UC Riverside

Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) have become an essential point of access for Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x undergraduate students. UC Riverside is uniquely positioned to understand access and opportunity for Chicano/Latino students as the first HSI in the University of California system designated in 2008 and one of the first Hispanic Serving Research Institutions (HSRIs). While there has been a growing body of literature on HSIs, serving is often defined in a contemporary context, and few studies involve Chicano/Latino students in determining what serving means to them at an HSI. In this study, I define serving as the ability to promote a culture of student success that enrolls, cultivates, validates, and graduates Chicano/Latino students.

Guided by Critical Race Theory and Chicana Feminist Theory, this Participatory Action Research study centers the voices and experiences of Chicano/Latino students both historically and presently to identify the origins of Chicano/Latino student success at UCR and trace the university’s trajectory to becoming an award-winning HSI (Matute, 2022). I created a course to explore the labor of Chicano/Latino student activists and faculty from the 1960s-1970s. Twelve Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x undergraduate co-researchers and I formed Encuentros, Student Participation Action Research, and Testimonios (ESPARiTU). Over the span of three academic quarters, we analyzed archival documents, including photographs, outreach flyers, student newspapers, and college information brochures. We also conducted three testimonios (oral histories). We interviewed Dr. Carlos E. Cortés, who was one of two UCR Chicano faculty in the 1960s-1970s foundational to the formation of Chicano Student Programs and the concept of serving Chicano/Latino students at UCR. We also interviewed two students, Ofelia Valdez-Yeager and Alfredo Figueroa, who played a central role in Chicano student activism and helped establish support structures for Chicano students during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to facilitating the course and engaging in the ESPARiTU research, I conducted collective observations, field notes, pre and post interviews, and analyzed co-researcher weekly journal submissions. I placed our collective analysis of the archival materials and oral accounts in conversation with my analysis of the ESPARiTU undergraduate experiences to map continuities and contestations across time.

This collaborative research affirms the vital role of Chicano student activists and leaders in the 1960s-1970s in establishing structures of serving at UCR. Engaging in this historical recovery, Chicano/Latino undergraduate students gained a renewed sense of self-determination evident in three phases: 1) conocimiento (knowledge production), 2) comunidad (establishing a collaborative knowledge community), and 3) cambio (change). To preserve and pass on the revelatory counter history we excavated, ESPARiTU created a new digital collection that is available for the community and scholars to learn about the Chicano/Latino presence and evolution at UCR. This study advances our knowledge of HSRIs by recovering the practices and tools used to promote a culture of Chicano/Latino student success and liberation at UC Riverside.