Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Within a few months of 2020, we’ve experienced challenges that have grasped the world, the nation, and UC Davis, e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, greater attention to loss of Black lives to violence, and greater recognition of the incidence and impacts of ongoing racism. These challenges continue, and our community has been traumatized—seeking answers and ways to cope. However, despite these difficulties, there is strength, resilience, and a continued—indeed a collaborative—commitment to equity and justice. Ensuring that justice is served is not limited to the work of a few, it is up to all of us to join in and work together.

Despite the difficulties imposed by the pandemic, particularly in terms of holding in-person events and strategy sessions, from November 2020 to June 2021, the Hispanic Serving Institution Phase 2 Implementation Task Force took up the challenge of advancing the goals of the 2019 report, Investing in Rising Scholars and Serving the

State of California: What It Means to be original task force.

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) has yet to reach 25% Latinx undergraduate fulltime enrollment, the threshold necessary to formally become a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Nonetheless, the campus’ commitment to its HSI initiative and vision stands apart from any official U.S. Department of Education (ED) designation. For more than three years, UC Davis has vigorously developed and pursued its own HSI vision of institutional transformation. Together, campus staff, faculty, students, and alums conceptualized the opportunity at hand and articulated HSI priorities at UC Davis in a path-breaking 2019 report, “Investing in Rising Scholars and Serving California: What it Means for UC Davis to be a Hispanic-Serving Institution.” This brief will highlight the momentum leading to the report as well as what has occurred afterwards in terms of implementation.

In June 2018 Chancellor May invited twenty-nine distinguished scholars, administrators, community members, and students to serve on a task force to help UC Davis define what success should mean for a research intensive, public land-grant, Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in California. The Task Force was charged with examining and making recommendations to continue to improve the success and well-being of all our students, including our Latinx and Chicanx students, and to identify the resources and reforms necessary to achieve these goals. The task force report was released in 2019.

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) has yet to reach 25% Latinx undergraduate fulltime enrollment, the threshold necessary to formally become a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Nonetheless, the campus’ commitment to its HSI initiative and vision stands apart from any official U.S. Department of Education (ED) designation. For more than three years, UC Davis has vigorously developed and pursued its own HSI vision of institutional transformation. Together, campus staff, faculty, students, and alums conceptualized the opportunity at hand and articulated HSI priorities at UC Davis in a path-breaking 2019 report, “Investing in Rising Scholars and Serving California: What it Means for UC Davis to be a Hispanic-Serving Institution.” This brief will highlight the momentum leading to the report as well as what has occurred afterwards in terms of implementation.

When I reflect back, not only on the year covered in this report, but the past eighteen months, I consider how much effort it has taken to make sure that tens of thousands in our campus and community are safe and healthy (physically and mentally), yet also are able to meet their basic needs, be productive, and serve others. It has been a daunting task, but we are UC Davis, and UC Davis has taken this challenge head on.