MSU Denver marks its 5th year as a Hispanic-Serving Institution

When Metropolitan State University of Denver was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education in 2019, it was a milestone that capped a dozen years of work by a University task force.

Five years later, MSU Denver’s continued status as an HSI reflects the University’s ongoing commitment to educating and empowering Hispanic/Latino/a/x students, setting the stage for initiatives that have benefited all students in the University.

On Monday, MSU Denver will kick off its observance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions Week, which recognizes the 569 HSIs throughout the nation and coincides with the first week of Hispanic Heritage Month.

“This is a big deal,” said Michael Benitez, Ph.D., MSU Denver’s vice president of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. “It relays to the students that we are committed, that we are mindful about the demographics of the surrounding area in particular and that we’re attentive to that trend but also the demographic representation in Denver and the state of Colorado.”

The HSI designation is an opportunity and a responsibility because it enables the University to apply for federal grant funding that has been specially earmarked for HSIs, but it requires ongoing efforts to maintain the designation, he said.

“Students might not know how much goes into supporting sustaining this designation — what we need to continue to do to assure that we’re successful and to assure that we’re doing this in a spirit of servingness,” Benitez said. “To lean into what this designation means to support and serve all students.”

As an example, he said, HSI designation “makes us eligible for National Science Foundation STEM-based grants, an effort at increasing representation in fields where Latino representation is a challenge. It opens the door to secure grants to pilot and put into place practices of sound teaching and effective pedagogy.”

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Under the leadership of Manuel Del Real, Ph.D., executive director of HSI Initiatives and Inclusion, MSU Denver played a key role in bringing Colorado’s HSIs together for this year’s Colorado HSI Summit, Benitez said.

“It’s amazing that five years later we have not only the designation, but we are also leading the way in putting together a statewide HSI consortium,” he said. “As opposed to seeing each other as competitors, how can we all dip into that pool of available funding in a true spirit of servingness and collaboration?”

Del Real, the University official tasked with ensuring that MSU Denver maintains its HSI designation, said federal criteria for the designation require that at least 25% of full-time undergraduate students be Latino. “We’re meeting that, at 37%,” he said. In addition, core expenses per full-time employee must be lower than the average institutional group and at least 50% of students must be receiving federal need-based aid, a metric MSU Denver has had difficulty meeting.

“Over these past couple of years, we haven’t met the threshold for need-based aid,” Del Real said. “It’s because students don’t submit the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).” Many MSU Denver students erroneously assume they wouldn’t qualify for aid, so they don’t fill out the paperwork, he said.

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While his office is urging all students to complete a FAFSA, he has devised a workaround to meet the Department of Education requirement. “It just requires more data that we provide to them,” he said. “Once I submit that data, we meet the threshold and we’re in the clear.”

Since 2019, MSU Denver has received more than $14 million in federal funding designated for HSIs and Minority Serving Institutions. Included in that funding are:

– A $2 million Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans grant for the Department of Nutrition.
– $5.6 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funding for HSIs.
– A $2.9 million Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions grant for SpaceTech Scholars.
– A $1 million National Science Foundation Building Identity Leading to Diversity grant.
– $1.5 million from the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program.

Chalane E. Lechuga, Ph.D., professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and director of Faculty Diversity Research and Development in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, said the HSI designation is “just another milestone in a long history of Hispanic-servingness.”

“The effort to pursue the official designation is rooted in this department,” she said.

An HSI Task Force was created in 2007 to consider ways to increase the proportion of Hispanic/Latino/a/x students at the University, Lechuga said. At the time, they made up 13% of the undergraduate population (but close to 20% of the state’s population was Hispanic/Latino/a/x). “It wasn’t just going to happen as a natural demographic shift,” she said. “It required some intentionality around community-building.”

The HSI designation has also played a role in shaping the student body, Lechuga said. “It allows us to recruit in different ways,” she said. “Students are hearing the messages about HSI-servingness and are coming to us because of that. It strengthens that message when there’s that institutional level of support.”

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Amelia Federico, a senior majoring in Political Science with a double minor in Chicana and Chicano Studies and Sexualities Studies, is a member of The Student Advisory Council. She believes student awareness of the University’s HSI designation is “a little bit hit-or-miss.”

“As someone who does identify as Latiné, it’s really nice not to go to a PWI (predominantly white institution),” she said. “I love MSU Denver. It’s not only diverse, but we have this designation that allows us to have things like the ODI that puts on Hispanic Heritage Month. That’s not something that you see a lot.”

Federico notes MSU Denver is the largest HSI in Colorado and that the designation helps set the tone for campus inclusivity.

“I don’t feel like this elitist pressure cooker that sometimes can be higher education,” she said. “That has been instrumental to my success and is why I love MSU Denver. It creates a sense of belonging that meets people where they are.

“There’s a different level of comfort when you walk into a space and you see so many different people and you’re bound to see somebody who looks like you and you’re bound to have a professor who looks like you. I think it’s really liberating.”