http://amaejournal.utsa.edu ISSN: 2377-9187 Volume 12 Issue 1 2018 AMAE Open Issue Editors Patricia Sánchez The University of Texas at San Antonio Antonio J. Camacho AMAE, Inc. Associate Editors Julie L. Figueroa Sacramento State Lucila D. Ek The University of Texas at San Antonio Association of Mexican American Educators Journal A peer-reviewed, open access journal http://amaejournal.utsa.edu/ Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2018, Volume 12, Issue 1 168 Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice. Anne- Marie Núñez, Sylvia Hurtado, & Emily Calderón Galdeano (Eds.). New York, NY: Routledge, 2015. pp. 228. ISBN-10: 1138814318. Paper: $47.95. Stephanie Aguilar-Smith Michigan State University Cynthia D. Villarreal University of Southern California The number of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) has grown exponentially since 1992 when Congress first recognized these colleges and universities. This federal designation applies to nonprofit two- and four-year postsecondary institutions enrolling at least 25% full-time equivalent Latinx1 undergraduate students and 50% or more students receiving need-based financial aid (Laden, 2004). As of 2015–2016, 472 institutions met the eligibility requirements for HSI status and matriculated about 2 million Latinx students (Excelencia in Education, 2017). In spite of this growth, there is a lack of consensus about what it means to truly serve Latinx students at HSIs (Garcia, Ramirez, Patron, & Medina, 2016). Furthermore, while scholars suggest that several factors complicate the understanding of HSIs, they often do not provide ways to transform HSIs to better serve Latinx students. However, Hispanic-serving institutions: Advancing research and transformative practice, a three-part volume edited by Núñez, Hurtado, and Calderón Galdeano, bridges this gap between scholarship and transformation. Championing asset-based, transformative research and practice, the volume’s three parts include: 1) contextualizing the culture, structure, and identity of HSIs; 2) framing institutional actors and experiences within HSIs; and 3) building capacity and accountability in HSIs. Across the chapters, the authors use a range of methodological approaches, theories, and units of analyses. Thus, this collection may serve as a comprehensive reference text for higher education administrators and student affairs practitioners at HSIs and emerging HSIs. Providing individual- and organizational-level data as well as research- and practice-based recommendations, this book 1 Although the book interchangeably uses the terms Hispanic and Latina/o, we use the identifier Latinx to describe the pan-ethnic group of persons from Spanish-speaking countries and/or descent. Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2018, Volume 12, Issue 1 169 may also benefit faculty, researchers, and policymakers focused on HSIs and other minority- serving institutions (MSIs). Faculty may integrate several of the text’s chapters into the curriculum of graduate higher education programs. For instance, Garcia’s use of organizational theories as an asset-based approach to study HSIs (chapter 5) and Hurtado, Gonzalez, and Calderón Galdeano’s application of organizational learning (chapter 10) would be insightful additions to higher education courses. Foregrounding asset-based and transformative research, the book includes empirical chapters on individual student outcomes and organizational analyses. This combination of multiple units of analysis is one of the text’s many strengths. The organizationally-based chapters (chapters 2, 5, 9, and 10) add to the understanding of HSIs as distinctive units meriting investigation. To further illuminate the institutionalized norms and structures operating among HSI administrators, faculty, and staff, future scholars may consider incorporating organizational theories combined with critical frames, as this approach would offer a more nuanced perspective on the experience of Latinxs at HSIs. For example, an organizational lens with a postcolonial application would highlight HSIs’ historical backdrop and yield more critical interpretations of power dynamics. Meanwhile, the volume’s attention to individual actors such as Cuellar’s analysis of Latinx students’ characteristics and outcomes (chapter 6) and Rodriguez and Calderón Galdeano’s examination of graduation rates across four-year HSIs, emerging HSIs, and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) (chapter 11) further contextualizes the unique space HSIs occupy in higher education. Moving forward, scholars may examine faculty at HSIs in more depth, considering, in particular, the different experiences between faculty of Color and their White counterparts. This volume also contributes to the growing research on HSIs by advancing innovative theoretical frameworks for praxis. For example, Gonzales (chapter 7) and Cortez (chapter 8) employed funds of knowledge to examine faculty and leadership at HSIs (Moll, Almanti, Neff, & González, 1992; Ríos-Aguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt, & Moll, 2011), and Cuellar (chapter 6) integrated Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model to evaluate student outcomes from an asset- based perspective. In addition to using theories that challenge traditional notions of success, future work may incorporate methodologies that center and legitimize racial and ethnic differences. For example, using methods from Chicanx and Latinx Studies and LatCrit—such as counterstories, testimonios, cuentos, and dichos—may generate a more critical consideration of Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2018, Volume 12, Issue 1 170 how racial and ethnic differences among students at HSIs impact their educational experiences and outcomes. Lastly, this collection also provides a solid foundation for future research on HSIs by inspiring scholars to abandon or to reimagine normalized approaches to research such as comparison studies between HSIs and PWIs or between Latinx students and their White peers. Indeed, the text invites future scholars to resist hegemonic whiteness deeply embedded in institutionalized norms, including an overreliance on such comparison studies that inadvertently may re-center long-powerful institutions and people. For instance, the volume’s push for transformation encourages reframed comparison studies such as research comparing HSIs to other MSIs, which share similar pressures and roles in supporting racially and ethnically minoritized students compared to PWIs. Attending to such cross-institutional comparisons, future work should also emphasize community colleges’ significant role in educating Latinx students. With the exception of Núñez, Crisp, and Elizondo’s analysis of community colleges’ transfer-function related to Latinx students (chapter 3), the text underexamined community colleges, many of which are HSIs and which collectively educate about 47% of all Latinx students in higher education (Smith Morest, 2015). Fundamentally, this volume beckons scholars to historicize and center HSIs’ realities—to privilege their sociohistorical evolution and distinctive resource conditions, particularly when analyzing their organizational effectiveness and their students’ outcomes (Núñez, 2017). As a whole, this volume prompts readers to reflect upon the ways research on HSIs may transform policy and practice and to reimagine how they may integrate asset-based perspectives in their work. This book also inspires many lines of future inquiry related to HSIs. Ultimately, this volume resists Frank’s (2013) notion of epistemic injustice—the exclusion of marginalized and minoritized people as knowledge producers—by urging methodological, ontological, epistemological, and axiological innovation among those studying HSIs (Núñez, 2017). Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2018, Volume 12, Issue 1 171 References Excelencia in Education. (2017). Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs): 2015–16. Washington, DC: Excelencia in Education. Retrieved from http://www.edexcelencia.org/gateway/dowload/306 17/1509499397 Frank, J. (2013). Mitigating against epistemic injustice in educational research. Educational Researcher, 42(7), 363–370. doi:10.3102/0013189X12457812 Garcia, G. A., Ramirez, J. J., Patron, O. E, & Medina, O. (2016). Reframing Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs): A counterstory of a “Latinized” institution in the Midwest. Center for MSI Research Brief, 1–13. Retrieved from https://cmsi.gse.upenn.edu/content/reframing- hispanic-serving-institutions-hsis-counterstory-%E2%80%9Clatinized%E2%80%9D- institution-midwest Laden, B. V. (2004). Hispanic-serving institutions: What are they? Where are they? Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28(3), 181–198. doi:10.1080/10668920490256381 Moll, L., Almanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: A qualitative approach to developing strategic connections between homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1476399 Núñez, A. M. (2017) Flipping the HSI narrative: An HSI positionality. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal. 11(3), 276–29. Retrieved from http://amaejournal.utsa.edu/index.php/amae/article/viewFile/385/295 Ríos-Aguilar, C., Kiyama, J. M., Gravitt, M., & Moll, L. C. (2011). Funds of knowledge for the poor and forms of capital for the rich? A capital approach to examining funds of knowledge. Theory and Research in Education, 9(2), 163–184. doi.org/10.1177/1477878511409776 Smith Morest, V. (2015). Faculty scholarship at community colleges: Culture, institutional structures, and socialization. New Directions for Community Colleges, 171, 21–36. doi.org/10.1002/cc Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006