Chapter 9: HSIs and Community Partners: a Framework for Strengthening Servingness Through Engagement

We argue that community engagement for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) represents efforts between the institution and community partners that contribute to an organizational culture that supports “legitimized” outcomes for Latinx students, including 6-year graduation rates, job placement, and post-baccalaureate enrollment (Garcia, 2017). Garcia (2017) suggests that community engagement is one of six indicators of a Latinx-serving identity at HSIs and found further evidence to include community engagement as an indicator of servingness in the Multidimensional Conceptual Framework of Servingness (Garcia, Nuñez, & Sansone, 2019). Although research confirms that community engagement is essential to an ideal Latinx-serving identity (Garcia, 2017), little is known about why and how HSIs understand and engage with their community, including how they determine which community partners to involve, how they engage them in a culture of inquiry that is committed to equity and inclusion (Gonzales, 2015), and the outcomes associated with such engagement. As the number of HSIs grew to 523 in Fall 2017 (Excelencia in Education, 2018), there is critical value in improving our understanding of why and how HSIs engage with community partners, and what value such partnerships bring to the institution’s overall ability to serve students.