Issues of racial inequity are increasingly at the forefront of America’s public debate. In addition to urgent concerns about racial bias in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, activists highlight deeply connected issues of economic exclusion and inequality. No metric more powerfully captures the persistence and growth of economic inequality along racial and ethnic lines than the racial wealth gap.

• Amy Traub, Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede, & Tom Shapiro
• Available at: http://cahsi.cs.utep.edu/cahsifiles/Files/ssnlh/Asset_Value_of_Whiteness…
• Read the article here.

Finding Your Workforce: Latinos in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) identifies the top institutions graduating Latinos in STEM disciplines for 2012-13, and spotlights replicable practices and efforts at select colleges and universities. This brief provides a snapshot of Latinas in STEM, as well as strategies for successful STEM pathways to increase access and interest in these fields. It offers opportunities for action to improve Latino retention and degree completion and increase representation in the STEM workforce. The brief is part of Excelencia’s efforts to inform recruiters and employers of institutions graduating Latinos in key sectors and encourages them to do more to engage Latinos in their workforce.

• Deborah A. Santiago, Morgan Taylor, Emily Calderón Galdeano
• Available here.

“Despite the increasing numbers of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and their importance in serving students who have historically been underserved in higher education, limited research has addressed the meaning of the growth of these institutions and its implications for higher education. Hispanic-Serving Institutions fills a critical gap in understanding the organizational behavior of institutions that serve large numbers of low-income, first-generation, and Latina/o students. Leading scholars on HSIs contribute chapters to this volume, exploring a wide array of topics, data sources, conceptual frameworks, and methodologies to examine HSIs’ institutional environments and organizational behavior. This cutting-edge volume explores how institutions can better serve their students and illustrates HSIs’ changing organizational dynamics, potentials, and contributions to American higher education.”

• Nunez, A., Hurtado, S., and Calderon E. (2015). Hispanic-Serving Institutions – Advancing Research and Transformative Practice. New York: Routledge.
• Available here.

¡Excelencia! In Education is committed to using data to inform public policy and institutional practice to achieve our mission of accelerating student success for Latinos in higher education. We know college success does not begin at the college gates. Every educational experience from early childhood to high school and into the workforce influences the potential for college success. For this reason, this publication looks critically at the entire educational pipeline and the context in which our students are learning in order to better understand and inform decision makers about the multiple paths to success for Latino, and all, students.

These fact sheets provide reference tools for today’s diverse stakeholders and can be used to inform data-driven discussions about their efforts to improve Latino educational achievement. The release of “The Condition of Latinos in Education: 2015 Factbook” continues our commitment to provide baseline information on Latino educational progress and to recognize the practices, policies and partnerships with evidence of effectiveness in serving Latino students.

• Available here.

The Family Engagement for High School Success Toolkit: Planning and implementing an initiative to support the pathway to graduation for at-risk students, highlights the lessons learned from a planning process that tasked 15 local United Way “pilot sites” with bringing together schools, community organizations, families, and other stakeholders to a develop a comprehensive family engagement initiative. With support from the UWW and HFRP, these pilot sites adopted outcome-focused approaches with the aim of designing family engagement strategies to remove obstacles to engagement, and, ultimately, build stronger connections between families and schools. From this careful planning process the pilot sites and their partners in the community developed implementation plans with strong potential for success.

• Available at: http://cahsi.utep.edu/cahsifiles/Files/ssnlh/FEHSToolkit.pdf

Women are less likely than men to stay in engineering majors and to become engineers because they want to have families and are more insecure about their math abilities, right? Not necessarily, suggests a new study in the October issue of the American Sociological Review.

• Available here.

The somewhat tired, but still quite true, “It’s not who you know, but who knows you” maxim is something to keep in mind as the professional conference season starts to heat up. Do you have plans to attend a meeting this year? Will you be strategic about how you spend your energy when you are there? How will you use the time to strengthen your professional reputation and position yourself for new opportunities? Here are a few tips to consider.

• Available here.

Our science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to America’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.

• Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
• Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs – considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
• Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
• Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare.

There are many possible factors contributing to the discrepancy of women and men in STEM jobs, including: a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields. Regardless of the causes, the findings of this report provide evidence of a need to encourage and support women in STEM.

As Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) grow in numbers, it is important to address how these two- and four-year colleges and universities can truly be Hispanic-serving institutions, as opposed to simply being considered Hispanic-enrolling institutions. This policy brief represents a collaborative effort involving the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE), the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the University of Southern California Center for Urban Education (CUE), and the Departments of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio. The goals of this brief are to aid HSIs in: (1) attending to their mission and identity in order to develop programmatic initiatives that promote Latina/o student success, and (2) focusing on collecting data to assess the extent HSIs are meeting their mission to improve educational outcomes for Latino students. Malcom, E., Mara B.E., Dávila, B., 2010. (Re)Constructing Hispanic-Serving Institutions:Moving Beyond Numbers Toward Student Success. Retrieved December 2010.

• Available here.

This report examines the most commonly used forms of financial aid and college financing strategies among Latino STEM bachelor’s degree holders. Given the large number of Latinos enrolled in community colleges and at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), the report examines the financing strategies of those students who earned associate’s degrees and attended HSIs in comparison with those who did not. Malcom, L., Dowd A., Yu, T. IBM, 2010. Tapping HSI-STEM Funds to Improve Latina and Latino Access to STEM Professions. (Center for Urban Education) . Retrieved December 2010.

• Available here: report 3 Tapping HSI-STEM Funds to Improve Latina and Latino Access to STEM Professions.pdf

The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in postsecondary education. HERI is housed in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS)at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The Institute’s research program covers a variety of topics including the outcomes of postsecondary education, leadership development, institutional transformation, faculty performance, federal and state policy, and educational equity. Visiting scholars, faculty, and graduate students have made use of HERI facilities and its research resources since its affiliation with UCLA in 1973. HERI Research programs related to CAHSI include:

• Diverse Learning Environments
• Post- Baccalaureate Experiences

The 2009 Tomás Rivera Lecture explores the opportunities and challenges provided by the rapidly growing school-age Hispanic population in the United States. It describes how despite educational progress, the Hispanic achievement gap persists. This report documents Hispanic demographics, growth trends, educational attainment and road blocks leading to Hispanic underrepresentation in higher education.

• Tienda, Marta. 2009. Hispanicity and Educational Inequality: Risks, Opportunities and the Nation’s Future. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
• Available here.

This paper presents a model and guide for scaling effective programs that promotes planned withdrawal of support and leads to a self-sufficient program. The model is based on the belief that “public services such as education should be funded primarily by public funds, but that public/private partnerships can create the impetus to maximize effective programs.

• National Science and Math Initiative, Taking Successful Programs to Scale and Creating Lasting Results.
• Available here.

Public Agenda s interviewed Hispanic scientists and inventors, officers at technology corporations, leaders from prominent non-profit and corporate entities, as well as government and educational institutions, about what’s needed to bring more Hispanic youngsters into science, technology and math professions. This report summarizes the themes that emerged.

• Public Agenda Report, IBM, Out Before The Game Begins: Hispanic Leaders Talk about What’s Needed to Bring More Hispanic Youngsters Into Science, Technology and Math Professions. (Palisades, NY May 2008).
• Available here.