Cal Poly Hispanic/Latino enrollment reached 25% for the first time. The news was announced at the Hispanic Serving Institution Symposium Wednesday and in a university press release.
Meeting the 25% threshold is a major requirement to become a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).
To officially apply to be an HSI, the university has to maintain a 25% Hispanic/Latino enrollment for two years.
HSIs are eligible to receive specific grants from the federal government. However, universities are not required to spend funding directly on Hispanic/Latino students.
“We’re so excited for this, but this is not a stop gap,” said Beya Makekau, the associate vice president for DEI strategic planning and networks, at the symposium. “We are going to remain committed. We are going to remain vigilant in serving this population and enrolling this population and cultivating a campus community that represents them.”
To become an HSI, Cal Poly must also demonstrate a high concentration of students who are eligible for Pell Grants. Pell grant-eligible students make up 23% of total enrollment, up from 19% in 2023.
The school will file for an exception to the Pell Grant requirement, according to Denise Isom, vice president for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer.
“We actually hold AANAPISI status, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution, and Minority Serving Institution status, both of which we have applied for with that exception,” Isom said of the Pell Grant exception at the symposium.
Latinx/e students comprise approximately 29% of the incoming class, or 1,802 students this year. Incoming Latinx/e student enrollment has grown steadily since 2018.
According to US census data, around 40% of Californians identify as Hispanic/Latino. President Jeffrey Armstrong said there is more work to do as Cal Poly works towards matching California demographics.
“We are here to serve high achieving high school graduates of California,” Armstrong said at the symposium. “We are going to work tirelessly till we better match California.”
Historically white institution
Cal Poly enrollment no longer consists of more than 50% white students and is no longer a predominantly white institution. However, Cal Poly is still a historically white institution.
“We have the potential of remaining a culturally white institution, an institutionally white institution, a systematic and structurally white institution, if we do not continue on centering the pieces of the work that are at the heart of our effort in becoming HSI,” Isom said at the symposium.
Cristian Ulisses Reyes, a master’s student in higher education counseling and student affairs, was one of the student panelists at the symposium.
“Although Cal Poly is a dominantly white institution, it’s about the efforts that are being made at an institutional level,” Ulisses Reyes said. “It’s about the faculty that are working at the institution making those classes for students. As long as that intention remains there and student voices are on the forefront, we’ll be just fine.”
Faculty and Curriculum Shifts
Only 44 tenure-track faculty members identify as Hispanic/Latino, approximately 7% of all Cal Poly faculty. As of 2023, people who identify as Hispanic/Latino hold 12% of Cal Poly management positions.
According to Isom, the College of Liberal Arts has hired 20 new faculty members through DEI cluster hiring, sixteen of whom are faculty of color. They also ran an HSI-specific cluster hire, which led to the hiring of six new faculty members focused on expertise in Latinx/e studies.
The DEI cluster hiring process is expanding to be a university-wide program this year with a focus on HSI and Black student success, according to Makekau.
“We had the registrar explore how many courses in our campus catalog included a title that had the word ‘Hispanic,’ ‘Latinx,’ ‘Latine’ or ‘Mexican’ in it. It was less than seven,” Isom said at the symposium. “The clusters mean curriculum changes. It means what students are exposed to changes. It means the foundational knowledge of our majors changes.”
Students, like Industrial Technology and Packaging (ITP) junior Alexis Espinoza, want to see themselves represented in the classroom.
“There’s finally an ITP professor who’s a Latino and I am very close to him,” Espinoza said at the student panel at the symposium. “We speak Spanish to each other in the classroom, and that’s something that I look forward to. Every time I see him hosting a class that I need, I will always make sure to sign up.”
Transfer and Local Student Enrollment Growth
Cal Poly has seen a 12.5% growth in incoming transfer students. More than 800 students from the incoming class come from the local area, 25% higher than last year’s incoming class. More than half of incoming students from the local area are Hispanic/Latino.
“We’ve seen programs like ignited by excellence, where high school students from our partner schools spend a day on this campus,” Isom said. “We’ve done a couple around Latin students and African-American students each year. The number is growing every time, the relationships deepening every time, as they have with our community colleges as well.”
Within the California State University System
Cal Poly and the California State University (CSU) system are planning a merge with Cal Maritime. The two universities have the lowest Hispanic/Latino enrollment rates in the CSU system.
Cal Poly’s Hispanic/Latino proportion of total enrollment has grown by approximately 8%. This is lower than the 14% average growth system wide, according to CSU data.
“[HSI] is a status but at the same time is a new baseline,” Armstrong said at the symposium. “If the board approves the integration of Maritime with Cal Poly, CSU universities will all be Hispanic serving for the first time.”
