When Samuel Nava applied to Wichita State, he had to navigate the application and financial aid process on his own.
“When I was going to college and filling out my FAFSA, my mom literally just gave me her social security number,” Nava said. “It was one of those, ‘I don’t know what to do,’ and my mom, she didn’t speak English, or know how to use a computer.”
Nava went on to graduate and later completed his graduate degree at WSU. Nava is now a community resource navigator at WSU Tech. His job is to help students navigate applying to college.
Last year, he was also made director of Hispanic Serving Initiatives. In this role, he oversees programs designed to help Hispanic students at WSU Tech. WSU Tech recently hit a milestone that Nava attributed, in part, to some of these programs.
A quarter of enrolled students at WSU Tech are Hispanic. Reaching that number opens up new opportunities for the technical college.
Colleges and universities that are made up of a quarter or more Hispanic students can be designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). That means they can apply for several grants that wouldn’t be available to them otherwise.
“It’s a lot of funding opportunities for us to create more initiatives, more programming to help underrepresented communities,” Nava said.
It’s a designation that Wichita State is approaching as well.
As of 2023, 17% of undergraduate degree-seeking students at Wichita State were Hispanic, and 13.4% of bachelor’s degrees were earned by Hispanic students.
WSU has projected that it will reach a 25% Hispanic student body and an HSI designation by 2030.
Sara Mata is the director of Hispanic Serving Initiatives at WSU. She’s responsible for making sure the university is equipped to serve the growing Hispanic population of students.
“WSU in the last two years and probably a little bit longer, there were some folks here that were doing work around this conversation of like, ‘OK, our numbers (of Hispanic students) are increasing. How are we being intentional about providing resources?’” Mata said.
The Office of Hispanic Serving Initiatives oversees several programs, including multicultural scholarships and works to help Spanish-speaking parents of WSU students understand the university. The office also helps support student organizations.
Danny Rodriguez is part of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization (HALO). Rodriguez said he thinks the university is doing “an amazing job” at supporting Hispanic students.
“We’re creating a lot of different events for the students to come out and interact with each other,” Rodriguez said.
Lorena Favela is also part of HALO and said that the university helps HALO involve more students.
“They have that advantage of helping us get our organization (to be) more promoted and out there for students who might not know more about the organization,” Favela said.
Nava and Mata said they want students to know that Hispanic Service Initiatives don’t just benefit Hispanic students.
“I know specifically we talk about Hispanic Serving Initiatives, Hispanic Serving Institutions,” Nava said. “Sometimes that gets taken out of context. One of the important things that I like to tell everyone is that just because a school is Hispanic serving that doesn’t mean that they’re Hispanic exclusive.”
Mata said her office plans to keep improving its services for Hispanic students.
“For me, it’s all about the intent,” Mata said. “What are we wanting to see? And a lot of HSIs have been HSIs forever, and don’t really do anything other than enroll (Hispanic students), or they’ll get these grants, and it doesn’t really necessarily benefit the students holistically.
“And that’s why I feel like the work that we’re doing now in this role is going to set it up long-term to be successful and ready for when we do meet that HSI designation.”
