Chapter 10: SGT. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club: Latino Administrators in Higher Education

The journey that most Latinos undertake in academia has been well-documented, either navigating the waters as a student (Berlak & Moyenda, 2001; Hagedorn, Chi, Cepeda, & McClain, 2007; Orfield, Losen, Wald, & Swanson, 2004) or as a faculty member (Delgado Bernal & Villapando, 2002; Delgado-Romero, Flores, Gloria, Arrendendo, & Castellanos, 2003; Turner & Myers, 2000) at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). However, the experiences of Latino administrators in higher education in their environment warrant more attention in the literature (Haro & Lara, 2003).

The present state of Latino administrators in higher education illustrates that more work needs to be done, considering long-reaching implications on institutions serving Latino populations. Latino administrators are instrumental in creating a hospitable and inclusive environment for Latino students and faculty alike as being powerbrokers on their campuses (Bensimon & Tierney, 1992/1993). In addition, from an institutional perspective, the number of administrators of color serves as a marker for institutional commitment to diversity (Jackson, 2001). And the general population of Latinos in the United States is growing at an extraordinary rate and recently overtook African Americans as the largest minority block in the country and on college campuses (Fry, 2011). In fact, the Pew Research Center projects Latinos constituting a majority in some states in the near future (Lopez, 2014). However, higher education has been slow to react to this demographic change, even though more Latinos are graduating from high schools in higher numbers (Fry & Taylor, 2013).