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  5. Spring 2022

Empowering Latinx Students: Scholarly Perspectives on UC San Diego as an Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)

To earn official status as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) from the U.S. Department of Education, an institution must reach at least 25% full-time Latinx undergraduate student enrollment.  With approximately 20% full-time Latinx undergraduate student enrollment and growing, UC San Diego is currently considered an Emerging HSI.  While enrollment numbers are an important way to measure our institutional commitments to Latinx students, there are so many other interwoven factors that shape the lived academic experiences of Latinx students.

This scholarly conversation shifts the focus beyond enrollment demographics to ask how UC San Diego can better serve and empower Latinx students.  Sharing findings from their own research, student and faculty scholars will discuss how Latinx individuals navigate selfhoods that shape and are shaped by their sociocultural, geographical, and educational contexts. 

Faculty Moderator

  • Dr. Gerardo Arellano

    Dr. Gerardo Arellano

    Dr. Gerardo N. Arellano is the inaugural director of the Raza Resource Centro at UC San Diego. Dr. Arellano received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his BA from UC San Diego in the departments of comparative ethnic studies. His research interests include trans-border culture and migrations, de-colonial pedagogies, Latinx post secondary educational achievement and retention. He has extensive experience working with underserved students of color at the community, high-school, and university levels. He loves to work with students and he enjoys advising graduate and undergraduate students, strategic planning, curriculum design, program development and assessment. He is passionate about coaching students to obtain scholarships, internships, research and conference experience.

Student Panelists

  • Valeria Castro-Abril

    Valeria Castro-Abril

    Valeria Castro Abril is a fourth year literature/writing student, a 2022 McNair Scholar, and head of the Muir Outspoken creative writing group at UC San Diego. She is originally from San Diego and Tijuana. Her research discusses disparity and violence at the US-Mexico pedestrian ports of entry, with a special focus on daily student crossers.
  • Luis Ramirez

    Luis Ramirez

    Luis Ramírez is a fourth year Spanish Literature student and two time recipient of the Triton Research Experiential Learning Scholars grant .  They are originally from Michoacán Mexico and their research focuses on the effect of trans generational memory and the study of feminist movements.   They primarily focus within the region of Mexico and Santiago de Chile studying the effect that memory has in the post dictatorship. 

Alumn Panelist

  • Donna Yerat-Rodriguez

    Donna Yerat-Rodriguez

    I graduated from UC San Diego in June 2021 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and a minor in Ethnic Studies. While I attended UC San Diego I was involved with LGBT Resource Center, Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services (OASIS), Chancellor’s Associates Scholarship Program (CASP), and the RAZA Centro. 

    After my undergrad, I have been dedicated to completing a year of service with Americorps where I serve as a Community Liaison for a non-profit organization called Immigration Counseling Service in Oregon. I work with Latinx immigrant farmworkers in rural Oregon to provide them with legal rights information in Spanish. In the future, I hope to work in Southern California advocating for immigrant rights. 

    My research project looked at how those who identify as Latinx first-generation college students define success for themselves during their college experience at UC San Diego. My findings indicated that students defined success as being able to go back to their communities with the knowledge and degree they gained to uplift their own community.