Description

The Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU) is a group of 21 universities across nine states that joined together to increase opportunities for students historically underserved in education, namely Hispanic or Latinx. As R1-universities and national leaders, the members of the HSRU Alliance have a unique opportunity and indeed a responsibility to improve the pathways for Hispanic students beyond the baccalaureate degree into graduate and professional programs, and as doctoral graduates to contribute to the diversity of the faculty of higher education institutions, and future leadership in government and private sectors.
HSRU’s work focuses on achieving two important goals by 2030. First, it seeks to double the number of Hispanic doctoral students enrolled at its member universities, and second, it seeks to increase the number of professors by 20%. Both goals will require intentional work and collaboration among the Alliance universities, partnerships with other like-minded institutions, and the support of public and private partners. Though the Alliance’s broad goal of increasing the number of Hispanic faculty is agnostic to disciplines, because of their historically low participation rates, an area of particular opportunity for increasing the number of women Hispanic/Latina doctoral students and faculty lies within the physical sciences and engineering.
UC Santa Cruz, under the direction of HSRU Alliance Executive Committee member Chancellor Cynthia Larive, seeks support from the Luce Foundation in implementing an Alliance convening to be held at the UC Santa Cruz campus from June 26 – 29, 2023. The three-day convening will gather representatives from the Alliance, bringing together an inaugural cohort of women Hispanic faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in the physical sciences and engineering disciplines. The convening will be led by a design-thinking facilitator with the goal of guiding the cohort to identify opportunities and collaboratively develop a framework to support women Hispanic STEM faculty and students as they advance in their academic and professional careers.
The program will include keynote speakers, panel discussion, and breakout sessions, with options to gather both according to role (faculty, postdoc, or graduate student) and according to discipline to generate innovative ideas, conversation, and connections. The convening will also include a seed grant program offered to cohorts to encourage participants to catalyze their newly developed ideas and relationships by developing. UCSC will offer three seed grants of up to $25,000, one for each of the groups (faculty, postdocs, and graduate students).
UCSC anticipates that the program will produce a replicable and scalable model for developing cross-regional programming and research, will increase interdisciplinary, cross-institutional, and cross-regional programming and research, will forge strong relationships and networks among participants, and will foster new and collaborative projects. This effort will also lead to future programmatic and research efforts by the Alliance. The Alliance is exploring an expanded collaborative project aiming to increase the number of Hispanic doctoral students with the Department of Education, and it is discussing an Alliance and NSF collaborative project to engage the “missing millions” of underrepresented Hispanics in STEM disciplines. In expanding programming with federal and foundation partners, the Alliance will increase its sustainability over time, and this inaugural convening will play a key role in positioning the Alliance for long-term success.
Foundation staff invited Cynthia Larive to submit a request for support. UCSC seeks Foundation support, which it hopes to use as leverage to secure future funding partners to expand the program. Foundation support would go toward meeting rooms and planning services, childcare reimbursement, grant programming, honoraria, and facilitation.