Embracing our HSI Identity and Servingness

What Does It Mean to be an HSI?

An institution of higher education (IHE) is designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) when it has an enrollment of undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25 percent “Hispanic” students or as recognized by Berkeley City College as students that identify as Latina, Latino, or Latinx or Chicana, Chicano or Chicanx.  Designations must be renewed every year.

Designated by the U.S. Department of Education, the HSI designation allows Berkeley City College to be eligible for federal grant funding, recognized as Title V, Developing Hispanic Serving Institution and Title III STEM grants.

Embracing our HSI Identity

Berkeley City College is proud to be formally designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and embraces our identity as an HSI serving Latinx and Chicanx students through our Conocimiento Los Caminos project. Our work is centered on equity and racial justice at Berkeley City College and we consider this as part of our commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity and antiracist action. We recognize the persistence of historical and structural systems of inequality and are implementing measurable steps towards equity and justice. We affirm our intent to act upon these values and hold ourselves accountable to the land and its people: our students, our communities and on another. We view the work as an HSI as integral to equity and racial equity and embrace the need to transform our institution beyond being Hispanic-enrolling to Latinx/Chicanx serving as a means to Transform Lives.

Pathway to Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

Berkeley City College is committed to developing an integrated infrastructure to support and meet the needs of all of our college campus community, to reach our racial equity imperative and build student academic success through the pathway of building a sense of belonging for our students. As part of that, Berkeley City College is committed to building and fostering a sense of belonging for our students through student-centered programming that integrates high impact practices and utilizes leadership, practice and data to support evidence-based decision making.  The final aim of our HSI work is to expand services for marginalized and minoritized communities by interrogating and transforming our systems with an equity advancing lens.

HSI Designation and Timeline

About Title V and Title V DHSI Projects