Providing an Overview of the CSU HSI Landscape at CSU Student Success Network’s Beyond Designation convening

Dr. Amber Gonzalez and Dr. Kevin Ferreira van Leer, co-leads of the Using Our Voices to Transform HSIs Collaborative, were invited to speak at the California State University (CSU) Student Success Network’s Beyond Designation: Thinking Intentionally About Servingness in the CSU convening on November 5, 2025. Drs. Gonzalez and Ferreira van Leer grounded the convening with an overview of the CSU Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Landscape.  

Drs. Gonzalez and Drs. Ferreira van Leer proposed viewing the CSU system as an HSI system – some important data points:

• 21 of the 22 CSU campuses are federally designated as HSIs

  • The remaining campus, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) + Maritime, is federally designated as an emerging HSI as well as a federally designated Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI)
    

  • CSU Channel Islands was the first CSU named an HSI in 2010  
    

• 10 of the 22 CSUs are multi-designated institutions (see Table 1) 

  • 10 CSUs are federally designated as an HSI and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI).  
    

  • Sacramento State, is the one CSU that currently holds three designations, as a federally designated HSI, AANAPISI, and most recently, a CA designated Black-Serving Institution (BSI, Senate Bill 1348)
    

The CSU system plays a significant role in driving Latineⁱ bachelor’s degree attainment in California:

• 62% of all bachelor’s degrees earned by Latine students are from the CSU system

  
  

• 50.1% of undergraduate students identify as Latine¹ (Fall 2024)  

  • 40.2% of graduate students identify as Latine

    
    

• According to the CSU Student Success Dashboard, of students who begin as freshmen, in spring 2018, only 56.3% of Latine students graduate in 6-years, compared to 70.6% of White students. Whereas, for transfer students, 83.3% of Latine students graduate within 6 years compared to 85.2% of White students.

  • The four-year graduation rate shows similar degree attainment trends. Of students who begin as freshmen, in spring 2020, only 29.9% of Latine students graduate in 4-years, compared to 50.1% of White students. Whereas, for transfer students, 79.8% of Latine students graduate within 4 years compared to 82.3% of White students. 

    
    

CSU Forward: A New Strategic Plan for the CSU, which was proposed in fall 2025, creates an opportunity to focus on student success, grounded in servingness (Garcia et al., 2019), focusing on students’ holistic success including academic, professional, and personal outcomes. For example, the new strategic plan focuses on outcomes such as career development and employment opportunities for graduates.

Dr. Gonzalez and Ferreira van Leer also discussed how specific structures of servingness across the CSUs can be transformed for servingness, pointing to some exemplar cases: 

• Institutional mission, vision & purpose statements 

  • Exemplar: California State University, Sacramento list its designation as a HSI (as well as an Asian American Native, American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution and Black-Serving Institution). This is important as mission statements are reflective of the overall culture of an institution (Hernandez, 2014) and have the opportunity to guide an organization and institution toward transformative practices that may push them to fully and adequately embrace Hispanic students, their identities, and needs (Garcia, 2015).  

• Curricular and Co-Curricular Pedagogy 

  • Exemplar: California State University, Channel Islands’ Noche de Familia event. This event, led by staff and faculty, highlight that ways that center the cultural and racial ways of knowing of Latine students and their families (Garcia et al., 2019).    

    
    

With many exemplary structures for servingness across the system, the CSU HSI Action Research Network has still noted some areas for improvement. At the time of the presentation, there was a scattered coordination of institutional HSI efforts. For example, only 5 of the 21 CSUs designated as HSIs have an HSI Director or someone that has been identified as responsible for institutional coordinated HSI efforts. Additionally, there is no system-wide coordination efforts regarding HSI activities. This presents a tremendous opportunity for institutional and system-level collaboration. 

This opening presentation at the CSU Student Success Network’s Beyond Designation: Thinking Intentionally About Servingness in the CSU convening set the stage for subsequent panels by CSU leaders on (1) Defining and Operationalizing Servingness Beyond Designation and (2) Identifying, Collecting, and Using Data in Support of Servingness.  

References  

California State University. (2025). CSU Forward: Thriving Students, Thriving University, Thriving California – Strategic Plan 2025 [PDF]. The California State University. https://www.calstate.edu/Strategic-Planning-for-the-CSU/Documents/csu-strategic-plan-2025.pdf  

California State University. (n.d.). Diversity: The CSU’s Students. The California State University. Retrieved November 24, 2025, from https://www.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/diversity calstate.edu 

California State University. (2025, July). Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) fact sheet [PDF]. The California State University. https://www.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/diversity/Documents/HSI-fact-sheet.pdf calstate.edu 

California State University Channel Islands. (2010, April 30). CI Achieves Hispanic Serving Institution Status [News release]. https://www.csuci.edu/news/releases/2010_CI_Achieves_Hispanic_Serving_Institution_Status.htm csuci.edu 

California State University. (n.d.) CSU System – Percentage of students who graduated within 4 and 6 years [Data visualization]. CSU Student Success Dashboard.  https://public.dashboards.calstate.edu/csu-by-the-numbers/historical-grad-rates  

Table 1

Institutional Designations by California State University Campus 

	AANAPISI	HSI	BSI
Bakersfield		X
Channel Islands		X
Chico State		X
Dominguez Hills		X
East Bay	X	X
Fresno State	X	X
Fullerton	X	X
Humboldt		X
Long Beach	X	X
Los Angeles	X	X
Monterey Bay		X
Northridge		X
Pomona	X	X
Sacramento	X	X	X
San Bernardino		X
San Diego	X	X
San Francisco	X	X
San Jose	X	X
San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly)	X
San Marcos		X
Sonoma		X
Stanislaus		X