcomes for Latinx students but in a way that holds
colleges and universities ㅡ places that were designed to maintain whiteness and separation ㅡ
accountable to Latinx students and communities.
The aspects of my border identity combined with these experiences of choque at a PWI
and healing at an HSI led to my interests understanding the essence of HSIs. I purposefully
designed this study to document the good taking place at HSIs that other universities could
benefit from. HSIs, for me, were a space of healing, renewal, hope, and thriving; I would implore
universities to consider ways they could see themselves as such for racially minoritized students.
Suspending Judgment to Get To The Things Themselves
To fully engage in the phenomenological reduction, I return here to the questions
modified from Salis Reyes (2016, 2019). How do my experiences and assumptions impact my
view of hiring at HSIs? How have they helped me get to a conceptualization of HSI
consciousness? What are the ways in which they raise challenges for my ability to suspend
judgment? And lastly, how have I attempted to work through these challenges? Initially, this
study design and research questions were informed by my experiences and assumptions. The
case I made for sampling was heavily influenced by my own observations of faculty
demographics at a border HSI and metropolitan HSI. Having been mentored by Chicana and
Latina faculty who role modeled leadership and encouraged me to pursue academia, I want to
contribute to a conversation within higher education researchers about the urgent necessity of
diversity in faculty. This sense of urgency on my part might result in heightened judgment and
criticism of the policies and procedures at my study sites and among the behaviors of my
participants.
65
These experiences and assumptions impact my view of hiring at HSIs tremendously and
it would be untrue to say that I can completely remove them from my consciousness in order to
conduct a phenomenological study. Since the beginning of my journey conducting research, I’ve
been weary of accusations of me-search
15
; however, I recognize that it is precisely my
experiences and assumptions that lead me to pose the research questions and investigate this
phenomena in this particular way. To make claims of neutrality through a phenomenological
reduction and to bracket my self “promotes not only blindness to our complexity as
multiplicitous selves but also a dangerous fragmentation of our selves,” (Ortega, 2016, p. 77). In
recognition of my multiplicitous identity, I come to this conversation with the self-awareness of
my role as a researcher in the co-construction of knowledge.
Beyond that, taking a Latina/Chicana feminist phenomenology approach, I am also
drawing awareness to my state of inhabiting borderlands (symbolic, ideological, and physical),
having a new mestiza and nepantla consciousness (Anzaldúa, 1987, 2000) as well as a
differential consciousness (Sandoval, 1995). Within this recognition, I am able to situate this
study and myself within specific histories and relations of power. According to Ortega (2016),
the ability to negotiate different identities and social locations in different contexts allows a
flexibility that “opposes the fixity of traditional conceptions of selfhood,” (p. 74). Because of my
understanding of HSIs and borderlands from both personal and conceptual frames, the awareness
of my experiences enable me to get to a conceptualization of HSI consciousness that is holistic
and capturing of a phenomenological essence.
15
A term used in academic circles meant to cause judgment of racially minoritized scholars who conduct research
on their own communities. This term invalidates the important work being done by scholars of color on topics/areas
of study which have importance to them.
66
Recognizing that I have a unique perspective to contribute to this scholarship, the
presumptions I carry because of my experiences pose a challenge to my ability to suspend
judgment entirely. Having expectations of faculty hiring based on my previous experience
working with faculty around this very issue requires checking-in and reflecting on my
positionality and beliefs regularly. In every step of the research process from the designing of
protocols to sampling participants to analysis of their narratives, I engaged in reflection and
memoing to constantly question my unconscious capacities. In addition, when interviewing
participants I aimed to limit my assumptions of what I thought I knew about hiring or the
institutional process and allowed the participants to educate me on their lived experience with
this phenomenon. Allowing this lived experience to emerge was key; I wanted to know their
experiences with faculty hiring informed by their social identities, social location, roles, titles,
and more. Coming to each interview in such a way as it would allow the participant to open
themselves to me in this way was an important and intentional consideration I made to stay close
to the task of uncovering the essence of hiring at HSIs.
Although I could not completely bracket myself for the phenomenological reduction
process, I aimed for fidelity of the analytic process in order to suspend judgment as much as
possible. In doing so, I stayed true to the steps of phenomenological analysis: (1) reading the
interview in its entirety for a sense of the whole; (2) differentiating the description into meaning
units; (3) reflecting on the psychological significance of each meaning unit; and (4) clarifying the
psychological structure(s) of the phenomenon (Giorgi, 2009). Keeping these steps in this order
central to the analysis was a concrete way that I could refer back to reflecting on how to suspend
my beliefs and presumptions. Additionally, the inherent objective of phenomenological analysis
67
which states to refrain from making generalizations about a phenomenon or a population were
helpful reminders to bracket out my assumptions about what I anticipated from the data.
Lastly, it is because of my identity as a Chicana scholar and spirituality that I embody a
commitment to the teaching of the Toltec through Don Miguel Ruiz’s (2013) The Four
Agreements: (1) be impeccable with your word; (2) don’t take anything personally; (3) don’t
make assumptions; and (4) always do your best. Although not a scholarly text, my spiritual
connection to this ancestral knowledge plays out in my approach to research. I have internalized
the four agreements for some time now and because of these agreements, I was able to bracket
my assumptions and feelings for the purpose of achieving personal freedom and happiness; this
also served my process of the phenomenological reduction.
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Chapter 6: An Environmental Description of Cases and Findings
According to Schein’s (2010) articulations of organizational culture, the levels of culture
range from the tangible and overt manifestations that are visible to outsiders to the deeply
embedded, taken-for-granted, and unconscious assumptions. In this chapter, I introduce two case
studies: Metropolitan Hispanic-serving Institution (MHSI) and Border Hispanic-serving
Institution (BHSI). I answer Research Question 1 (How does faculty hiring create and reflect the
organizational culture at HSIs?) by illustrating some of the overt, observable aspects of the
organizational culture as observed by my time on campus as well as some of the covert
manifestations of culture as described by participants. I use data from my own observations and
reflections of the physical campus environment, documents that outline policies and procedures
related to faculty hiring, and interview data about the organization to piece together an
understanding of MHSI’s institutional context. Finally, I compare the two cases and integrate the
findings with my theoretical framework.
Understanding organizational culture requires a deep look at the structure of an
organization as well as how individual actors within the organization orient themselves in time
and space (Schein, 2010). Outsiders or new members gather the overt manifestations of culture,
or artifacts, by taking in what they see, hear, and feel. Artifacts include the visible products such
as the architecture, the physical environment, language, technology, art, style, emotional
displays, published documents like charters or creeds, and observable rituals and ceremonies
(Schein, 2010). Here, I examine artifacts I witnessed, heard, and felt during my time on campus.
In this chapter I lay the foundation for the case studies by providing institutional context from
formal documents, observations of physical space, and participant accounts for how the
university is organized.
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Case Study 1: Metropolitan Hispanic-serving Institution (MHSI)
Metropolitan Hispanic-serving Institution is located in southern California in a densely
populated and culturally diverse metropolitan area in a large urban county. It is located in the
city of Ceres
16
about 30 miles outside of the city of La Gloria
17
. Its proximity to La Gloria, a
large urban city, allow Ceres to be informed by the urban lifestyle but with the feel of a small
suburban city. The population is about 150,000 for the city of Ceres in a county of about 10
million residents. This metropolitan area is characterized by multicultural diversity but does
boast a strong Latinx demographic.
Observable Aspects of Organizational Culture
On my first trip to campus, I met with Rosemary, the staff member in the Employee
Diversity Office (EDO) to check-in about my project. She told me in advance of my visit that
finding parking on-campus would be a challenge. With this knowledge, I decided to arrive for
our meeting early to avoid beginning our conversation in a state of perspired frustration. Driving
in, I noticed the names of the streets on campus were all in Spanish. I thought what this linguistic
representation must have meant for Latinx students in relation to the Hispanic-serving identity. I
took this as a sign that I would find a strong HSI presence on campus. The dewy September
morning was still as I strolled through campus from the outermost parking lot with students
walking to get to their first class of the day. To get to our meeting place at the campus coffee
shop, I passed the soccer fields and tennis courts, dorms with Spanish names, and the recreation
center. I noticed a swarm of students huddled close to the entrance of the English Language
Institute building speaking a language unfamiliar to me. All around me, the nature and the
16
Pseudonym.
17
Pseudonym.
70
landscape created a quiet stillness. I finally made my way to the campus coffee shop where a
group of students all wearing hijabs were outside selling donuts for a student organization. They
asked me if I wanted to buy one and I politely declined. After my meeting with Rosemary, I took
myself on a walking tour of the surrounding area. I paused at the Japanese meditation garden and
suddenly I was transported – the sound of birds and the water from the Koi pond made me feel
like I was about to enter a Japanese temple. I took it all in looking for signs of the Hispanic-
serving identity. Other than the Spanish naming of streets and dorms, any other physical
manifestations of an HSI consciousness were difficult to find.
Organizational Conversations about HSI Designation Highlight Diversity. I was
reminded of my experience observing students on campus when one participant from my study
later told me during our interview that MHSI prided themselves on being one of the most diverse
campuses in the country. When describing the campus to me, Claire, associate professor in the
social sciences, said
If you look at our numbers, we’re not just a Hispanic-serving institution. In addition to
serving a large population of Hispanic students, we also have other…we also serve
students from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds… We have more representation
compared to [other nearby campuses]. With that said, we do have a fairly low percentage
of African American students… I’ve heard from my own students that as an African
American student, they feel a lot of times they’re left out of the conversation because
people talk about the Hispanic students, they talk about Asian students because a lot of
them are in engineering [and] business. I think [our African American students] just feel
they’re left out of the conversation. Not only do we want to focus on just out Hispanic
71
students, we also want to make sure that we are fulfilling the needs of our other students
as well.
Much like the metropolitan area in which they live, students at MHSI represent a plurality of
backgrounds, language, nationalities, and cultures. This explained my first visit to campus where
I witnessed multiple ethnicities and cultures represented in the landscape and population.
Reflecting on what Claire shared, I recognized that what I saw that first day on campus was in
fact something representing multicultural diversity and not so much a Latinx-dominant
environment. Similarly, another faculty member, Bob, shared that in spite of the HSI
designation, MHSI was focused on inclusion for African American students. Bob said
[The university is] more concerned with the African Americans because we have a
smaller proportion of African Americans here. So there’s been… if you look at the
signs
18
driving in, there’s a couple African American people to sort of set that tone that,
yes, we’re a friendly place here. And people have talked about that… how African
Americans felt more comfortable at other state schools than MHSI… And then somebody
said that they’ve been repeating that story for 20 years…But still, I sort of think that we
have relatively few African Americans so they’re more push towards that. And as far as
the Hispanics go, I think they just kind of blend in with everybody else.
What Bob and Claire shared about how the campus saw themselves as an HSI was a common
theme across interviews. Even when Jane, professor in the sciences, described an HSI grant that
a colleague applied for, she was quick to tell me that it’s not just for her Hispanic students:
18
By “signs” Bob meant the banners hung on campus especially outdoors that promoted a campaign highlighting
first-generation college students, faculty, staff, and administrators at MHSI. The posters and signs used the heading
“I am first” to highlight success stories of the MHSI community members.
72
Right now, one of our newer faculty members just finished an HSI grant… and it’s a
training grant. So, the idea is to train students who are Hispanic primarily. They don’t all
have to be Hispanic, but that’s the focus because it’s an HSI grant through USDA, so it’s
a federal grant.
Through these brief snapshots, faculty clued me in to insider information about how the campus
externally articulated their HSI identity. In sharing with me their own observations about the way
the HSI identity manifests on campus, it was evident that the ongoing organizational
conversation among members was one focused on inclusion of all students.
Faculty Hiring Policy. Another observable aspect of organizational culture according to
Schein (1990) is revealed by artifacts such as organizational documents. In this study of
organizational culture, I reviewed the artifact of MHSI’s faculty hiring policy. Faculty search
committee members at MHSI relied on the Faculty Recruitment Handbook (FRH) to help orient
themselves when getting a tenure track faculty line filled. This 102-page document covered
everything from the roles and responsibilities of people involved in the search process, to
information on bias and assumptions that shape the review process. For example, the section on
bias includes empirical research to support the claim that people engaging in decision-making
use their own individual experiences and cultural histories to inform their decisions. The FRH
also includes a section providing practices to enable equity during the review process. One
example of these practices states that each candidate should be evaluated based on the entire
application without relying too heavily on letters of recommendation or the prestige of degree-
granting institution. Overall, the FRH is a thorough document that serves as both resource for
hiring committees and an artifact oriented toward equity and diversity.
73
The process of hiring at MHSI is outlined as seven steps that I summarized in Figure 4.
Each of the seven steps articulates several sub-steps, lists forms required, describes policies
about record-keeping, and describes approval processes. For example, included in the
articulation of step V of the process are five separate approvals required by the dean, department
chair, EDO, faculty affairs, and affirmative action compliance team. Each approval step requires
a different format either via memo, in-person meeting, or specific form. Although the steps are
many, the level of detail provided in the FRH ensures that search committee members know
exactly how they are expected to navigate the process; there is no room for error.
Figure 4
Metropolitan HSI Faculty Hiring Process
However, given the number of checkpoints, approvals, and mandatory trainings required
to advance through the process, a few faculty search chairs expressed frustration with the extra
surveillance and time it required. For example, Claire perceived that the policies added to their
workload but had not changed much about the ways they were doing hiring. Claire said “other
Set up
committee &
roles
Establish the
position
Prepare the
search
Recruit
diverse pool
Search
process
Appointment
process
Complete
search and
close files
74
than filling out more paperwork to show that we’re doing what we’re doing [the FRH] hasn’t
really affected our department much because we’ve always been inclusive and promoted
diversity.” In a different department, Bob shared that his department has been late to get the
candidates they wanted because of all the rule-following. He told me:
I do everything possible to follow the guidelines. To follow the guidelines takes time,
sometimes... It’s a race. So, in the past, we’ve been late because I’ve been following all
these little rules and stuff like that. So, the point is there that trying to follow the rules
takes time. And that causes problems when it comes to recruitment, especially in [my
field].
Bob shared that following the guidelines caused a ripple effect in which they had been late to
extend invitations for interviews or even job offers to their preferred candidates. Marcos
similarly shared that MHSI and his department were already doing great in terms of faculty
diversity and these mandates and policies go too far. Marcos said:
I was one in six Ph.D’s [who were] Latino, U.S. Latinos [in my field] when I graduated.
One in six, so I’m fighting the same fight [administrators] are, but I think the optics in it
are kind of going too far. The ones where I go, “You guys are talking to us like we’re a
bunch of Confederates here, okay? Look at our department. We’re very diverse and
overall, we’re already doing a great job here.” So we’re beating a bunch of [dead] horses
that are already doing great things [in terms of hiring diversely].
The analogy of beating a bunch of dead horses shared by Marcos illustrates that he thought
faculty were mostly already doing the work of hiring with diversity in mind—that
institutionalizing it in process was an unnecessary burden. Throughout the interview, he
referenced the fact that there were so little candidates of color in the pipeline in his field and
75
explained that he was already attending conferences specifically for racially minoritized people
in his field for recruitment purposes. The stories shared by Marcos, Bob, and Claire’s
demonstrated that although they were in agreement with MHSI’s emphasis on hiring equity,
diversity, and inclusion in hiring, the amount of time required to meet various benchmarks
caused challenges for the search itself.
What MHSI’s institutional context revealed is a broad emphasis on diversity that is
written into the FRH and – at least members believed—is embedded within the campus
environment. The HSI status did not seem to meaningfully pervade the structure of the process of
hiring or appear to be noticeable in campus life overall. MHSI administrators also emphasized
accountability structures to ensure that all organizational members were operating with equity,
diversity, and inclusion in mind. Faculty search committee members expressed that the many
accountability methods in place sometimes delayed the process of hiring new faculty. The
institutional context presented for the next case study reveals a vastly different approach to
structuring a priority on diversity in hiring.
Case Study 2: Border Hispanic-serving Institution (BHSI)
Observable Aspects of Organizational Culture
Border Hispanic-serving Institution (BHSI) is located in the southwest region of the
United States along the border with Mexico. It is a campus that is often referred to as being bi-
cultural and bi-national because of its borderland location. During my visit to BHSI in November
2019, my very first interview was with Viktor, a professor whose office was in a brand-new
building; this building is not yet visible on Google maps. Navigating to his office on the
southwest side of campus, I recognized that this new building had a skybridge a few stories up
connected to a parking garage. Following the interview, I decided to walk on the skybridge to
76
survey the campus from above and get some fresh air. The sky was cloudy and dark for it being
the early afternoon. I snapped some photos on my smartphone to capture the beauty of the
architecture and landscape as commuting students whisked by me to get to class. West of the
parking garage was a parking lot next to the freeway. And west of the freeway is Mexico. In that
moment, I sent the photo to my advisor so that she too could share in the excitement I felt being
there. I am aware of, and often reflect on, the fact that my positive experience growing up along
and attending an HSI on the border could mean that I romanticize the border.
Organizational Conversations about Community. BHSI is located in the city of
Girasol
19
which borders the Mexican city of Rodriguez
20
. Often in interviews when describing
the students and the culture on campus, the surrounding community of Girasol was mentioned.
The faculty members I interviewed, all senior faculty, represented decades of experiences and
interactions in Girasol. Even for faculty members, like Viktor – professor in the sciences - that
relocated to Girasol from across the world, Girasol was home.
Girasol is a city of approximately 600,000 residents, however, taking into account the
international metroplex including people that live across the border and work in the U.S., the
population is closer to 2.5 million borderplex residents. In 2017, nearly 85% of residents
identified as Hispanic/Latino. In my time conducting research on campus, it was clear that the
demographic makeup of the city as primarily Mexican and Mexican-American was a major
aspect of the organizational culture and campus life. Laura, a professor in the social sciences,
told me that on campus, however, faculty members hail from a variety of Spanish-speaking
countries in addition to Mexico. Laura said:
19
Pseudonym.
20
Pseudonym.
77
So, I think that there has been a pretty big effort to hire Latina, Latino faculty. I wouldn’t
say necessarily Mexican, Mexican-American faculty, but a lot of the professors are from
South America, Latin America, also from Girasol, also from Mexico, so there’s a pretty
big range. There’s been a pretty concerted effort to do that. I think one of the facts that’s
interesting to me is that a lot of schools are now hiring officers like diversity, equity and
inclusion officers or deans, associate deans to promote that. We don’t do that at BHSI, in
part, I think because we’ve been committed to hiring folks who represent our student
body, or at least somewhat represent our student body.
While sharing that BHSI was intrinsically committed to hiring Latinx faculty because of the
demographics of the city, she expressed that BHSI does not structurally house administrative
positions focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The organizational focus to support the
students attending BHSI is also internalized by individuals who serve on search committees. In
the cases of faculty hiring, the hiring handbook as well as the equal opportunity office provide
structures of support to faculty members who describe themselves as already doing the work.
Faculty Hiring Policies. BHSI’s faculty hiring policy is outlined in a document titled the
Faculty Search & Selection Handbook (abbreviated here as FSSH). The FSSH is issued by the
equal opportunity office (EOO) which was mentioned in several of the interviews with faculty
search chairs. This nearly 60-page document begins by framing the importance of diversity. It
states that diversity creates and improves upon innovation and excellence while remaining
accessible and safe for students. Following this information about the importance of diversity,
the FSSH outlines some strategies that a search committee should take to increase diversity of
candidates. Out of a list of 15 potential strategies, it is expected that search committees will
commit to five of these strategies. Some examples are recruiting via personal contact with
78
colleagues, using social media, targeting publications with minority audiences, and requesting
nominations from targeted universities like MSIs. The FSSH also outlines the roles and
responsibilities of everyone on the search committee including the process of recruiting and
hiring. I provide a summary of the process for hiring faculty in Figure 5.
Figure 5
BHSI Faculty Hiring Process
Each step in the process of faculty recruitment and selection is overseen by either the
dean, the EEO, the department chair or the provost. After the outlining of the process of hiring,
the FSSH provides tips, strategies, and numbers of people from human resources to contact for
each step of the process; these tips account for about 75% of the FSSH. The FSSH however has
no mention of trainings or workshops intended to support search committee members or chairs.
Sky, professor in the sciences, told me:
Really, I had no training and I did a lot wrong on that first committee… I never got
training. I really do think that they should [train search committee members]. I think we
do just mentor each other internally. Somebody who is the [search] chair can get
mentored by the previous chair. My second committee that I chaired was a lot easier for
me because I knew the game. I knew what needed to happen. Right, so it was a lot easier,
Build &
Certify
pool
Shortlist
candidates
Approve
phone/Skype
interview list
Approve finalists
Recommendation
for hire
79
my second one. The first one was rough and I made a lot of mistakes. I goofed and things
got delayed and it was just, that was on me. I didn’t know what I was doing.
As Sky pointed out, this lack of formal training for search committee members, particularly
search chairs, meant that he made several mistakes during his first time as chair. He also stated
that faculty mentor each other on how to be search chairs, which gives the departments
autonomy with how they navigate the faculty hiring procedures. This autonomy, however, can
give way to ambiguities, inconsistencies and biases in the process. Sky later shared with me that
he thought the process did not contribute to any disagreement. He said:
Everybody [on the search committee] was just in agreement, so they definitely helped
suggest some paces [to post the job ad]. “Hey, here’s a good place. Here’s a good place.”
We did that. There was never any friction or disagreement there. [The committee
members] were quite helpful. I do know that every step of the way we are always having
to run, if we were to make some kind of announcement, it would have to go through…
the equal opportunity office… Literally everything had to go through that and each step
of the way, like we would get a pool of candidates, they’d have to review it. Then we
would go for a phone interview and they’d have to review the pool of candidates for the
phone interview. If it wasn’t diverse enough or whatever, they’d get back to us. There
was one time where they came back to us and said, “your pool is not diverse enough.”
But they couldn’t tell us what wasn’t diverse about it. We just had to put more candidates
in the pool, and so they were okay with it.
According to Sky, the process of approving the diversity of the pool was opaque given that the
EOO did not give additional information about the pool of candidates. Sky was one of the few
faculty search chairs that described a back-and-forth with EOO. Most search chairs I interviewed
80
said that their pools were already diverse and they did not have to change anything. This could
be because of what Laura described as hiring diversely being “infused in the culture of BHSI.”
Each department said they considered student feedback during a teaching demonstration.
Though some department chairs shared a more formal process with students involving one-on-
one meetings and feedback forms, all departments found that their observations of how finalists
interacted with student was a key evaluative measure. Specifically, Viktor said:
In our department, we found it very important that [candidates] interact with students or
we did have a sample class to teach the demonstration. Before we set up the
demonstration class, we do have the conversation with them that it’s important for us to
see how they interact with our students and we do remind them that we have a unique
student population and we want to see how they interact with students… So applicants
who come to the finalist stage are very clear about what institution they are coming to
because they do have not only a visit and face-to-face meeting with us, the future
colleagues, and our lab space and so forth… they do meet with the students as well.
At another point in the interview, Viktor shared that by time of the on-campus interview,
candidates will have heard several times about the Hispanic-serving identity and the border
context. Viktor said:
In [the final] interview, and this is standard protocol, the interview starts with the search
committee chair, in this case me, reading a five-to-ten minute pre-prepared description of
the university, the college, the department, and even the city… if they go onto our
website, it’s heavily present and this is perhaps the third time that the applicant is hearing
from us that we are a Hispanic-serving institution. We are a border community, we have
a unique geographic location, a unique student population and all these variety of aspects.
81
To faculty search chairs, their responsibility to their students was to hire faculty members that
would understand the unique student population, the unique geographic location, and the border
community.
Comparing Cases
In comparing the two institutional contexts in which these case studies exist, faculty at
both campuses conveyed the importance of serving the population of students within a specific
geographic boundary. At MHSI, the diverse metropolitan area was used to convey the
importance of inclusivity and diversity for all students. At BHSI, the bicultural and binational
border context was often described as unique. These two cases also convey a reliance on
bureaucratic protocols to ensure compliance in the hiring process. I reviewed each campus’
hiring policy (the FRH and FSSH) as artifacts in an effort to understand more about each case. I
found that although they both relied on their respective hiring manuals, MHSI’s hiring policy
highlighted specificity and managerial structures to ensure compliance and consistency across
departments. In contrast, BHSI’s hiring policy was procedural in nature serving mostly as a
checklist of the process. The simplicity of BHSI’s FSSH revealed ambiguities in the process. At
MHSI, the heavy managerial hand overseeing the hiring process in the FRH created extra
paperwork for faculty members that were already committed to diversity and inclusion. In the
next section, I build on these findings to illustrate how internal aspects of organizational culture
inform faculty hiring. I then describe how I used the findings to develop a framework of HSI
consciousness.
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Chapter 7: Uncovering HSI Organizational Cultural and Consciousness Through Faculty
Hiring
In designing this study, my intent was to learn about HSI consciousness as it is revealed
by faculty hiring at HSIs. In this chapter, my expected outcome is twofold: 1) document how
internal, individually interpreted elements of organizational culture inform faculty hiring
(Research Question 1b) and 2) to draw out the essence of HSI consciousness and how it informs
the hiring process (Research Question 2). I will illuminate three key dimensions of HSI
consciousness that are revealed in both case studies. Like Anzaldúa whose writing was guided by
the Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui, la luna, to light the dark places, I too use “writing as a process
of discovery and perception that produces knowledge and conocimiento (insight),” (Anzaldúa,
2015, p. 1). The process of obtaining conocimiento of this study is also guided by van Manen’s
method of uncovering themes through phenomenological analysis. According to van Manen
(1990), phenomenological themes are not generalizations but rather “are the stars that make up
the universes of meaning we live through. By the light of these themes we can navigate and
explore such universes,” (p. 90). Therefore, it is by guidance of la luna through writing that I can
see the stars.
This chapter is organized into two sections. In the first section, I present a set of themes
for each of the two cases that emerged from interviews about faculty hiring. In the second
section, I describe a framework of HSI consciousness informed by the themes of the two case
studies. The presentation of the cases is organized by the universes of meaning, or themes,
present in each case that I gathered from an analysis of interview transcripts. These themes are
for MHSI: an active and ongoing commitment to diversity; collective prioritization of good
teaching; and values focused on student success. At BHSI, the themes are a commitment to
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serving the region; prioritization of Latinx student mentoring and research; and valuing and
adding value to Latinx student experiences.
Case Study 1: MHSI Faculty Hiring and Organizational Culture
As a campus located in the desirable locale of Southern California, MHSI was often
described as having no shortage of applicants to fill their faculty tenure track positions. However,
many faculty members lamented that the makeup of tenure track professors on campus did not
represent what they described as the multicultural diversity of the student body. Most of the
faculty expressed concern for a need to have more Latinx faculty because of their HSI status, but
overall, they touted multicultural diversity as the goal to which they were striving. David,
professor in the social sciences, summed up the motivations of diversity at MHSI by outlining
three primary arguments. The first argument for diversity he said is the notion of access and
fairness. “That you’re looking at a full population of qualified individuals and providing access
to people that ought to receive access and that’s the only fair way to do it.” A second argument,
he describes is for role models for students. “We found that to be incredibly important; that
students want to see faculty that in some ways, at least some of the faculty look like them, sound
like them.” The third argument, he describes, is for diversity in points of view that can contribute
to a robust dialogue. Put in simpler terms, Camila, professor in social sciences, stated that her
diverse students would rather not be taught by “just a bunch of White people.” Expressing a
similar sentiment, Karen, associate professor in humanities, shared with me that her students
come from a plurality of experiences and having representation among their professors is
important. At MHSI, these conversations about representation or access came in the form of
describing the importance of diversity.
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Active and Ongoing Commitment to Diversity
Diversity was mentioned as being a part of the current demographics of the students, the
faculty in some departments, the administration, and a goal that they were continually striving
toward in their hiring. And although some expressed disconnects between faculty and
administrator cultures, the commitments on part of the administration provide tangible support
toward this goal in several ways. When asked about the organizational culture of MHSI, one
faculty member said, “it’s very fragmented and not in a good way.” This faculty member went
on to say that fragmentation “is obviously not unitary” and that “there’s a lot of fragmented
culture within different [disciplinary] subgroups.” Another faculty member stated that “the
[administrator] culture is so transcending that [the organization] becomes the corporate culture.”
And another faculty member said that although MHSI is often considered a teaching university,
“what [they] really specialize in is administration.” What was described as a top-down approach
and “heavy hand” from administration to implement initiatives was seen by a few faculty
members as being in direct contrast to the actual mission around student success. Despite these
interpretations of organizational culture expressing a heavy administrative hand, the steps taken
by administration to ensure diversity
21
are demonstrative of a structure intended to create
accountability for increasing diversity.
The most tangible of these commitments is the existence of an office responsible for
overseeing the faculty hiring process from committee training and crafting the job announcement
to making the official offer and signing the contract. The structure of this office and the policies
enforced by the campus administration are dedicated to ensuring that diversity is a topic of
discussion at every stage of the hiring process. This organizational commitment to diversity is
21
These steps are further outlined in Chapter 6 on the institutional context of each case.
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demonstrated at MHSI in two primary ways: it is given attention by senior administration and it
is written into policies and structures.
Allocation of Resources Demonstrate Commitment to Diversity. Schein (2010)
explains that an organizational culture can be understood by focusing on how leaders allocate
resources. Specifically, when leaders create a budget, they reveal what is valuable to them, their
assumptions about worthy causes, and more broadly, their beliefs. At MHSI, the allocation of
resources focused on increasing diversity in the tenure track faculty ranks is an example of a
tangible commitment.
When discussing the importance of hiring diversely, participants often stated the
multicultural diversity of the student body as well as in the makeup of senior leadership. The
student demographics for MHSI are representative of the diverse metropolitan context in which
they are situated. In addition to being Latinx serving, MHSI has a large representation of Asian,
Pacific Islander, Desi American (APIDA) and Black/African American students. Claire stated
that “MHSI and the college [of social sciences] and the department very much pride ourselves in
being one of the most diverse campuses in California.” Even though faculty discussed the HSI
identity as being important to the university community, they more often described their students
as multicultural and diverse. Claire and her colleagues talked about MHSI being “not just a
Hispanic Serving Institution.”
In addition to diversity within the student body, participants described diversity amongst
the most senior leaders on campus. A Black/African American woman, Latina, and two
Black/African American men occupy the most senior cabinet positions
22
. Participants brought up
22
To preserve the anonymity of the site as well as of the individuals currently occupying these positions, the roles
are kept intentionally vague.
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the racially minoritized status of the university president and provost when conveying a
commitment to diversity indicating that the importance of diversity started in the most senior
positions. Jane explained:
The provost...is a [minoritized]
23
woman. She very much would like to see us hire more
Hispanic
24
faculty, and she’s right. I agree with her. It’s easier said than done, sometimes.
I would say the message we get from her is that she wants us to at least consider them…
Not just go into something with a mindset that we need this, but to broaden our view a
little bit about who would be acceptable and whether with some interaction, could
become an appropriate member of the department. And yes, she does bring up to us on a
regular basis that our faculty does not reflect our student body. And that is very
important.
In sharing that the provost identifies as a minoritized woman, Jane gave legitimacy to the call for
more Latinx faculty. Members of the cabinet signal to the university community the importance
of hiring diverse faculty by putting money and resources toward increasing diversity.
Faculty expressed that in addition to ongoing conversations on campus about the
importance of employee diversity, administration designates money in support of having
candidate pools be as diverse as possible. The money is to be spent for recruitment efforts such
as paying for job ads to be posted in certain journals or boards that will attract diverse
candidates, as well as for bringing candidates in for the on-campus interview. Charles, associate
professor in the sciences, shared:
23
To preserve the anonymity of the site as well as the provost, her racial/ethnic identity is kept intentionally vague.
24
From here on, some faculty use Hispanic/Latinx interchangeably while others have different meanings for them.
When appropriate to indicate a difference between Hispanic and Latinx, I will do so with a footnote.
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Our recruitment package included all these things we’re going to do for recruiting. So, it
includes advertising in various venues and so that’s approved and then also funded
through the Inclusive Excellence funding… So that’s the university signaling… that
recruiting effort is as broad as possible.
The intent of broad recruiting at MHSI was to serve the purpose of building a diverse
pool of candidates. Although this Inclusive Excellence funding enabled search committees to be
intentional about advertising in journals and on job boards that promoted diversity, Bob found
that there were many venues for posting on job boards or message boards that did not cost
money. He explained that his department posted their job announcement in a subcategory
specific to women within their big national association. According to Bob, all they had “to do is
a little click, and click, and click, and post it there.” The university’s role in demonstrating
financial support for recruitment efforts made the case for actively seeking job boards that
attracted diverse candidates. He stated that it “had some small impact, but the cost was small, so
hey.” The university also signaled the importance of diversity by broadening the criteria to
access these pots of money for recruitment. For example, Jane described getting money from the
provost as well as the dean to attend national “diversity” meetings that served as opportunities
for recruitment. She explained that the department had to apply for additional funds and make
the case to the provost office why these national meetings could contribute to the building of
diverse candidate pools. Jane told me “We had to apply, they reviewed why we were going and it
was a meeting that several departments from the university went to, so it was no question.” This
was only one example of many shared with me where faculty search chairs requested more
money to bring in diverse finalists. In all cases, the money was given either by the EDO office,
the provost, or the department itself.
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Another way that administrators showed an outward commitment to diversity is in the
creation of an office exclusively dedicated to faculty recruitment with a focus on diversity.
Although faculty were unclear about how the Employee Diversity Office (EDO)
25
emerged, they
were clear about the role it served in monitoring progress toward faculty diversity. Charles
explained that:
...there was a priority on diversity and inclusion, particularly on the front end of the
recruiting process. In the search process with regard to recruiting, pools are not going to
be advanced [to the next stage] unless there is a big pool and there is representation. So, I
think that helped [encourage diversity].
The monitoring of diversity by the EDO, while appreciated by many of the participants of this
study, was also described as halting or impeding progress by requiring additional steps and
checkpoints in the search process. Nevertheless, at the very least, faculty members mostly agreed
that having the structure in place was better than at most other campuses in the state system. This
structural commitment to diversity was one way of administration putting their money to action;
policy, it turned out, was another means of demonstrated commitment.
Commitment to Diversity is Written into Policies and Structures. In addition to
putting money and resources into diversity efforts, MHSI also ensured that their commitment to
faculty diversity was tangible and written into institutional policies. Faculty participants had
clearly internalized this institutional commitment, for in our interviews they often referenced
policies and guiding principles outlined in the recruitment handbook that were designed to
promote diversity in the candidate pool and at every stage of evaluation. The guiding principles
outlined in the handbook are Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Placing these guiding principles
25
Pseudonym used to preserve anonymity.
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ahead of both the general rules and the outline of the process for hiring new faculty signaled that
diversity is a framework in which this work is situated.
Beyond policies communicated in the hiring handbook, faculty described other practices
enforced by the EDO that contributed to holding departments accountable for this work. Nearly
every participant from MHSI expressed that the EDO’s focus was on ensuring there was
diversity in the pool of candidates. While this is not an exclusive emphasis on hiring diverse
faculty, it provides faculty with the mechanisms for ensuring that they have diverse options from
which to choose. Like many of his colleagues, Bob stated that faculty were “under pressure to
have a very diverse applicant pool.” While I understood that these pressures were coming from
administrators, other faculty members described the process instead as accountability and
support from the EDO. Like all other faculty members from MHSI, Claire stated that “before we
can even look at the pool, it needs to be approved [by the EDO].” In addition to these structures
intended to ensure diversity in the pool of candidates, MHSI leaders held mandatory workshops
such as implicit bias trainings required of all search committee members. Camila shared that
everyone had to attend workshops where a faculty fellow “talked about things you can do to get
a more diverse pool.” One of these workshops is outlined in the handbook and was discussed as
part of the process in nearly every interview with search chairs. Admittedly, Karen said that
White faculty sometimes “get clubbed over the head with this [diversity] stuff… but you got to
do it..” The mandatory diversity and implicit bias trainings requires of search committee
members serve a deeper purpose in the mission of increasing diversity. Although some faculty
members might see additional trainings as time wasters, the search chairs in this study all agreed
they were necessary. Bob shared:
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[In hiring] there will be bias and you have to train them about their biases and how to
counteract these biases they have. But some of the white males react against that. They
get really violent. “I don’t have biases!” … I think [these trainings] maybe has backlash
in the opposite direction.
According to Bob’s statement, search committees have to be trained to minimize biases in
decision-making; however, he has seen his white male colleagues become “violent” about not
having biases. Faculty search chairs overall agreed that for mandatory implicit bias trainings, the
pros outweigh the cons.
Additionally, faculty members expressed that the direct implications of taking implicit
bias trainings were evidenced in the diversity of candidates, finalists, and among offers. Claire
shared:
We all have to take an implicit bias training. We try not to let [implicit bias] affect us. If
let’s say that they were two equally qualified… applicants and one was Caucasian or
Asian and the other was Hispanic, then we’re absolutely going to make an offer first to
the Hispanic person/Hispanic candidate. That’s actually what we did.
In Claire’s example, her committee took the trainings from the implicit bias workshop to heart
when they saw two equally qualified candidates and extended their offer to the Latinx individual.
The trainings, whether popular or not, were valued and important to members of search
committees. In addition to the implicit bias trainings, MHSI also had a policy in place where
each search committee had to have an Equity Liaison representing the voice of equity beyond
equal opportunity office responsibilities. The policy, outlined in the hiring handbook, does not
have limitations on who may serve in these roles nor does it define a particularly effective
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method for selecting these liaisons. According to Charles, someone volunteers for the role or is
elected. Charles said:
The first search I chaired, the equity liaison was a junior [faculty member]… there’s a
request for volunteers for [the equity liaison]. The committee elects… And then there’s
additional training that person goes to beyond the required training of all the committee
members.
For Charles, the role of the Equity Liaison being elected of based on volunteers is not out of the
ordinary; however, given that he said the person was a junior faculty member leads me to believe
that liaisons might be elected based on seniority. If this is the case, there are power dynamics that
are to be considered especially if it is at the expense of evaluating equitable practices.
Collective Prioritization of Good Teaching
Following discussion about what administrators on campus were visibly committed to,
faculty participants were asked what they prioritized in hiring. In addition to diversity, several
faculty members communicated that as a primarily teaching-focused institution, they prioritized
candidates who simply put were good teachers. When discussing the importance of teaching for
MHSI students, many participants used this as an opportunity to reflect on why they themselves
were passionate about teaching. For example, Camila shared “I like teaching here... It’s very
gratifying teaching here.” Charles referred to the faculty at MHSI as all having “the same view
about social responsibility and teaching” which resulted in wanting to do the best for the
students. Gabriel, professor in the humanities, stated that although MHSI is “a complex place to
work” he felt like the teaching he does “makes a bigger difference [at MHSI] than in more
privileged institutions.” In reflecting on their own approaches to teaching, faculty also expressed
a focus of their teaching is embedded in MHSI’s hand-on approach to learning. The hands-on
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learning method came up in nearly every interview as being a part of the university’s culture and
mission. Although Schein (2010) argues that missions are secondary mechanisms of transmitting
culture as they can sometimes be merely evidence of aspirational beliefs and values, the mission
of hands-on learning at MHSI is deeply embedded as a part of their cultural and organizational
identity. As a result, when describing what search members prioritized in hiring, they looked for
someone that was committed to or showed potential to be committed to the hands-on learning
mission. To many of the faculty in this study, this meant that new hires had to be exceptional
teachers, but also had to be passionate about research to be able to engage students in hands-on
learning. Marcos connected the teaching mission explicitly to the HSI identity when he stated “if
you didn’t believe what the meaning of student success is, how to teach in ways to bring about
[student success], maybe you have no business being at an HSI.” To Marcos and to many other
faculty in this study, good teaching was directly connected with the HSI mission of educating
Latinx students.
The faculty members I interviewed, representing different disciplines and departments,
each had their own approach to what they meant by hands-on learning. This emphasized that
although each department was committed to the hands-on learning method, the application
varied by discipline. Regardless of the application, they all conveyed that the hands-on learning
approach was a campus-wide commitment spanning across disciplines and departments. One
faculty member in the social sciences argued that there was a misunderstanding that nothing
outside of engineering or agriculture could employ a hands-on approach. He explained that
“English is [hands-on learning] too… [hands-on learning] is liberal arts,” when stating that the
entire campus is invested in this approach. Another faculty member suggested that the approach
to hands-on learning means investing in faculty that are not strictly advancing scholarly work but
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are committed to serving the local community of students. In practice, the dedication to hands-on
learning manifests as a prioritization of both teaching and research intended to advance student
success. Beyond their own practice, faculty demonstrated a thoughtfulness toward hiring new
faculty members that also prioritized teaching.
Prioritizing Teaching Students from Diverse Backgrounds. As previously stated,
when faculty participants discussed their students, they would often inform me that MHSI was a
multicultural campus. This meant that students represented diverse class backgrounds, diverse
racial realities, and diverse pathways to higher education. Faculty participants described MHSI
students as “salt of the earth,” primarily commuters, underrepresented, working-class, and
contributors to their families as opposed to merely classifying them by their racial or ethnic
identity. According to faculty, these diverse backgrounds and experiences helped make a case for
hiring new faculty members committed to racial and ethnic diversity and who prioritized good
teaching. Charles stated that one of the things committees look for in new faculty members is
“genuine people that were invested in the interests of the students.” Charles also shared that
faculty at MHSI do more service than other universities because they are “really interested in the
students that have such a diverse range of needs and issues and we’re constantly doing things.”
By “things” Charles was referring to the various activities associated with teaching a 4/4
teaching load using the hands-on philosophy which includes activities like grading, advising,
tutoring, and meeting with students regularly. Like Charles and Camila, Gabriel referred to the
priorities of teaching at MHSI as being aligned with teaching students from a diverse range of
racial and ethnic backgrounds. He outlined the required teaching work in a rubric his department
used to evaluate candidates, which directly privileged applicants experienced with diverse
populations. Gabriel told me:
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So, like you would get a score between zero and four. Zero would be no documented
experience teaching or working with diverse student populations. That’s a zero in the
student success/multicultural environment. A one would be vague expressions, irrelevant
experience, no specific examples. A two would be specific evidence of previous success
in teaching and working with diverse student populations. A three, extensive work life
experience working with diverse student populations, And four, publications or
leadership experience relevant to working with diverse populations.
Not every participant gave me a detailed run-through of their rubric, but Gabriel took pride in
their attention to the minutiae and said “we’re very good with rubrics.” Their disciplinary culture
in the humanities put a lot of emphasis on the use of rubrics in their evaluation of students so it
made sense that they put the same attention to evaluation of job candidates. On the one hand, his
department is heeding the advice and training from the implicit bias workshop, but other
departments might employ more loosely defined criteria when making decisions.
As with connecting a priority on teaching with their reflections on why they were
personally passionate about teaching, faculty linked the importance of candidates having
experience working with students from diverse backgrounds to examples from their own
experiences teaching at MHSI. For example, Karen shared:
These are our students, because we have elite colleges very close by... And I’ve taught
there. Yeah, those kids are great. I mean, they have all these resources, but there’s also
challenges to those kinds of jobs. And with the time I taught there, I just felt I have
nothing to offer these kids, they have everything, they don’t need me...Whereas here, I
feel I can relate to the students more; [we’re] of the same community and the same social
class. And I can help, I can actually do something for them, whether that be giving them
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advice, whether that be teaching them, whether that be just relating to them, pointing
them in the right direction...I just feel like my work actually has meaning here.
To Karen, her work at MHSI not only held more meaning because she shared an identity with
many of her students, but also demonstrated the way she, like other faculty, measured themselves
as good educators because of and not in spite of the unique diverse student population.
Another topic of discussion that often came up without any prompting on my part was the
state of faculty salaries. Faculty at MHSI were open with sharing that their campus could or
could not compete with other universities in the metro region. In these discussions about pay,
faculty conveyed that to work at MHSI, one could not be motivated by money alone. Rather,
candidates had to be intrinsically motivated and driven by the possibility of contributing to social
mobility or the development of students. Gabriel referred to his colleagues as “saints” that don’t
ask for much in return and “take on incredible service loads.” Similarly, Marcos told me:
A new faculty member has to buy in and accept the mission of the university, that part of
fulfilling people’s dreams. But on pure money alone, we just don’t compete. It turns out
that’s pretty good. That means we only get faculty that [believe in] the mission with their
heart. So, if somebody comes along and says, “Oh, I’m worth $120,000 because look at
all these papers I’ve published,” it’s very clear that like well, it’s not about publishing a
bunch of papers here. It’s about helping students get by and helping students succeed in
college. In our department, we do a great job and helping them succeed in careers which
is, to me, more important.
Marcos’ argument was that paying faculty less than competing universities ironically worked in
their favor because it meant that they only attracted people who were intrinsically supportive of
the mission. To Marcos, this desire to work at MHSI despite salary restrictions meant that
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faculty were committed to teaching and working with this student profile (i.e. Latinx, first-
generation, working-class, commuter).
Although it was the predominant pattern, not all departments explicitly said teaching
experience was their number one priority in hiring; rather, what mattered more in Jane’s
department was industry experience in addition to teaching. The combination of the two was
Jane explained as “golden” in the eyes of their search committees. In Jane’s department, the
hands-on learning, or applied learning method, is fundamental to their undergraduate and
graduate programs. She later explained that 50% of the student learning in her department is
done outside of a classroom and in the field. Jane said:
[P]eople who have industry experience who maybe worked in industry before, they went
back and got their Ph.D. or worked in industry while they were doing their masters or
something, they’re golden… I will say that people that have industry experience also
have experience with the Hispanic workforce. No question, that is just going to be the
case, and they may also be Hispanic [themselves]. [This field] is very Hispanic-oriented,
but we don’t have any faculty that are Hispanic. And part of it is because they haven’t
gotten to that point yet.
Having decades of industry experience herself, Jane explained the value of having industry
experience because of how it loaned itself to the hands-on learning philosophy and gave
candidates experience working with Latinx people on a regular basis. For Jane, candidates with
this industry experience would trump teaching experience because of the experience it would
mean working with the Latinx community.
Prioritizing Passion for Teaching. Faculty also expressed the importance of candidates
being passionate about both teaching and research. Like at most other universities, finalists who
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make it to the MHSI on-campus interviews are required to give a teaching demonstration. The
faculty I spoke to stressed the importance of this demonstration in seeing the candidate interact
with students in a classroom setting. Camila told me that in the most recent job search, the
committee was interested in figuring out what contributions the candidates could bring to the
department “especially in teaching.” Gabriel said that at MHSI, the expectations on teaching and
service are more than at other institutions where the faculty expectations are teaching at 40
percent, service at 40 percent, and research at 20 percent. David told me directly that when they
hire, they are “interested in individuals who are passionate about teaching and passionate about
research.” He communicated that compared to community colleges which are all about teaching
and PhD institutions which are research dominant, MHSI is a balance between the two.
What we’ll say very clearly is you cannot spend all your time teaching. So, if you think
you’re going to have a class with 10 papers and you give them all the chance to rewrite
the paper, it’s not happening. You’re not spending 30 hours on this class because you’re
teaching four classes. And if you’re thinking of research and doing X articles a year, it’s
not going to happen. But you can absolutely excel in the classroom, be very popular, and
also excel as a researcher and that research you’re bringing back into the classroom in a
couple of different ways. You’re bringing it back in terms of introducing material, being
up-to-date. You’re also bringing it back in terms of your confidence level because you’re
doing research and also your attention to detail, the way you think, even if you’re not
bringing specifically the research in class, the fact that you’re doing research is reflecting
in your teaching performance.
To David, conducting research has a positive impact on teaching related to confidence, detail,
and engagement. When evaluating candidates, he looks for that confidence and passion for
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research and teaching. Similarly, Charles argued that whenever a finalist leans more toward the
side of research, that person will be considered if they show passion toward teaching. Charles
explained:
We certainly have interviewed candidates that maybe are more research focused or this
kind of thing, but I think even if you’re more research focused, you still have to show
some passion and aptitude for teaching and awareness of the social responsibility.
What Charles shared reinforces David’s claim that new faculty hires have to be both strong in
teaching and research. Like Charles and David, Karen’s role supporting undergraduate students
through research means that she has to be a researcher and a teacher. Because of her striking this
balance as well as being impacted by the hands-on learning mission, Karen emphasized that
research was important for mentoring and teaching.
The emphasis on teaching was evident in some departments that require a teaching
statement in addition to the required student success statement. Marcos told me that his
department asks for the student success statement, teaching philosophy, and research statement.
He further explained that the committee reads each statement when deciding on the finalists but
that the student success statement is most important in the eyes of administration. At MHSI, this
requiring of multiple statements and philosophies simply reinforced the notion that teaching was
important at achieving student success. In the next theme, I break down the meaning of student
success.
Values Focused on Student Success
At MHSI, when faculty discussed the types of candidates they looked for to teach their
students, they often referenced the institutional cultural value on student success. Several faculty
members discussed that student success had different meanings to faculty compared to
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administrators. One participant described this difference as faculty being “more concerned with
what students learn in a classroom” whereas “administrators are more concerned about whether
they graduated.” Surely, these two definitions of student success are ultimately working toward
the same goal, but one is concerned with process and the other with product. David discussed
these differing concerns regarding student success:
The bottom line is it’s numerical and it has to do with how many students graduate. In
faculty, we argue yes, we want to see some more students graduate, but we do not want to
see classes being compromised. We do not want to see standards being lowered.
Administrators would be quick to say we’re not lowering standards, okay? We just want
to see more graduation rates. But ultimately at some point, the two come into clash.
Administrators, they’re being told [by the] chancellor’s office, whatever, increase the
graduation rates.
These differing interpretations of student success contribute to the fragmentation of cultures
described earlier. However, since faculty members make the call on who to hire, it is ultimately
their interpretation of student success that matters when evaluating applicants.
According to Schein (2010), how new members are evaluated and selected to be a part of
an organization demonstrates how organizational culture is transmitted and embedded. In the
case of MHSI, the actions demonstrated by search committee members in terms of their
evaluation of candidates were motivated by deep underlying assumptions and their espoused
values (Schein, 1990, 2010). These assumptions were informed by a taken-for-granted belief that
MHSI students have different educational needs than students at most other campuses and led to
a valuing of diversity in the form of diverse thought, diverse experiences, and diverse
racial/ethnic identity. Because of the campus-wide commitment to diversity and valuing of
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teaching that met the unique and diverse needs of the students, the tangible and observable
artifacts were shown to be embedded and transmitted throughout MHSI’s policies and structures.
This manifested in the ways that the faculty hiring policies articulated accountability measures
for ensuring the pool of candidates reflected the demographic make-up of the entire field or
discipline as well as mandatory search committee workshops intended to reduce and implicit bias
to increase equitable outcomes.
The aspect of student success is a cultural value embedded throughout the organizational
culture. It drives their strategic plan and everyday practice. Bob referred to it at the latest trend.
He told me:
The big thing now they’re talking about success, student success, which is good. But I
think the big push is towards graduation rates, higher graduation rates [equals] student
success. And one thing that bothers some of the faculty is this may be at the expense of
rigor. Everybody says things have gotten easier for the students… it just seems that way
to me, is that there is sort of a lowering of standards in order to increase graduation rates.
Although Bob said that his department has historically been one of the tougher majors, the
collective drive to increase graduation rates seemed at odds with how he measures student
success. The messaging that faculty members receive from administration is couched in language
that suggests graduating students is winning some competition. For example, Camila said:
I think the values that most faculty have are very much about student success and student
learning. So helping students learn and be successful in their classes, get their degrees
and go on to do something great. Where that overlaps with administration is they do have
these student success branding things, but sometimes that means things like if a student
has a minor and they finish all the requirements for the minor, they will automatically
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graduate them, kick them out. So, to [administration], student success means you
graduated, we got to put something in the win column.
According to Camila, Bob, and David student success is important to MHSI. The rest of the
faculty search chairs in this study would agree. In each interview, they described what student
success meant to their pedagogy and practice as well as what it meant to the whole of the
university. Gabriel summed up a different take on student success when he shared that it was
seen as a way of serving the state of California. He said “being able to make California work is
something people feel very passionate about, so the [state public university system] is an
important engine in making California work.” Whether faculty search chairs describe student
success as serving California, increasing rigor, improving graduation outcomes, or doing
something great with their education, they all have to evaluate a student success statement when
hiring new faculty. These differing articulations of student success could result in new faculty
hires that are mismatched with the cultural value of student success. Despite the contrasting
definitions of student success, Gabriel referred to the student success statement as being a “very
important discriminator” for search committees. The implications of this ambiguity in evaluative
measures might contribute to hiring new faculty that simply check certain boxes. Although each
department hires colleagues based on a department-level fit, this opacity of the value on student
success may present reasons why internally MHSI’s culture was described as fragmented.
Case Study 2: BHSI Faculty Hiring and Organizational Culture
At BHSI, the aspects of organizational culture that emerged from the interviews with
faculty about hiring are illustrated by three key components: first, faculty search chairs described
looking for candidates who shared a commitment to serving the region; second, they described
prioritizing Latinx research and mentoring; and third, they discussed valuing Latinx student
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experiences as well as adding value to their education. These components of their organizational
culture showed up in conversations both about their own experiences as faculty members at
BHSI and when discussing what they looked for in hiring new faculty. When describing their
experiences at BHSI, Sky and Alma spoke specifically about the roles they played in educating
and imagining the future of higher education. Sky said:
I think we see ourselves as, the Hispanic population in the U.S. is growing, and so we see
ourselves as having what we think the demographic will look like in the future. BHSI is...
a glimpse to the future, so if we do awesome, then we can say, our future’s going to look
a little bit different.
In believing that BHSI is a glimpse into what future demographics of college students will look
like, Sky sees his role as bigger than himself. The responsibility he and his colleagues have to
educate current BHSI students directly impact the sustainability of a future where Latinx
students lead higher education enrollment trends. Similarly, Alma, associate professor in the
humanities, expressed that her classroom represents a vision that her Chicano elder scholars had
for Latinx students. Alma told me:
I had two senior scholars visit my class once. They said “We wrote about this. We wrote
about one day this would be possible, and now you’re doing it. You switch back and forth
[between English and Spanish] in the classroom and they get you.”
These two imaginaries presented by BHSI faculty members begin to form a narrative of how
BHSI had been a beacon of social mobility and the advancement of higher education for Latinx.
Commitment to Serving the Region
Among the handful of four-year universities along the U.S./Mexico border, BHSI is one
of the most distinguished. BHSI is an important case study because it serves over 75% Latinx
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students, is a doctoral degree-granting research university, and is ranked in the top three each
year on measures evaluating the education and performance of Latinx students
26
. I chose to study
this campus because of its location on the border the noteworthy percentage of tenure/tenure
track Latinx faculty. BHSI has a unique institutional history as well as geographic context that
underlie the university’s mission and culture today. Namely, BHSI was founded as a university
to serve and be served by the local geographic region; more than just being a university intended
to educate the region, its initial curriculum was established as a school dedicated to advancing
the study of local natural resources. Over the past century, BHSI, much like the city in which the
school is located, has evolved to a changing context. Today, it is a top tier research institution
dedicated to providing access to an excellent education.
When prompted to discuss the mission and values of the university, all but two faculty
search chairs interviewed at BHSI explicitly described a commitment to serving “the region”;
and the two faculty that did not use the term “region” specifically, described the campus’
commitment to the surrounding community in their own terms. Lucia, associate professor in the
social sciences, told me that BHSI faculty are committed to serving students from the region just
as they are. Lucia said:
For me, the values that have been driving [BHSI’s] practice for 30 years … to work with
the community, to work with the students just as they come, right? I mean, we don’t want
to reach out to other students. We want to serve our region, serve our students here just as
they come and then support them so they can be successful. And I think we have done a
very good job on doing that.
26
These distinctions are kept intentionally vague to preserve anonymity of the site.
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According to Lucia, the commitment BHSI had to serving the region manifested in their practice
as supporting students to be successful. She also evaluated BHSI to express her belief that the
university has done well in supporting students and serving the region. Laura explained that the
reason why BHSI was committed to serving the region was because of a lack of access to higher
education in nearby cities. She shared:
About 60% or maybe 65% of our students receive Pell grants, and that’s a marker of low-
income status. And about 30% of our population in the city of Girasol
27
live below the
poverty line. So, that access and the HSI status is important. But I think to contrast this to
where I taught before in California, if you wanted to live at home in, let’s say you grew
up in Sandoval
28
, you could live at home and go to like probably 50 different
universities… Whereas in Girasol, your choices are Desert HSI or BHSI. And maybe if
you live [across the border in Mexico], like Universidad de Rodriguez
29
or whatever,
there’s not a lot of choices for people there.
These limited options for students mean that BHSI is serving an entire region of people, a region
that is primarily Mexican-American and Mexican. To Laura, this is why the HSI status is
important. It gives a sense of legitimacy to the university and a sense of ownership that the
university belongs to the people of the community. Similarly, when describing the importance of
BHSI to the local community, Alma discussed the geographic location of campus and its
distance from other major cities in the state. Alma said:
We know that we serve this region, and we have a commitment to the people of this
region. Other people might have issues with, well, we should be serving other people.
27
Pseudonym.
28
Pseudonym.
29
Pseudonym.
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[But] we’re like, “Well look at Girasol. Look at where we’re located on a map. There are
no other major universities outside a certain radius… After the border region, there’s
desert. There’s empty space. You have to drive a significant number of hours to get to the
next big city.”
For Alma, BHSI’s double location of being in the desert and a higher education desert
30
mean
that the commitment they have to serving the region is important to the community and the
organizational culture. Faculty members in my study took this responsibility to heart when they
described the type of students who attended BHSI and the importance of having faculty that
understood the community context.
Understanding the Community Context. Faculty search chairs discussed the need for
job candidates to understand the border location including its political, cultural, and historical
context. Despite the complexities of living on the border, all faculty members in this study
described the respect and care that they had for students; they looked for candidates that would
have those same values and commitments to the community. Stephen, professor in the social
sciences, told me “we often look for people who have ties.” In this statement, he shared how the
search committee looks carefully at the cover letters to weed out the ones that seem ingenuine.
Stephen said:
[The HSI designation] got discussed often [in the search committee]. It’s a tricky thing
because it’s something that we looked at. We often look for people who have ties…
because in reality if we go after the top qualified candidates, they’re not coming here.
They might just be using us as a practice interview and as an option in their back pocket
30
I use this term to describe a geographic area where there are either no public universities or only broad-access
colleges or universities to educate a large radius of people.
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to just negotiate and we’ve been part of that. We look closely at cover letters and try and
see people that say that [they want to be in Girasol].
As search chair, Stephen said they looked for signals that the candidate wants to be in the city of
Girasol. Looking for ties is important to Stephen because that way the candidate already has an
understanding of the community and the students who attend BHSI. He later described BHSI as
being a city in which many people are immigrants and compared to other cities has a low income
level. Stephen said:
It’s very gratifying [to work at BHSI] in many ways. Over time, it’s less so than it used to
be, but our school does very well in terms of measures of social mobility. I think that we
would hope so, I mean, there are poorer areas of Girasol. I think compared to most cities
in the country, it has a lower level of education or a low level of income. I mean you have
some who lived here hundreds of years and came, but for the most part quite a few of
people that are immigrants. I guess you would maybe say DACA students or children of
immigrants. A lot of those students need opportunities.
To Stephen, part of understanding the community context is knowing that the community is
comprised of immigrants, low household incomes, and low levels of education. When hiring new
faculty members, they are in need of individuals who will be understanding of the community
context as well as the experience of those within the community. Similarly, Lucia described the
importance of faculty candidates expressing that they have considered working at an HSI with
the types of students at BHSI. Lucia shared:
For me, [in my department], we always want to make sure [faculty candidates] know how
to work with our students, I guess that it matters if they know how to work in it, or it
matters if they have even thought about the context that they are coming in…we believe
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we need to bring candidates that are aligned with our values that are not going to be racist
or are not doing to be disqualifying them because they are different from the faculty. So,
we hire different ethnicities, right? But we make sure they value the Latinx students.
Lucia, like Stephen, expressed that whoever comes to work at BHSI should understand – and
further, value -- the community. Although for Lucia, new faculty do not necessarily have to be
from Girasol, they should not be racist and should know how to work in this particular context.
Faculty members in this study overwhelmingly described the context as “unique.” Viktor,
who spoke often about being from a multicultural European community, explained that the
border context placed BHSI in a unique position geographically as well as culturally. Viktor
said:
The unique location is the border location and a bi-cultural situation. We are in a
geographic situation being right on the border and having a large percentage of our
population Hispanic or Hispanic American both in the community and in our student
population reflected also in our faculty population. So due to the unique location,
geographical location of our institution, but also our cultural heritage of our institution.
So [BHSI] is a research-focused institution with a unique Hispanic focus inherited from
the geographic and cultural aspects of the institution.
For Viktor, the bicultural border context, gave BHSI a “unique Hispanic focus.” These
distinctive aspects of BHSI set it apart from other research institutions. Beyond just the nature of
the primarily-Latinx demographic, the cultural aspects of the community of Girasol inform the
BHSI student experience. Sky touched on these cultural aspects when discussing the importance
of hiring faculty that understand the student population. Sky told me:
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Well, there’s no litmus test, but certainly we wanted faculty that had an understanding of
our student population because we have a very unique student population. Your typical
university experience is that you go to your university, you’re staying in the dorms, right?
You’re working full time on everything. Here, that’s not what happens. They’re
commuters and 80% of the students have a full-time job outside of this. At graduation,
they always do a show of hands, raise your hands if you have kids, raise your hands if
you have a full-time job. A huge proportion of the [graduates in the] audience is raising
their hand. That’s very unique. And so, what happens is professors will come here
remembering their other university and then they always go “the students here are just
lazy. They don’t want to work.” Then, I usually have a talk with them and say, “We have
a different student population. That student that you’re frustrated at probably has kids and
a full-time job and they’re still going to school, and if anything, they’re more committed
than the other person, but at the end of the day, their priorities are feeding their kids and
paying their bills. They can’t quite devote the attention to this that a full-time student
would, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dedicated. We just have to teach differently. We
have to teach the students we have, not the students we wish we had or the students that
will be at another university.” It makes them look at it in a very different light. Our
students are very dedicated students. It’s really impressive, in fact. We look for faculty
that aren’t necessarily from here, but that have done some research and have an
understanding of what they’re coming into.
Sky, another Girasol transplant, described the importance of incoming faculty members knowing
the type of students that attend BHSI. His experience with colleagues that refer to BHSI students
from a deficit lens influences his approach to hiring new faculty. To Sky, this understanding of
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the BHSI student experience confirms his belief that the students are committed to their
education and faculty hired should, in turn, demonstrate a commitment to serving the region by
serving the students of the region.
Commitment to Serving through Access and Excellence. The notion of serving the
region resides in the campus-wide commitment to a mission of providing access and excellence.
This phrase is often communicated across campus as a slogan of sorts, an affirmation that the
work they do as educators is intended to uphold both access and excellence. Faculty search
chairs at BHSI told me that this slogan is transmitted across all departments and embedded
within the campus culture. The slogan was introduced by a former university president who
played a large and important role in the shaping of the current institutional priorities, values, and
commitments. BHSI’s former president left behind a legacy that has taken this campus from a
local, broad-access comprehensive university to a world-class research institution. Saying the
president’s name or describing their appearance can trigger an icon-status recognition in the area
as well as in some spaces in higher education scholarship, therefore to preserve anonymity, will
be referred to using gender neutral pronouns and limited descriptors. The faculty I interviewed at
BHSI were also aware of this former president’s status because rarely was their name revealed in
the interview. It is also because their legacy and impact on the campus culture and identity that
several participants shared with me concerns about the potential direction of new leadership. One
professor said to me: “I want us to really highlight that there’s been a shift in leadership, and I
think you’re doing your research right at the cusp of this shift in leadership.” Another professor
described the presidential transition as “interesting” as she described her department’s “big
struggles” with the gap between the former and current president’s values. Regardless of the
faculty comments and concerns of being in this state of transition, faculty often referenced the
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former president’s commitment to serving the region in relation to the notion of providing both
access and excellence. One professor shared the former president’s call to action as “bring in and
serve this region, and we will do it in an exceptional way: access and excellence.”
The concept of “serving” the region conveys more than teaching. For faculty at BHSI, to
serve students implies that the faculty are not working for their own advancement but for the
advancement of their students. This notion of service was conveyed in glimpses when faculty
spoke of their students and conveyed a deep sense of responsibility for the work of educating
them. Jorge, professor in the social sciences, told me “My [biological] kids are grown. So, these
[students] are my kids.” Jorge shared this sentiment when illustrating the ways he made sure to
support his graduate students.
[One of my students] said I don’t know how I’m going to [finish my dissertation]. I don’t
know how I’m going to do it. She’s teaching, she’s got two kids, young kids, husband,
problems with car, she got sick health-wise. I said, I don’t know how you guys do it. I do
not know. So, I’ve gone to them with, last time I met with her? I met her at [the high
school where she teaches]. And because I know how difficult it is for them, then I’ll
make that exact, because I have the flexibility.
Jorge’s story illustrated that implied by the term “service” is a dedication that goes
beyond providing merely the access to knowledge. Alma shared that the commitment to serving
the region considers the working-class demographic of the majority of students attending BHSI.
“We know who we serve, and so whoever leads this institution needs to be very aware of who
we serve and the needs of a working-class university,” Alma said. The awareness of serving a
primarily working-class demographic fits in with the institutional commitment to access; and
beyond that, the aspect of excellence is evidenced in practice, pedagogy, resources, and services
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on campus. Lucia described the importance of access to research as contributing to excellence.
Lucia said:
Really important is the mission of excellence, and access to an excellent education…that
has oriented our practices, really focusing on research, really focusing on doing solid
research that can contribute to not only our community but beyond, but first and foremost
I would say our research contributes to our community mostly. I think that has been
traditionally the case, and we are a big region… contributing to our local needs, it also
makes us known nationally and internationally.
However, beyond just access to research as being tied to excellence, the notion of research that
advances the community is especially important at BHSI. For Lucia, a professor in the social
sciences, her research is directly connected to the bicultural experiences of people on the border.
Being an HSI on the border that contributes to border-related research is an important aspect of
the culture at BHSI because it advances the local community and gives the school legitimacy
through recognition. Additionally, research that advances the local community also creates
opportunities for local students to get Ph.D.’s without having to leave the region. Stephen said:
Again, given our environment and where we live in Girasol, there’s great opportunities to
[provide access]. Of course, the excellence is excellence in teaching and excellence in
research. There’s been trying to lift both of these while improving access, also to try and
improve the quality of research to provide PhD programs. The students don’t necessarily
have to leave for students who might be a little nervous to leave for a PhD program. They
may be able to pursue it here if they so desire.
The notion of access and excellence as a cultural value emphasized the commitment from
members of the faculty to contribute to serving the students and the region. Whereas one faculty
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member interviewed expressed some concern that increasing access could mean lowering
standards, every single one of the participants from BHSI expressed support and care for this
commitment. Embedded within the commitment to serving the region through research, faculty
search chairs also expressed a prioritization of Latinx-focused research and mentoring.
Prioritizing Latinx Mentoring and Research
A second aspect of BHSI’s organizational culture illustrated from interviews with faculty
search chairs was a priority on Latinx mentoring and research. Although faculty expressed that
both research and mentoring of Latinx students were important, Jorge expressed that mentoring
is at the top. Jorge said:
At the end of the day, the research is important. It’s pivotal. But, because of the nature of
who we serve, we still have to take a step back and say my mentoring, my advising is
with the students. It’s not with other faculty. It’s not with trying to figure out what my
administrator wants me to do. It’s the students.
Jorge shared that although BHSI is a research institution, the nature of their location on the
border and serving the region makes their responsibilities more aligned with teaching and
mentoring. Even in aspects of their research, the responsibility Jorge describes is to the students.
All other faculty search chairs spoke of their mentoring and teaching in similar ways. Whenever
the importance of research was described, it was always linked to mentoring. Additionally, Alma
said:
Ideally, you want to look for people who are the best qualified, right? And now because
we’re R1, that is now becoming like who’s done research. It really comes down to who
can bring in money? Who has a potential of coming here and being successful? For me,
fit matters… is this a good fit? Because I don’t care how smart you are. If you don’t
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know who we’re going to serve, if you don’t want to come serve this population, I don’t
think you fit here. That’s on the committees.
Like Jorge, Alma expressed that above research experience, committees look for a particular fit
that is aligned with the priority of serving the region and mentoring students. At BHSI, the
priority is the students, specifically mentoring and teaching.
These beliefs shared by Jorge and Alma were common among all other interviews as
well. Even when discussing the topic of hiring, search chairs communicated that they looked for
the most qualified candidates and researchers that could mentor students. Specifically, Stephen
expressed the importance of having the most qualified people to educate their primarily first-
generation student population. Stephen said:
We want the most qualified people because if we’re trying to get the best education to
these first-generation students, right? We don’t want to compromise too much…our
students is [sic] all equal. We need to give them the best quality education to the diverse
population we have right now.
To Stephen and other faculty search chairs at BHSI, hiring the most qualified faculty was
directly connected to the notion of serving the region and a primarily first-generation Latinx
community. Sky discussed the way in which he evaluates candidates for the way they convey a
passion for working with students. To him, this informal evaluation of passion comes through in
body language and tone. Sky said:
Ideally, we want faculty that want to work with students and do cool things with students.
From there, it’s more just my philosophy and looking at people, so when I have them in
my office, I’ll talk about a few projects. I don’t even care if they care about my project,
what I’m looking for is their eyes, and when they’re talking about the things they do,
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when they talk about involving students, do their eyes light up a little bit, like “that was a
good fun, positive experience.” [Do they share] things that they did for that student or
you kind of get that the student was holding them back and they were just doing it
because they had to?... I look for kind of that overall attitude and the kind of candidates
we hired were ones that were really excited to work with students. I look forward to that.
Sky, as well as other faculty search chairs, expressed that hiring faculty passionate about
mentoring Latinx students was important. “Mentoring” was a word used frequently in interviews
when describing what search chairs looked for in candidates. And although they were
exclusively talking about mentoring, the role of mentoring was important because it would lead
to graduation and a job. Sky also shared:
Our business is to graduate students, right? We’re not just here to do our own little
research project. We’re here to mentor the students, get them through the system and
graduate them. At the end of the day, that is our job. Everything else is secondary to that.
It’s easy to lose sight of that…It depends a lot on the hirings. I really hope we can hold
on to our dedication to the students.
For Sky, faculty hiring was directly tied to mentoring and graduation. The aspect of mentoring
described by the faculty I interviewed was deeply embedded within the culture. It was also a
priority that was enveloped in the internalized commitment to serving the region. Together, the
prioritization of mentoring and the commitment to serving meant that BHSI faculty search chairs
were on the same page when looking for who to hire to teach their students. It was important to
them that new faculty be good researchers, but more importantly that they mentored students
keeping in mind their unique experiences and identities (i.e. first-generation, commuter, working
classes, etc).
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Research that Engages the Local Latinx Community. Included within the
prioritization of Latinx mentoring and research is the belief that faculty hired to work at BHSI
should be involved in research that either benefits or engages the local community. Each faculty
search chair expressed this belief to a different degree, but Alma was one of the most adamant
about looking for candidates focused on research that engaged community because of its
connection serving the region. In particular, Alma also mentioned how impacting the community
through research helped with their cultural mission of facilitating social mobility for students.
Alma shared her belief on the importance of cultivating a research agenda focused on community
and involving undergraduate students in that work. She argued that this helped students achieve
social mobility and is an important consideration when hiring new faculty. She said:
In Ranking Monthly
31
, we got three years in a row for number one in social mobility in
the nation. We literally move students out of poverty…this is what I do, this is how I do
it, and I publish about it, and I present at conferences and I do keynotes on community
engagement as a hiring good practice. Engaging scholarship for community. I bring in
my [undergraduate] students and show them how I do research… they get certified in
research ethics. They get the CITI certification for three years. Then of course for my
undergrads, that’s like leverage for getting funded, to get internships, to get scholarships,
to get fellowships. They come in [to graduate school], they’re like, we know how to do
research.
Alma’s approach to hiring new faculty considers the importance of mentoring Latinx students in
research, specifically research that engages the community. She shared that this work is
important for students’ social mobility out of poverty. Later in the interview, she gave more
31
Pseudonym.
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context to why community engagement was important to students and indirectly when hiring
new faculty. She told me:
We know who we serve, and so whoever leads this institution needs to be very aware of
who we serve, and the needs of a working-class university. Our students work. They go
to school. For me, pushing them to do community engagement and do service is
complicated... I’m asking them to give of themselves, but at the same time, they’re kind
and generous, and they know that this is the community they came from. Giving back
where you came from is easier than say a prestigious university. They feel like they’re
doing a service… they’re still tied to their families, they’re still tied to their high schools,
their friend networks. They are so tied. The community is in the university. Our students
are still tied to community, so there is this mutual obligation to give back, and its not a
hard sell for our students. They understand. Like, “oh yeah, I came from here, I know we
need help.”
This mutual obligation that students feel to give back to their community is part of the character
of the students, according to Alma. She argues that the people hired to work at BHSI should
recognize this, value it, and serve the community through research and service. Further, this is
connected to the third aspect of the organizational culture that emerged through interviews with
faculty search chairs.
Valuing Latinx Student Experiences
The final component of BHSI’s organizational culture illustrated in context of faculty
hiring is a collective valuing of Latinx student experiences. This emphasis on valuing Latinx
students came through in nearly every interview with faculty search chairs. Whether they were
describing specifically what they wanted in potential hires or reflecting on their own practice,
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there was this collective understanding that their students’ experiences mattered and contributed
to a cultural richness unique to BHSI. This aspect came through particularly as faculty search
chairs expressed an understanding and empathizing with their students and the border
experience.
Understanding and Empathizing with Latinx Students. This perspective or awareness
of understanding and empathizing with Latinx students is what I came into this project calling
consciousness. Later in this chapter, I discuss how consciousness, whether a Latinx-serving
consciousness or an HSI consciousness, incorporates this understanding of student experiences,
but also is comprised of organizational elements. The choice I made in understanding HSI
consciousness was rooted in this aspect of empathy and awareness which came through in each
and every interview with faculty members. For example, in the context of discussing BHSI
students, Lucia spoke about the Latinx student experience as a binational and bilingual
experience that has value. Using an asset-based perspective, Lucia said:
For me, first it’s to know the community, the value our students bring, right? So for me,
for example, bilingualism, their knowledge that they bring from their families and their
cultural practices, should be present in each one of our courses. If [students] find a place
where those are valued then it’s easier for them to flourish and to develop. I think that in
general in the University [students] find many spaces that are bilingual, where they can
really use both languages. And so even in those courses, in my courses, they can use both
languages, they translanguage. They even can turn in course work in Spanish if they wish
to do so. And I know that many of the faculty have that same practice. So, we value their
bilingualism. Because of that, they bring their aspect of their culture with them. At the
same time, we have to recognize that our students come from backgrounds that have had
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also difficulties, in terms of low income. Our students, if you see the average income in
the community, the parents have to work a lot. They have to have, one, two jobs
sometimes. So, you know, recognizing that many of them are parents also and they have
a lot of responsibility with the family is important for me. I make a point to get to know
them, to see their situation and try to support as much as I can, right? For me, it’s
important that they feel proud, pride and proud of who they are right?
As a Latina, Lucia has the opportunity to speak to her students in both English and Spanish. For
her, the act of translanguaging or having a bilingual flexibility shows that she values the
knowledge and skill involved in speaking in two languages. Additionally, her understanding and
empathizing with the external realities and responsibilities her students hold is also something
she values. Lucia went deeper into her explanation of translanguaging and how it helped her
relate to her students. She said:
I teach in both languages… Then I always remind the students that since I am bilingual, I
can really evaluate their work in both languages. So just make sure to use the language
that they prefer to. Or sometimes I tell them if you want to practice your Spanish, even
though it’s not your strong language, just go ahead and send it to me in Spanish and I’ll
help you with that. I think that’s really important and I wish it was even better in terms of
policies [explicitly allowing or validating bilingualism in the classroom], right? I mean,
we don’t have really policies established, but its more the culture of the institution in this
case.
Lucia expressed that this notion of translanguaging is something done to show value in
bilingualism but is also embedded within the culture of the institution. There are no policies at
BHSI that specifically address the ability for students to turn work in that demonstrates
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bilingualism, however, the act of translanguaging on campus is a cultural practice. And even
though she would not discriminate against a faculty candidate that was monolingual, she
expressed that faculty at BHSI should value the bilingual, bicultural identities of the students.
Like Lucia, Liliana spoke from her own experience as a student and how that informed
her strategy to recruitment and hiring new faculty. According to Liliana, she craved faculty she
could relate to and connect with, but never got it. However, it is because of her own experience
as a student that she described looking for faculty to hire that students might relate to and share
experiences with. Liliana said:
I’m fourth generation Hispanic. Does that make me less Hispanic than people who are
first generation college degrees? No. But In some people’s minds it does…I wanted [my
students] to relate to somebody because I craved that when I was at school. I never got it.
And so, I was intentional with that hire and this other position. Here, it’s a little harder
because everyone in the nation in my profession is having trouble finding qualified
applicants [with a doctorate degree].
Although the nature of Liliana’s profession is that there are very few Latinx candidates
with doctorate degrees, she still prioritizes hiring faculty that her students can connect with on
some level. Later in the interview, Liliana described the strategic recruiting she did to hire a
bilingual faculty member because of the high Mexican student population in her department.
During a presentation she gave to her field, she spoke about her recruitment strategy. She said:
But in that tiny little presentation, I talked about how I recruited someone who was a
Mexican national intentionally because a lot of the students that we were serving were
Mexican nationals… we usually have one or two where English is their second language
and the language barrier is a huge obstacle.
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In this example, not only was Liliana describing how she was strategic about hiring faculty that
could relate to her students, she literally recruited someone specifically that shared the
experience of learning English as a second language in the field. The strategic recruitment efforts
she used were layered within this notion of understanding and empathizing with her students’
experiences. Similarly when Alma also brought up the concept of translanguaging, she specified
that students did not have to be fully bilingual to understand. She said that regardless of
Latinidad, students who grew up in the border context got her jokes and references for the most
part. Additionally, she shared that when she translanguaged, it held a special meaning to both her
students and herself. Alma shared:
I code switch all the time, I translanguage. I move my languages back and forth, and [my
students] get it. They laugh… You switch back and forth in the classroom, and they get
you. Yes, they’re 80% Latinos and Latinas, and everybody else was raised here so they
get me. They’ll switch gears too. [Even if] they’re White or they’re Black. But if they’re
from Girasol, they get me too. And if not, then I’ll throw in the translation, but I know
they get it. That means the world to me, because I know it means the world to them. Then
I get to write their letters of recommendation into law school, master’s and PhD
programs, or to jobs… My students are moving forward, are getting careers, they’re
getting married, they’re having children, they’re attorneys, they’re master’s, they’re in
other PhD [programs]. Those are my kids. Those were my students… That’s my fruit.
That’s the fruit of my labor. I get to see the fruit of my labor.
The direct connection between the act of translanguaging in the classroom and writing letters of
recommendation for her students shows that she is able to connect with her students on a deep
level. Because of this mutual understanding of language – which is demonstrative of culture –
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she develops a bond with her students where she sees them as her own kids. When her students
leave BHSI to go to professional schools or start jobs, she sees the fruit of her labor. In hiring,
she also looks for faculty members that can connect with students in a similar fashion.
In addition to translanguaging, Lucia shared the importance of valuing the experience and
identity of BHSI students as transfronterizos, or border crossers. Lucia said:
So we have a good number of students at BHSI here that are transfronterizos, and they
cross [the bridge] every day to come to school so there is this need to acknowledge, you
know, their unique situation and what they bring. Anyway, if you have class, from the ten
PhD students, four are transfronterizos, two are totally bilingual, maybe one doesn’t
understand any Spanish, but we are able to create those spaces. I think that makes our
program even stronger because they do have these opportunities of living in their own,
everyday practice and their everyday learning situations. They live what they are
studying so that’s very cool.
This statement about understanding the experience of the transfronterizo reality is important in
hiring new faculty because of the consciousness and empathy required when working with BHSI
students. Although not related to students specifically, Laura shared an example that captures the
transfronterizo experience. She told me:
Our administrative assistant…lives [across the border] in Rodriguez
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, and she comes
across the border every day. So, what does that mean when there’s all these border wall
politics, and remain-in-Mexico policies? And you know, that doesn’t necessarily directly
affect [the university president or the department], but it can on any given day depending
on what’s happening on the bridge.
32
Pseudonym.
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The precarity that BHSI students and staff may face given their border-crossing status has direct
implications when considering attendance in classes, late policies, mental health, family
separations, and more. Alma, Lucia, Laura, and Liliana talked about hiring strategically so that
new faculty at BHSI would carry an awareness of how border issues could impact students on
any given day.
Valuing Latinx Students and Adding Value to their Education. In addition to valuing
the bicultural and bilingual aspects of student identities in the classroom, faculty search chairs
expressed a need for new hires to add value to their students’ education. In discussing this value-
added approach to educating BHSI students, many faculty members I interviewed discussed a
campus-wide initiative called the BHSI Advantage
33
. Although I was familiar with Advantage
from my scan of the BHSI website, Lucia explained the impetus for the initiative as one that
would amplify the talents of students from an asset-based perspective and funds of knowledge.
Lucia said:
Well, here in the last five years we have been talking about a kind of philosophy that is
the Advantage Initiative… it has to do with recognizing the talents that the students bring
and then offering experiences that will draw from those talents and then enhance those
talents and multiply them and amplify them. So that’s kind of the pedagogical or the
education notions behind [Advantage]. So, the idea was we have, kind of the cornerstones
are that we have talented students, we want to recognize those talents. Those talents are
related to who the students are, so it might be bilingualism, it might be their knowledge
of working with family, it might be their organizational skills because they work at a very
young age. I mean, many, many different knowledges that they bring with them because
33
Pseudonym.
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who they are, because being a Latinx working class person. And so, we recognize those
talents, but we also organize experiences so that students can amplify those talents and
also add new talents, of course.
The BHSI Advantage initiative demonstrates a campus-wide commitment to valuing the Latinx
student and border student experience in higher education. As opposed to recognizing the deficits
of these student educational outcomes or trajectories, BHSI’s Advantage approaches students
from a value-added, affirming, and equity-minded approach. While the study of this initiative
merits a project entirely on its own, it’s worth mentioning here that the BHSI Advantage
demonstrates that valuing students for what they bring to campus is deeply embedded in the
organizational culture.
Beyond a valuing of student identities and experiences, the Advantage initiative also aims
to add value to their education by creating opportunities that enhance their degrees. Alma
described this enhancement as service learning and engaging her undergraduate and masters
students in research programs to help position them for admission into graduate school. Alma
shared:
Now, BHSI has this thing called the BHSI Advantage. Leading experiences for students
to give them an edge besides GPA, besides a college degree, they have experiences. For
me, since I’ve been hired, I do a service-learning community engagement in all my
classes, so I engage my students in undergraduate research and community. I take them to
conferences with me. They publish with me. I publish with undergrads, masters, and PhD
students… For me, it’s been really important to then develop a community of
practitioners of engaged scholars. In other institutions, activism is from upon; here, it’s
called community engagement.
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This distinction Alma made between activism at other campuses and community engagement at
BHSI is an indication that advancing the region and the community through higher education is a
part of the cultural mission focused on access and excellence. Access is not just about having
students come to BHSI, but it is also about having BHSI be a part of the community. Similarly,
Jorge connected the Advantage initiative to his commitment to teaching, mentoring, advising and
serving. Jorge said:
And so, to me it’s critical because even though we’re pushing for R1… at the end of the
day, Cynthia, BHSI is a teaching institution. We prepare professionals. We prepare
engineers that first generation engineers in their families. And at the end of the day
research is important, it’s pivotal. But, because of the nature of who we serve, we still
have to take a step back and say my mentoring, my advising is with the students. It’s not
with other faculty. It’s not with trying to figure out what my administrator wants me to
do. It’s the students. That’s why we have, now, this push from Advantage about “you’re
Bienvenido.”
As Jorge re-stated his commitment to the students, he returned to the notion of serving and
connected it to his mentoring. Additionally, he expressed that at the center of the Advantage
campaign – an initiative that he had no role in creating -- are the students. His commitments,
priorities and personal values are in alignment with the culture at BHSI.
The complex nature of working at a university with students who cross geographical and
symbolic borders every day is epitomized at BHSI. Faulty search chairs expressed a commitment
to serving the region, priorities focused on Latinx student mentoring and research, as well as a
valuing of Latinx educational experiences. Together, these aspects inform and are informing of
the organizational culture that is embedded across BHSI faculty members and internalized in
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everyday practice. Structurally through policies and initiatives as well as informally through
internalized cultural practices, BHSI cultivates an organizational culture that is focused on access
and excellence on the border.
A Framework for Embodying HSI Consciousness: Lighting the universes of meaning
As noted previously, Chapter 6 documented findings that answered question 1 and
Chapter 7 answered question 2. As a result of the findings that emerged within these two
chapters, and in comparing the two cases, I developed a framework that is discussed here.
When I set out to answer the question of what HSI consciousness entailed, I was guided
by a phenomenological attitude that wondered to what extent did the HSI identity come into the
decision-making process of hiring faculty. According to van Manen, phenomenological research
begins by “surrendering to a state of wonder,” (2014, p. 27). In surrendering to this wonder, I
aimed to uncover what it meant at an organizational and individual level to be conscious of the
HSI identity; and how that consciousness was then used to inform the hiring process. I
hypothesized that HSI consciousness was on a scale of importance ㅡ the more importance it
was given, the more of a role it would play in hiring. However, after analyzing the interviews of
the faculty participants of this study, I recognize that having consciousness is less a matter of
salience and more of an embodiment of certain values, beliefs, and attitudes about what being a
faculty member at an HSI means.
Primarily a method for questioning, phenomenology is not meant to draw determinate
conclusions (van Manen, 2014). However, in the questioning exists the possibility for
experiencing insights and “giving us glances of the meaning of phenomena and events in their
singularity,” (p.29). HSI consciousness as it is conceived here is not to be applied definitively. It
is my goal with conceptualizing of HSI consciousness that this universe of meaning/framework
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can be used to guide practitioners and leaders within HSIs to develop through a process of
introspection, reflection, and action as informed by a phenomenology of practice approach.
Figure 6
A Framework of Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Consciousness
Components of HSI
Consciousness
Definition Reflective questions for
practitioners
Body The physical manifestations or
actions as told through tangible
commitments of members of the
university community. These
commitments are transmitted,
shared, and replicated through
action.
In what ways do my commitments,
actions and behaviors manifest in
ways that serve Latinx students?
How do my actions and behaviors
demonstrate an outward facing
commitment to Latinx student
success?
Mind The mind is the place where we
store our priorities. These are the
thoughts that lead up to the
external commitments.
In what ways are my priorities
focused on Latinx student success?
How do I communicate these
priorities to my Latinx students and
colleagues? How do I communicate
my prioritization of Latinx student
success to my colleagues? In what
ways do I prioritize Latinx student
success in decision making?
Spirit The spirit is seen as our heart, our
values, what we carry with us that
inform our priorities and
commitments. An HSI conscious
spirit manifests in values that are
focused on improving the Latinx
student experience.
In what ways are my values focused
on improving Latinx student
success? In what ways are my
values focused on serving Latinx
students? How do these values
manifest in my research, teaching,
service?
When conceiving of this framework, I turned to philosophical texts to understand how
they described consciousness. Early Western philosophers defined consciousness as a duality of
mind and body. Descartes, for example, famously argued that humans are conscious because
they are aware of their own existence: “I think, therefore I am.” However, since Descartes,
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philosophers have critiqued this duality to expand upon their understandings of consciousness.
According to Anzaldúa, for example, “spirit and mind, soul and body, are one, and together they
perceive a reality greater than the vision experienced in the ordinary world,” (2015, p. 24).
Referencing Anzaldúa, Irene Lara (2002) claims that the Westernized notion of body/mind
fragmentation is in conflict with our whole selves; she instead opts to perceive consciousness as
bodymindspirit. Lara argues that binary frameworks are both racialized and gendered “thus
occluding the role of power and hindering complex understandings of our multiple realities”
(2002, 438). Our Western teachings have shown us that rationality and logic are opposite to
emotion and intuition; and further, rationality is associated with whiteness and masculinity while
emotion and intuition is associated with women and people of color. These dualities have created
an understanding in which “[w]e are taught... that intelligence dwells only in the head”
(Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 59). In conceiving of my own understanding of HSI consciousness as
informed by the narratives of my 17 participants and a borderland subjectivity, I argue that HSI
consciousness is embodied through bodymindspirit that holistically portrays an individual focus
on serving Latinx students would possess.
Coyolxauhqui Process of Defining HSI Consciousness
As stated previously, with this work I have not set out to create dualities or a typology-
based approach to organizational culture. On the surface, it may therefore seem as though the
organization of HSI Consciousness in a framework that identifies three components contradicts
or undermines my initial aims of embracing the liminalities that exist in Hispanic-serving
Institutions. With this section, I have been deconstructing with the ultimate aim of
reconstructing. This is consistent with the Coyolxauhqui Imperative. Anzaldúa’s (2015)
Coyoxauhqui Imperative, draws upon the legend of Coyoxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess who
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was beheaded by her brother, Huitzilopochli, the War God. He flung her head into the sky where
it remains as the moon. It is by the light of the moon that we are able to see in the dark. Anzaldúa
uses this story to illustrate that to create knowledge in the dark, we have to piece together and
reconstruct the bits that have torn us apart.
Deconstructing/Reconstructing HSI Consciousness
The first component of HSI consciousness, I refer to as the Body. HSI bodily
consciousness is responsible for the physical manifestations or actions as revealed through
tangible commitments of members of the university community. These commitments are
transmitted, shared, and replicated through action. To comprise an HSI consciousness of the
body, these actions, behaviors, and physical commitments have to manifest in ways that serve
Latinx students. One example would be in the language used for an HSI grant proposal – simply
put, does the proposal intend to serve all students or specifically Latinx students? The second
component of HSI consciousness is the Mind. The mind is the place where we store our
priorities. These might not yet be outward-facing commitments that have manifested in actions
or behaviors but include the thoughts that lead up to the external commitments. In embodying an
HSI conscious mind, these priorities need to be focused on Latinx student success. The third
component of HSI consciousness is the Spirit. Beyond our mind and body, we each have a spirit.
This could be seen as our heart, our values, what we carry with us that inform our priorities and
commitments. An HSI conscious spirit manifests in values that are focused on improving the
Latinx student experience. In reminding myself of Lara (2012) and the disconnect my Western
education has driven between mind, body, and spirit, I reconstructed these components into
onebodymindspirit to capture the soul or essence of HSI consciousness. It is understood that the
soul is the essence of a human being (Merriam Webster, 2020) and is associated with an
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individual’s emotional nature. Although the terms spirit and soul are often used interchangeably,
I turn to Black and Chicana feminist scholarship to distinguish a soul. According to Anzaldúa,
we make soul when we make art (2015, p. 41). Anzaldúa referred to soul as the power, or life
force of an individual (2015, p. 33). Referring to a whole HSI consciousness as art or power
strengthens the magnitude of the role HSI consciousness has in serving and educating Latinx
students. And envisioning it also as a reflection on bodymindspirit paints a more holistic and
whole picture of how HSIs can be truly Latinx serving. Rather than focusing on organizational
indicators that prioritize white normative outcomes of how HSIs can be Latinx serving (Garcia,
2019), we have to first have an understanding of how individuals approach their day-to-day work
conscious of their HSI soul.
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Chapter 8: Discussion and Implications
With this study, I set out to come to an understanding of how organizational culture
informed and was informed by faculty hiring. I examined experiences with hiring in two cases of
Hispanic-serving institutions to interrogate what it meant to possess an HSI consciousness while
making decisions, like those involved in hiring new faculty. In comparing both cases, I found
that the geographic location as well as the political, historical, and cultural context matter more
than theories of organizational culture suggest. Intuitively, I approached this project with an
expectation that the campus with a larger percentage of Latinx faculty, which based on my site
selection was the campus located on the border, would better serve Latinx students through their
hiring decisions. In the end, my findings yielded two diverse cases with their own types of HSI
consciousness depending on their geographic and social location. As demonstrated in Figure 7,
MHSI focused on serving the needs of their diverse student population rather than serving the
needs of the Latinx students directly. BHSI took an approach addressing the needs of the local
and regional community.
Figure 7
Comparison of Themes across MHSI and BHSI
MHSI BHSI
Commitment to: Diversity Serving the region
Organizational priorities
focused on:
Good teaching Mentoring Latinx students
Values focused on: Student success Latinx Student Experiences
In summary: Focused on abstractions that can
be defined and interpreted in a
number of different ways.
Focused on specific
community- and
individual-level
enhancements.
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Together, these two cases demonstrate that HSI consciousness can be both structural and
cultural, both external and internal, both collective and individual. Additionally, the data shows
that consciousness and organizational culture are mutually reinforcing. What I found in
conducting this study was threefold: first, HSI consciousness is created by centering students, not
the HSI designation; second, HSIs occupy many borderlands; and third, HSI consciousness is
both embedded and embodied by structures (faculty hiring policies) and people (internal beliefs,
values, and attitudes), respectively. In this chapter, I reiterate answers to the research questions,
make conclusions informed by the data, and articulate the implications of this study for practice,
research, and policy focused on HSIs and faculty hiring.
How does Faculty Hiring Create and Reflect the Organizational Culture at HSIs?
At the onset of this study, my goal was to capture a nuanced understanding of how
faculty hiring created and reflected the organizational culture at HSIs. This goal required an
assessment of similarities and differences in faculty hiring across institutions, across faculty
hiring processes, and across organizational cultures more broadly. As highly complex
organizations with evolving cultures charged with serving the growing Latinx student
population, essentializing HSIs into one category or type does them a disservice.
That being said, in organizational theory, how organizations within a given sector adapt
and change to resemble one another over time is described as institutional isomorphism, defined
as a “constraining process” forcing one organization in an ecology to resemble other
organizations based either on coercion, normative pressures, or imitation (DiMaggio & Powell,
1983). Particularly when organizations or units within an ecological context are competing for
resources, they adapt to each other to evolve with the environment. Under this conceptualization,
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one might argue that HSIs adapt to normative pressures on how they are expected to perform or
serve. It might also be suggested that pressures from other organizations or society coerce HSIs
into fitting a specific type or that HSIs might simply mimic each other. However, although all
HSIs might be seen as competing for power (enrollment numbers), legitimacy (graduation rates
and outcomes) or resources (Title V funding for HSIs), each is also evolving in its own unique
ways. This evolution is evidenced by the cases of BHSI and MHSI. Through this study, I
therefore asked myself: how does the organizational culture make each case unique?
The findings revealed that at the core of each and every conversation about
organizational culture were the students. Faculty members at both MHSI and BHSI shared
compassion, care, and love for their students. They were aware of their role in advancing social
mobility, and they viewed their work as a social responsibility. This ethos, or appeal to
credibility, was rooted in a commitment to serving the needs of their own students. At MHSI,
their student body was multiculturally diverse, located in a metropolitan representing a
multiplicity or plurality of identities. At BHSI, the student body was bi-cultural, bi-national, bi-
lingual. The borderplex and the metroplex were defining contextual characteristics that shaped
their organizational cultures via mission, policies, values, beliefs, and assumptions. Faculty
hiring is one important process that created and reflected these aspects of culture.
External and Internalized Aspects of Organizational Culture Inform Hiring. With
this study, it was also my intention to investigate how the external, observable aspects and
internal, individually interpreted aspects of organizational culture informed hiring. Upon
designing this study, I used Schein’s (1990) levels of organizational culture to note that there
were external and observable aspects (artifacts) as well as those internal to the organization
(values) and internalized by individuals (assumptions). In Chapter 6, I illustrated the institutional
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context of each HSI through these lenses and uncovered that the external and internalized
manifestations of culture were deeply informing of faculty hiring. At MHSI, for example,
multicultural diversity was observable on campus in the people, the architecture, and the
institutional policies; similarly, diversity was discussed as an individually and organizational-
held value. When making hiring decisions, faculty members evaluated candidates based on their
experience working with diverse populations. As this example illustrates, the importance of
diversity was outwardly observable and internalized by members of the organization. At BHSI, I
observed the bicultural, bilingual, and binational aspects of the organizational culture. Later,
during interviews with faculty members, they often shared the importance of understanding and
empathizing with the binational and transfronterizo experience. Search committees prioritized
hiring new faculty members with this awareness of the unique bicultural context. In both cases,
aspects of organizational culture were directly informing of faculty hiring.
In the study of organizational culture, Schein (2010) argues that culture is embedded and
transmitted by leaders. However, the findings of this study illustrate that in higher education, the
term “leader” refers to many stakeholders including the students themselves. Faculty members,
students, and the surrounding community greatly participate in this embedding and transmitting
of organizational culture as well. When faculty search chairs spoke about hiring practices, they
used the language of their shared cultural values, commitments, and priorities as well as their
own personal values to make decisions. They expressed a deep understanding and empathy of
the experiences of their students situated within the community context, and they made decisions
based on this awareness. In this sense, faculty hiring was in fact responsible for revealing and
creating aspects of the organizational culture, which was a result of the empathy and emotional
appeal they had toward their student population.
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What is HSI Consciousness and How is it Expressed in Hiring?
The next question I set out to answer with this study was how HSI consciousness was
expressed in faculty hiring. First, I created a framework for HSI Consciousness illustrated in
Chapter 7. Here, I argue that with this concept of bodymindspirit as HSI consciousness, this
consciousness is in itself a borderland.
HSIs Embrace Contradictions to Inhabit a Both/And Borderland
In the application of an organizational culture and borderlands theoretical framework, I
approached this study with a superficial understanding that HSIs inhabited a borderland -- a
nepantla -- where they were caught in-between contradicting identities. Initially, I anticipated
that the borderlands of HSIs resided in the space caught between their status as historically white
serving institutions and the pressure to serve all Latinx students. What participants’ narratives
revealed was that as that members of an organizational culture, they faced and embraced a
variety of contradictions beyond the HSI designation; faculty members described contradictions
they held in tension in their everyday experiences and interactions. I conclude from my data that
faculty search chairs often embraced the contradictions and thereby approached serving students
from a perspective of both/and thinking. Here, I want to explain what this means conceptually
before providing examples from each campus.
In borderlands, this concept of both/and exists in nepantla, the in-between space that is
neither here nor there, but is both. This line of thinking aligns with organizational studies
outlining the importance of both/and leadership (Smith, et al., 2016). The concept of both/and
leadership illustrates that although choosing one idea or identity over a contradictory other
minimizes cognitive dissonance, when leaders appreciate multiple, conflicting truths, they move
the organization toward trusting cultures that result in respect, collaboration, and learning
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(Smith, et al., 2016). Although it is perhaps the case that a both/and approach leadership is
present at both campuses, a borderland or nepantla frame is present in the mindsets of individuals
outside of leadership as well. In holding multiple contradictions in tension, faculty, staff, and
students also inhabited borderlands.
At MHSI, David spoke of one borderland when he shared that faculty hired are expected
to do both teaching and research. While community colleges are primarily teaching-focused and
R1’s are research-intensive, MHSI is in the middle and that being in the middle meant faculty
were expected to do both. Another contradiction at MHSI existed in the cultural value of hands-
on learning. All throughout campus, students were being taught that they could learn and do at
the same time as opposed to learning a particular skill set first and then applying it in practice.
When looking for qualified candidates to teach their students, they used their HSI consciousness
and this both/and to make decisions; faculty members specifically told me they looked for
candidates who shared in the hands-on learning mission and were equally skilled in both
teaching and research. They themselves had learned how to inhabit a borderland in their
everyday practice, and they wanted a colleague that could do the same.
At BHSI, similar to MHSI, they embraced the values of access and excellence. Often
misconstrued as mutually exclusive, the BHSI campus embraced both: broad access for people
from the region while also being exclusive in excellence. The deeply embedded value on these
two elements together demonstrates the both/and aspect of its borderlands organizational identity
and culture. Another contradiction exists on a literal border for students that live in one country
but attend school in another. The transfronterizo experience embraces the both/and liminal space
of nepantla in a literal borderland. And lastly, the use of bilingual flexibility, the inclusion of
both English and Spanish, as opposed to the hegemonic use of English on a university campus
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embraces the space of nepantla in language. When hiring, faculty members gave preference to
candidates that also demonstrated a borderland-embedded consciousness.
On both campuses, the borderlands that their members inhabited show that HSIs
themselves are neither here nor there but are both. Embracing the contradictions and accepting
the both/and quality of their culture freed MHSI and BHSI from choices that would otherwise
limit the education of their students. For Latinx students in higher education that straddle two
cultures (American culture and their Latinx ethnicity), having to choose one side or the other
means compromising and compartmentalizing aspects of their identity. When HSIs allow
themselves to exist in a borderland without choosing a side, students get to be a more authentic
version of themselves.
HSI Consciousness is Both Embedded and Embodied in Organizational Culture
Another way that HSI consciousness is a borderland is that it is both embedded in the
structures of the organization and embodied by the people. The commitments from the
administration to be upheld by the organization are embedded in structural aspects of culture
such as mission statements, manuals, and diversity initiatives; on the other hand, the people
interpret, embody, and animate those cultural structures—in some cases internalizing them as
their own values and beliefs. This is consistent with a view of structure and culture as mutually
reinforcing (Giddens, 1984; Hays, 1994).
At MHSI, the faculty members described the culture as administrative and corporate; this
aligns with what Berquist and Pawlak (2008) refer to as managerial culture. A managerial culture
is described as a “culture that finds meaning primarily in the organization, implementation, and
evaluation of work that is directed toward specified goals and purposes” (Berquist & Pawlak,
2008, p. 43). MHSI faculty members described the goals and purposes as being driven toward
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student success and diversity. Because administration held these responsibilities to diversity and
student success in high regard, they embedded structures and policies to ensure compliance from
all community members. On the other hand, faculty members at BHSI described the importance
of community engagement and serving the region. This aligns with a tangible culture which
“finds meaning in its roots, its community, and its spiritual grounding,” (Berquist & Pawlak,
2008, p. 185). While the defining characteristics of a tangible culture seem to reflect an idyllic
and traditional academy, BHSI’s focus on community extended to the city and region which
were infused with Mexican and Mexican-American cultural values. Therefore, BHSI’s tangible
culture was one in which faculty were focused on upholding the dominant Mexican and
Mexican-American cultural traits and values.
I found that each campus had a different strength: MHSI had embedded HSI
consciousness in its policies and structures while the faculty members at BHSI embodied their
own HSI consciousness as personal values and beliefs. Understanding the power of these
strengths through these case studies, I argue that both embedded and embodied HSI
consciousness are necessary to truly serve Latinx students. At MHSI, the importance of diversity
manifested as a heavy hand from administration and a top-down approach. On the contrary, at
BHSI, faculty search chairs embodied their own version of HSI consciousness which manifested
as each participant’s own commitments and values. For example, at BHSI both Laura and Lucia
spoke about the valuing of the Latinx student experience as being infused within the culture.
Laura further explained that BHSI did not require positions like Diversity Officers or deans
focused on Equity and Inclusion because those values manifested in the conversations occurring
among institutional actors. The university did not have to create structures to ensure diversity
because it was already something that was valued and articulated at both individual and
138
organizational levels. In contrast, at MHSI, Gabriel, Bob, and Marcos described the pressures
from administration via policies and accountability procedures to ensure that applicant pools
were diverse (followed by corrective action if they were not diverse). They lamented that the
structures and policies forcing them to take a specific set of steps in a particular order actually
delayed the process of hiring because of all the embedded checkpoints they were required to
meet. When asked, they each told me that the work of being committed to diversity was already
a part of their respective departmental cultures. This finding suggests that the embedding of
structures associated with promoting HSI consciousness may need to be re-evaluated once the
organization demonstrates that it is embodied within the people.
Implications
This study has broad implications for the improvement of faculty hiring practices; for the
realization of policy that designates Hispanic-Serving Institutions as a mechanism to enhance
how Hispanic-identifying students are served; and for future research on HSI’s, faculty hiring,
organizational culture, and borderlands in higher education. In this concluding section, I
delineate these implications.
Implications for practice
Internalizing HSI consciousness at organizational and individual levels requires
embedding consciousness in structures and policies that affect hiring and embodying it in the
mindsets and interactions of decision makers. Faculty and administrators need to consider this
when attempting to shift an organizational culture. Cultural shifts that impact practice do not
happen with beginning-of-the-year, one-time mandatory trainings. Instead, cultural shifts happen
through ongoing conversations over time. Posselt and colleagues (2020) discuss the ways in
which contexts, power, policies, and individual biases impact organizational decision-making
139
like that involved in faculty hiring. To enact what Posselt, et al. (2020) refer to as an equitable
repertoire of practice, an organization must interrogate each level and challenge the ways that
organizations have been socialized to maintain the status quo. In particular, when making
decisions, their framework for Equitable Decision Making could be used to evaluate the aspects
of organizational culture that inhibit equity and otherwise contribute to a deficit view of Latinx
students. Upon interrogating each level of influence on decision making, administrators and
faculty members at HSIs can begin to have conversations about how to shift the culture toward
one that embraces a borderland subjectivity and focuses on enhancing the Latinx educational
experience. Further, in hiring specifically, committee members can use the guiding questions
provided in the framework (Figure 6) to reflect on their own practice and also when evaluating
candidates. For example, faculty search committee members can evaluate candidates on their
HSI consciousness by developing a rubric with questions adapted from the reflection prompts.
“How do my actions and behaviors demonstrate an outward facing commitment to Latinx
student success?” can be turned into a question used to evaluate the ways candidate demonstrate
a commitment and priority for Latinx student success. Ultimately, hiring faculty that already
embody an HSI consciousness signals to members of the HSI community that they are
committed the students they serve. Additionally, Schein (2010) says that leaders embed and
transmit culture by who they hire and the criteria by which they are hired. Hiring with an
intentional focus on HSI consciousness may help shape the culture to one that is more Latinx
Conscious and Valuing than Latinx Indifferent or Ambivalent (see Chapter 4 for Figure 3)
regardless of the percentage of Latinx faculty.
140
Implications for Policy
Currently, the mechanisms for evaluating the Title V grants that lead to HSI designation
are attached to what Garcia (2019) refers to as white normative outcomes such as graduation
rates, transfer rates, and course completion. The measures for accountability for these grants do
not include the ways HSIs can work toward a Latinx-serving HSI consciousness. Policymakers
can learn from this comparative case study by observing the steps that MHSI leadership took to
embed policies that prioritized and evaluated a commitment to diversity in hiring faculty. At the
federal and state levels, policymakers can use this case study to put into place structural systems
to advance Latinx representation in faculty. At the state level, state college and university
systems can implement policies like mandated diversity and bias trainings on developing HSI
consciousness through hiring. At the campus level, policies can be enacted to support bilingual
flexible degree options as was shown at BHSI. This can also lead to certificates of bilingualism
that further legitimize and add value to HSI degrees.
Beyond hiring, the findings from this study can contribute to policies that define how
HSIs are given their designation. Criticisms that HSIs are merely Latinx-enrolling (Garcia, 2016,
2017, 2019) come from the fact that they are designated by a mere enrollment threshold rather
than by the ways they serve Latinx students. Using the framework for HSI consciousness can
develop a new set of criteria by which HSIs are designated that consider the aspects of how
campuses serve students in body, in mind, and in spirit.
Implications for Research
There is much to be learned about faculty hiring, generally, and this is the first study to
date that examines it within HSI’s. To contribute to research on equity in faculty hiring, future
studies can evaluate hiring at HSIs across many different institutional types and geographic
141
contexts. Expanding this research to other HSIs can illuminate additional values, commitments,
and priorities search committees have when hiring faculty to serve Latinx students. Indirectly,
the results from this future research can help HSI scholars and leaders investigate the question of
how to truly serve Latinx students. To advance scholarship on HSI and the notion of servingness,
I recommend future research be designed to evaluate the HSI consciousness framework in
application. A quantitative study could assess the validity of the HSI Consciousness framework
on measures of student success. On the other hand, a qualitative study might investigate HSI
consciousness at other HSIs to strengthen the framework. Additionally, in advancing an HSI
consciousness framework that respects the potential of inhabiting a both/and space of nepantla, a
follow-up study can be designed to envision and evaluate HSIs as sites of conocimiento and
consciencia, concepts from borderlands theory that describe knowledge acquisition and
consciousness. Though recently, studies evaluating HSIs have been critical of the ways in which
HSIs fall short of elite and predominantly white serving institutions, it is my hope for future
scholarship that research begins to imagine radical, transformational, and liberatory possibilities
for HSIs.
142
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Appendix A
Integrated Framework: Organizational Culture and Borderlands
154
Appendix B
Participant Demographic Survey
Feel free to leave a question blank if you are uncomfortable answering.
Name
Preferred Pseudonym
Gender identity
Sexual Orientation
How do you identify
racially?
How do you identify
ethnically?
Spiritual background or
religion
Hometown
Department
Position Title
Regarding your recent
membership of a faculty
search committee: what
position was this search for?
Was the position filled?
What was your role on the
committee?
How many applicants did
the search have?
How many did your
committee invite for an
interview?
155
Appendix C
Interview Protocol: Semi structured interview (60-90 minutes)
RQ1.How does faculty hiring create and reflect the cultures at HSIs?
RQ2. To what degree, and in what ways, does HSI-consciousness inform the
hiring process?
RQ3. How does HSI status inform individual committee members’ thinking with
regards to hiring?
First, introduce self and study. Then, go over informed consent form. Ask permission to audio
record and begin recording.
Introductory
questions
1. Please state your pseudonym for the transcript
2. Can you please state your title and then describe your roles and
responsibilities at this institution?
3. What brought you to this role?
a. What brought you to this university?
b. What role if any did the HSI status play in your
deciding to apply to this position? To accept this
position?
4. Let’s zoom out further. Can you describe the life experiences
that led you to the path of the professoriate?
5. In your opinion, what is the role of a professor?
156
6. What identities do you bring to the classroom? Are they the
same or different as the identities you bring to a meeting with
faculty?
RQ1 How does
faculty hiring create
and reflect the
cultures at HSIs?
7. What has your experience like been at this university?
a. PROBE: Can you provide an example of how it has
been ________.
8. How would you describe the culture of the organization?
a. Why?
b. PROBE: What leads you to believe that the culture is
_______?
9. How important is the HSI status for the university at-large? Can
you provide an example of how the university operates with
the HSI identity in mind?
10. You were on a faculty search committee recently. What was
the position? Can you briefly walk me through the process?
What was the order of events leading up to the selection of a
candidate?
RQ2 To what degree,
and in what ways,
does HSI-
consciousness inform
the hiring process?
11. What would you say were the most important criteria for
making this decision? What were you looking for? Non
negotiables?
12. How often did the HSI status come up in committee
conversations? Was the HSI status a point of importance for
the committee decision? Why or why not?
RQ3 How does HSI
status inform
individual committee
members’ thinking
with regards to
hiring?
13. For you as an individual, how important would you say that the
HSI status was in your thinking and evaluating of candidates?
Were you able to vocalize these thoughts to the committee?
Why or why not? If you did vocalize your thoughts, what were
the responses of the others in the committee?
14. Based on your interactions with students, what do you think
they want and/or need in a faculty member? What makes you
think so? Did you have this in mind during your committee
work?
157
15. In your personal work, what role does HSI status play in how
you envision the role of a faculty member? Do you think you
live up to this? Why or why not? In what ways?
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Scholars of culture and evaluation recognize that evaluation and selection processes, such as those inherent in hiring, draw out embedded values and assumptions. In the case of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), we have an opportunity to learn more about HSI’s and how members of the faculty think about their mission of serving Latinx students. Drawing on both organizational culture (Schein, 1990) and Borderlands theory (Anzaldúa, 1987), the objectives of this study are to contribute to the broader conversations around what it means to serve Latinx students at HSIs, as well as to add to the body of research on hiring racially minoritized faculty. ❧ A majority of the research on HSIs from a cultural perspective either looks at Latinx culture broadly or at the culturally-relevant classroom spaces
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Villarreal, Cynthia Diana
(author)
Core Title
Embedding and embodying a Hispanic-serving consciousness: a phenomenological case study of faculty hiring experiences
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Urban Education Policy
Publication Date
12/08/2020
Defense Date
10/19/2020
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
borderlands,case study,faculty,faculty hiring,faculty search committees,Hispanic-serving institution,HSI,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational culture,phenomenology
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Posselt, Julie Renee (
committee chair
), Bensimon, Estela Mara (
committee member
), Jacobs, Lanita (
committee member
)
Creator Email
cdrodrig@usc.edu,cynthiavillarreal915@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-406451
Unique identifier
UC11668605
Identifier
etd-Villarreal-9189.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-406451 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-Villarreal-9189.pdf
Dmrecord
406451
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Villarreal, Cynthia Diana
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
borderlands
case study
faculty
faculty hiring
faculty search committees
Hispanic-serving institution
HSI
organizational culture
phenomenology