Maintaining the normative university standards that systemically inhibit the progress of a diverse and intersectional Hispanic/Latiné students no longer serve the progress of post-secondary institutions in the U.S., including CSU. Striving to become a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) will redefine what it means to serve minoritized students. A collective of activist scholars engaging critical HSI work have defined servingess as “understanding and enacting an anti-racism approach towards cultivating a campus culture and climate which affirms and validates minoritized students to create a sense of belonging and community through culturally enhancing, equitable approaches that offer transformative experiences leading to both academic and non-academic outcomes. Servingness must also integrate notions of whiteness, coloniality, and anti-blackness in our practice, teaching, and research” (used with permission from one of the scholars, Susana Muñoz, 2022).

Racialized minoritized institutions, such as HSIs, that are committed to increasing access to students of color, simultaneously improve commonly measured student success outcomes. While the racialization of post-secondary institutions has historically erased the rich diversity within minoritized populations, Hispanic/Latiné students represent a wide and complex range of social and ethnic backgrounds that intersect with multiple identities, such as gender, sexuality, immigration status, first-generation status, age, socioeconomic status, religion, and physical/mental abilities. Successfully enrolling and graduating Hispanic/Latiné students while enacting a culture that enhances their education and experience will not only attract Colorado’s largest growing student body to CSU, but it will also position us as a leading land-grant institution of our nation. Moreover, HSIs generally enroll a larger percentage of Black and other non-Black students of color, low-income students, and first-generation students.