Napa Valley College can now qualify as a Hispanic Serving Institution and is now eligible to apply for HSI-related grants.
To qualify as an HSI, a college must have at least 25% of FTES (full-time-equivalent students) claimed by Hispanic students.
Traditionally a large percentage of students do not indicate their ethnicity on the admissions application.
The effort to encourage students to declare their ethnicity for purposes of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution and thus eligible to apply for millions in Federal grants that will serve ALL students (not just Latinos), is critical in this era of limited funding for education, said Oscar De Haro, vice president of student services. “If the college is able to obtain these grants, it will benefit all students,” he said.
At the beginning of this academic year Hispanic students claimed approximately 19.9% of FTES, while students of unknown (unreported) racial/ethnic backgrounds claimed 30% of FTES at NVC. Thanks to efforts by the college researcher, with leadership from the Office of Student Services, a college-wide committee, and the “Declare Yourself” campaign, additional Hispanic students were identified.
A website for collecting data was launched, and fall 2010 credit students with unreported race/ethnicity information were contacted through email, robo-calls, and personal telephone calls and encouraged to update their records.
“According to our calculations, Hispanic students claimed approximately 27% of FTES in fall 2010 and the proportion of FTES claimed by “unknowns” was reduced by 14%,” said Dr. Robyn Wornall, director, Institutional Research. “For the first time, the numbers we report to the federal government via IPEDS (the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) show that Hispanic students claimed more than 25% of NVC headcount.”
Students are still being encouraged to share more complete information with the college.
If students have not declared their ethnicity, there is still time. The college recently learned that there is some money from fiscal year 2010 that is available from the U.S. Department of Education for HSI STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) and articulation projects. Since the funding is from 2010, HSI qualification for grant proposals will be based on fall 2009 enrollments. NVC’s fall 2009 IPEDS data indicate that Hispanic students claimed 19% of headcount. “Our records show that Hispanic students claimed approximately 24.5% of FTES. NVC is continuing the Declare Yourself campaign and contacting ‘unknowns’ from fall 2009 in an effort to meet the application deadline of April 29,” Wornall said.