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By Isaiah Rosario, Asst. Sports Editor
Manhattan College has officially been declared a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as of April, marking a major milestone for the institution.
According to the United States Department of Education, a Hispanic Serving Institution is defined as an, “institution of higher education that has an enrollment of undergraduate full-time students that is at least 25 percent Hispanic students at the end of the award year immediately preceding the date of application.”
Director of Grant Administration Brendan Considine spoke to The Quadrangle about the necessary criteria to become an HSI.
“There are multiple criteria that are required by the federal government to get this to make us eligible,” Considine said. “The first is the percentage of full-time equivalent undergraduates for Hispanics has to be at least 25%. The second [criterion] is something called educational and core expenses… the amount of money per full-time equivalent student that the college devotes to student support services…we had to be below a certain threshold and we are. The third [criterion] is the percentage of students who receive Title V aid.”
According to Associate Provost Rani Roy, the third criterion to become an HSI is also known as Pell eligibility.
“I would say we were just under that criteria,” Roy said. “We applied for a waiver of eligibility and that waiver was accepted. We are now an HSI. This eligibility is a year-long eligibility. They recalculate this every single year, but it opens us up to lots of different funding opportunities based on that eligibility.”
Considine explained that initially, the college did not meet the criteria to become an HSI.
“January [or] February, we were notified initially we didn’t qualify right around New Year’s,” Considine said. “Then you have the option to apply for a waiver, which we did. It wasn’t rocket science at all, but it was a pretty hefty application. We were able to, in April, find out that we did get the waiver which makes us as eligible as any other institution.”
Dean of Students Esmilda Abreu-Hornbostel discussed the importance of Manhattan College becoming an HSI.
“When you become an HSI, you’re making a statement that you’re here to facilitate the educational access and success for our Hispanic population,” Abreu-Hornbostel said. “You are dedicating your resources to making sure that our latino/latina students thrive on campus and we have the support we need. It’s a commitment and it also allows us to tap into the resources at the Department of Education level.”
One of the requirements to become an HSI is to have a Hispanic student population of at least 25 percent. Provost William Clyde spoke about how the percentage of Hispanic students on campus has changed in his time here.
“I arrived here in 2010,” Clyde said. “I’m doing this from memory, but I believe that in 2007, we had about 7% of our population in the incoming 2007 class was Hispanic. It has gradually but steadily been growing from there. We got to the incoming class being 25% about five years ago … the upper class wasn’t quite there and it rolls through the four classes, but it’s been steadily growing, really for 15 years.”
Roy also spoke about how becoming an HSI would help create a more diverse and inclusive environment for all students on campus. Specifically, it will allow for more Title V aid for students moving forward.
“One of the first things that we’re doing is that this opens us up to something called the Title V Grant,” Roy said. “[Title V Grant] is a federal grant called Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions to develop our infrastructure for support for underserved students, or underserved populations across the college. It’s thinking about how we support students positively in career outcomes, retention, graduation rate, and enrollment, and then how we support them through their time here.”