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Boston Globe

Salem State has become a hub of Latino higher ed in Mass. Now that's under threat.

The designation opens universities to receive federal funding that aims to help students of color achieve the same outcomes as their whiter and more well-to-do peers. That money can prove essential for the survival of minority-serving institutions themselves, many of which are public schools already grappling with underfunded budgets. MSIs typically rely on federal funding to support as much as a quarter of their total revenue, said Jessica Colorado, a policy analyst at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, and per-student federal funding for Hispanic-serving institutions is Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Since 2020, Now that money is under threat. Even as Salem State is looking to finalize its HSI designation, the Trump administration is eliminating benefits for minority-serving institutions through Peter Wood, who heads the right-leaning National Association of Scholars, said that while historically Black institutions and the tribal colleges 'long predate the rise of DEI' and should have their funding maintained, Hispanic-serving institutions fall into a newer category. Advertisement 'You just have to be an institution that gets really aggressive on its admission of contemporary Hispanic students, so it's much more DEI-like than historically rooted,' Wood said. More broadly, White House threats to federal funding also jeopardize longstanding academic programs and financial aid Salem State already offers its roughly 6,000 students. To university president John Keenan, the federal funding freeze announced, 'It felt like full crisis mode all over again,' Keenan said. Yet Salem State has no plans to change course. Its The university also kept on Elisa Castillo as the assistant vice president for HSI-MSI initiatives, a position that Salem State says is the first of its kind in the state. An immigrant herself, Castillo spends her days brainstorming classroom supports for Latino students and coordinating events, from an appearance by John Quiñone from 'What Would You Do?' in 2023 to a hip-hop symposium this month. Much of her focus lies in creating 'high-impact opportunities,' such as paid internships and study-abroad trips to China or Puerto Rico — Castillo's homeland — for students who feel that sort of thing may be out of reach. If MSI funding goes away, it will likely be her job to find philanthropic funding and state grants instead. Advertisement 'We're in it to do the work, regardless of whether the presidential administration or the federal grants shift,' Castillo said. 'We are here to serve our community and students.' Those students reflect the demographic shifts of the nation as a whole, and the North Shore in particular. Salem State draws many of its students from expanding Latino enclaves north of Boston, including Chelsea, Lynn, and Lawrence. Today, 25 percent of Salem State students identify as Hispanic or Latino, many of them Puerto Rican or Dominican; 8 percent are Black. Salem State University in Salem. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Keenan, the president, calls his students 'gritty' as a compliment. Roughly half the students at Salem State are the first in their families to attend college, and many hold down jobs in addition to their course load. What's more, he notes, most stick around after graduating; 80 percent of Salem State grads stay in Massachusetts, becoming the teachers, social workers, and nurses the state needs desperately. By one measure, nearly 80 percent of all new workers joining the American labor force over the next five years will be Latino, cementing themselves as a core driver of the economy, said Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. 'If these institutions are not designed to prepare a diverse workforce that is much more savvy about technology, math, and science-based fields, the entire country will suffer,' he added. 'Regions like Massachusetts will be in pain without their labor.' Massachusetts has eight other HSIs — community colleges and smaller private schools — and they already have a big impact. Half of the students at those HSIs are awarded Pell Grants, a rate twice as high as non-HSIs, and the institutions award more than half of associate's degrees earned by Latinos statewide, according to Advertisement HSIs also demographics, by providing targeted tutoring and multilingual support, for example, said Marybeth Gasman, associate dean for Research at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Critics point to research showing that funding for HSIs is often simply funneled into universities' general budgets, rather than to programs targeted at underserved students. A directed all of the money to student-specific initiatives — two of which were actually 'Latino centered.' 'When you see those numbers, it can be discouraging,' said Rebecca Perdomo, an author of the study and a higher education consultant. 'It's not going to targeted supports as often as you would it to be.' But that may partly be because the schools that qualify for HSI are broadly underfunded, Perdomo added. A report last spring by the US Government Accountability Office found 'People get their expectations high about HSI funding. Then when you have to distribute, something goes to academic affairs over here, something goes to the library over there. That money runs out before you know it,' said Lorna Rivera, Director for the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at UMass Boston. 'They use it to plug up holes where there have been gaps already.' Advertisement Even without any HSI funds to date, Salem State has made do. It hosted a two-day conference for Hispanic and Minority Serving Institutions in July, which Elisa Castillo, assistant vice president for HSI-MSI initiatives at Salem State University. Salem State is set to become the first four-year public school in Massachusetts to earn the federal designation 'Hispanic Serving Institution,' which would make the school eligible for federal funding that is now uncertain. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff For Morelia Morel Diaz, a 21-year-old biology major and president of the Latin American Student Organization, those small steps count for a lot. Her family moved from the Dominican Republic to Mississippi a decade ago, and she chose to go to college 1,500 miles away at attend Salem State because of its promises of small classes and diversity. The burgeoning HSI program is only adding to her feeling that she made the right choice. 'Hispanic students can be discouraged by the lack of representation we see in our fields, but to see so many of us here together doing it and killing it, achieving those goals, and breaking those barriers, is amazing,' she said. 'A lot of the time, that potential has not been properly supported.' Hilary Burns of the Globe staff contributed to this report. This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Diti Kohli can be reached at