Hispanic -serving institutions: Websites and student facilitation programs

Michael Leighton Fisher, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

The current state (October of 2005) of Student Facilitation Programs, as advertised by individual university Websites/links, of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the United States, is presented within the historic (1960--2005) context of social educational foundations. In general, facilitation programs should encourage collegian achievement, from the beginning to the end of the educational process. Specifically, however, HSIs have the added responsibility of accommodating the needs of individual students in terms of their cultural attributes. In this study, an expert panel of educational professionals was gathered to develop a Website Evaluation Tool for use in the critique of Student Facilitation Programs, i.e. (Bridge, Freshman, Support and Serving) which target Hispanic students/culture. In particular, the 9 HSIs focused upon were defined as major four-year institutions located in the southwestern (California, New Mexico and Texas) United States. Per the study's Research Questions the following conclusions are: (1) the best HSIs, like good community colleges, devote most of their resources to promoting the education of the local populace; (2) however, with few exceptions (the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of San Antonio in particular) Hispanic culture is usually more of an add-on to existing programs which focus on diversity; (3) in addition, the overall invitingness of HSI Website advertisement, in terms of the representation of Hispanic culture, varies depending upon the goals of administrations and how well those goals were carried out by Web designers.

Subject Area

Higher education|Bilingual education|Multicultural education|Educational software

Recommended Citation

Fisher, Michael Leighton, "Hispanic -serving institutions: Websites and student facilitation programs" (2005). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI3196420.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI3196420

Share

COinS