About / news-main / News-archives / July 12 / Gevirtz School researchers awarded a UC Center for New Racial Studies (UCCNRS) grant

July 17, 2012
For immediate release

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara's Gevirtz School awarded a UC Center for New Racial Studies (UCCNRS) grant

Patricia Marin, Richard Durán, and Christine Victorino from UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School have been awarded a UC Center for New Racial Studies (UCCNRS) mini-grant for the project “Becoming an Hispanic-Serving Institution: Including Graduate Students in the Vision.”

The purpose of this proposed initiative is to understand what it would mean for graduate students at UCSB when the institution becomes an Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). This project is novel in its focus on understanding the complex process of becoming an HSI for one of the top higher education institutions in the country while considering the experience and role of graduate students in this process. This institutional transformation will be important to understand because demographics suggest that higher education institutions will continue to see a rise in the enrollment of Latino/Chicano students. For many institutions this will be a scenario for which they are unprepared.

Marin, Durán, and Victorino’s project provides the opportunity to: 1) expand the HSI literature by including an examination of graduate students; 2) expand the current discussion at UCSB and spread awareness on the campus; 3) develop a pro-active plan of action for UCSB that includes graduate students, and 4) offer a model for other institutions who will follow in UCSB’s footsteps. More broadly, this endeavor will allow the campus to consciously think about the racial transformation of the institution, the new opportunities it will give UCSB to be involved in a whole new set of dialogues around issues of race, and the responsibilities this places on the institution as a whole.

The researchers will convene a day-long forum to discuss project findings. In addition, the team will present their research at the UCCNRS annual research conference for 2012-2013, featuring work on “Race-Making, Race-Neutrality, and Race-Consciousness,” which will be held at UC Irvine on Friday, May 3, 2013.

Patricia Marin is a researcher and lecturer in the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara and associate director of the UC Educational Evaluation Center (UCEC). She studies issues of inclusion and equity in higher education for underrepresented students. In particular, her work examines issues of diversity, affirmative action, and college access. She is coeditor of Realizing Bakke’s Legacy: Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, and Access to Higher Education (with C. L. Horn, Stylus, 2008), Higher Education and the Color Line (with G. Orfield and C. L. Horn, Harvard Education Press, 2005), and Moving Beyond Gratz and Grutter: The Next Generation of Research (with M. Moses, 2006), a special issue of Educational Researcher, which received the Outstanding Publication Award of the American Educational Research Association’s Division J (Higher Education).

Richard Durán is a professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School and an affiliate of the UCSB Office of Educational Partnerships. A Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), he centers his research interests on assessment, literacy, and learning of persons from varied language and cultural backgrounds, but they are not confined solely to learning in school settings. He is also deeply involved in implementing outreach interventions improving college preparation and college access among youths from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education.

Christine Victorino is a Ph.D. candidate in the Education Leadership and Organizations emphasis in the Department of Education. Her dissertation examines faculty satisfaction, productivity, and collegiality in higher education. Her co-advisors are Drs. Sharon Conley and Karen Nylund-Gibson. Victorino currently works as Director of Academic Assessment at Pitzer College and previously completed her M.A. in Education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

[Patricia Marin, Richard Durán, and Christine Victorino are available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]

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