“A diverse national community of Hispanic American leaders in education, business, public service and philanthropy came together last week to present a compelling agenda for the country that calls for record new support for the higher education needs of our fast-growing Hispanic communities,” said HACU President and CEO Antonio R. Flores.
“Our nation’s future economic success and security depends on the education success of a population group that already makes up one of every three new workers entering the U.S. workforce, and which also constitutes the fastest-growing segment of our school-age population. We can no longer afford to ignore the needs of a population group that suffers disproportionately high poverty rates, as well as historically low high school and college graduation rates,” Flores said. “This is not a Latino issue; this is a national imperative.”
HACU’s 16th Annual Conference, held Oct. 26-29 in Denver, Colorado, attracted more than 1,000 educators, advocates and public policymakers joining corporate, community and student leaders from throughout the Americas to call for record new public- and private-sector support for Hispanic education initiatives spanning kindergarten through college and the lifelong learning needs of today’s rapidly evolving, high technology workplace.
“HACU is very important because people are very much aware that education is their passport to the future,” Denver Mayor Wellington Webb said in welcoming the conference, “Hispanic Empowerment: America’s Key to Diversity,” to Denver. Conference participants, in turn, applauded the presence of Christine Johnson, president of the Community College of Denver, as the first Latina to lead a Colorado higher education institution in a state experiencing unprecedented growth in the numbers and diversity of its population.
“We’re losing one out of every three Latinos that enter school,” Leslie Sanchez, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, told the conference. “We have to ensure that these children stop falling behind.”
Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, said more Hispanic representation is needed not only in Congress, but also inside the “bureaucracies” of federal government to better represent the needs of Hispanic Americans, especially when it comes to federal funding priorities for Hispanic education initiatives. Hispanics remain the only under-represented population group in the federal labor force.
HACU is calling for record new federal spending for Hispanic higher education initiatives on two fronts: within federal fiscal year 2003 budgets up for final votes this month in Congress; and within next year’s reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which will determine federal spending priorities for all higher education institutions for the next five years.
“In this economy, a degree is no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” said Congressman Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who has successfully advocated in Congress for Hispanic higher education spending increases as a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Anna Escobedo Cabral, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, called for increased private sector support for Hispanic higher education, and also cited the shortage of Hispanics in corporate management ranks. “We are making progress, but it’s been painfully slow,” Cabral told the conference.
“We want HACU to have the Coast Guard on their scope,” said United States Coast Guard Vice Admiral Tom J. Barrett. “We need your talent in our organization. We need diversity.”
America’s higher education institutions also must promote diversity on and off their campuses, said University of Colorado System Chancellor Elizabeth Hoffman. “There will be no majority population in this country by the second third of this century,” Hoffman told the conference. “It is a moral imperative for public universities to diversify their students, their faculty and their staff.”
Presidents of universities from California to New York attended the inaugural meeting at the Denver conference of the HACU Latino Higher Education Leadership Institute, which is promoting new efforts to increase the ranks of Hispanic presidents and senior executives at minority-serving colleges and universities.
Leaders of the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education at the conference announced a new $6 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to promote diversity at the top at not only Hispanic-Serving Institutions, but also Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities.
Jamie Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, stressed the importance of the unified voice represented by the Alliance of HACU, the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in promoting issues of concern to all minority higher education communities.
Hundreds of Colorado high school students attended a pre-conference Youth Leadership Fair that introduced them to role models and the leadership of Colorado’s education, corporate and community sectors in a day-long event designed to encourage them to aim for college degrees.
Hispanics became the nation’s largest minority population as of the 2000 Census. Hispanic population growth surged nearly 60 percent between 1990 and 2000. Already by 1998, Hispanic school-aged children had become the largest group of minority school children in the United States. Hispanics, with a median age of 26.4 years, are also the youngest population group – nine years younger than the median age for the general population overall.
“The stakes are higher than ever for the future of Hispanic students in America,” said Jose Vicente, a nationally distinguished Hispanic higher education advocate, president of the Inter American Campus of Miami-Dade Community College in Florida, and outgoing chair of the HACU Governing Board.
Conference participants welcomed the election of Salme Steinberg, the nationally renowned president of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago – a campus labeled the most diverse university in the Midwestern United States -- as the new chair of the HACU Governing Board.
HACU represents more than 335 member and partner colleges and universities that serve the largest concentrations of Hispanic higher education students in the United States. HACU also represents a fast-growing international membership of higher education institutions located throughout the Americas and in Spain.
At international sessions at the conference in Denver, educators united in calling for increases in funding and support for study-abroad programs to increase multicultural understanding in a global economy. In the wake of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, and resulting pressures to track international students, U.S. campuses must continue to welcome international students to promote academic interaction and learning opportunities, conference participants were told.
“We must not shrink from making this case and not be swayed by the counsel of those who fear to speak out, and not be intimidated by those who would close our border and call it patriotism,” said Marlene Johnson, executive director and CEO of the National Association of International Educators. “We owe it to our country and to ourselves.”
AT&T, Coors Brewing Company and the United States Army led a stellar list of longstanding champions of diversity in education and the workplace that sponsored HACU’s 16th Annual Conference, joining the United States Coast Guard, University of Colorado System, Central Intelligence Agency and Gateway Computers.
Other conference sponsors celebrated with awards and applause for their support of the national conference were Capital One, Hispanic Magazine, Philip Morris Companies, the United States Department of Agriculture, Eastman Kodak, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), Hispanic Network Magazine, Marriott International, Miller Brewing Company, State Farm Insurance Companies, the Farm Credit Administration, Kauffman Center Entrepreneurial Foundation/Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, MBNA, McDonald’s Corporation, Office of Surface Mining, TIAA-CREF, Towers Perrin, the United States Department of Commerce and Verizon Communications.
“The international reach and renown of our public- and private-sector sponsors energized the conference by their presence, their active participation at this important gathering and for their generous support for our shared efforts to build a better future for Hispanic Americans and for all Americans,” HACU President and CEO Antonio Flores said. “We applaud the commitment to diversity of our sponsors, and are inspired by their support to redouble our efforts to promote Hispanic higher education access, equity and success.”
For more information, contact HACU at (210)
692-3805. Ext. 3214. Or visit www.hacu.net