Dr. Gina Garcia
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy, University of Pittsburgh
And so I think that until all those external influencers are doing it (committed to anti-racist work), then …it’s not going to happen. So yeah, I’m hopeful, but also we gotta stay diligent in this and it’s much bigger than just the small micro thing we’re focusing on now. It’s got to be macro level.
Key Interview Takeaways
The inequities that were exposed could have been needs all along that schools were either unaware of, or were not paying attention to.
What are schools doing with their climate, not just graduation rates, but faculty of color and board member representation? How do schools assess it and how does it matter?
We can use technology to keep engagement going on social justice issues and for keeping students supported, especially first-year students and first-generation students.
Biography
Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is an associate professor in the department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy, at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches master’s and doctoral students pursuing degrees in higher education and student affairs. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on three core areas: Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs; postsecondary institutions that enroll at least 25% Latinx undergraduate students), Latinx college students, and race and racism in higher education.
Dr. Garcia has made numerous presentations at national conferences, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and ACPA College Student Educators International, and co-authored multiple publications in top journals including American Educational Research Journal, The Review of Higher Education, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. She has given talks at over 20 colleges and universities, including Guttman Community College (CUNY), the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Arizona. Dr. Garcia was the recipient of postdoctoral fellowships from both the Ford Foundation (2016) and the National Academy of Education/Spencer (2017). In spring 2018, she received the Early Career Scholar Award from AERA’s Hispanic Research Issues SIG and in fall 2018 she was the recipient of the ASHE CEP Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship (Junior). She is the author of Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and more recently in 2020, Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs, for which she won the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Book of the Year Award.
In 2019, Dr. Garcia published several articles including, “Toward a multidimensional conceptual framework for understanding “servingness” in Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs): A synthesis of the research,” with Anne-Marie Núñez and Vanessa A. Sansone, in the Review of Educational Research; “Descriptive analysis of graduate enrollment trends at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs): 2005-2015,” with Alberto Guzman-Alvarez in the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education; and “Constructing an HSI organizational identity at three Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the Midwest: Ideal versus current identity,” with Jenesis J. Ramirez, Oscar E. Patron, and Nik L. Cristobal, in the Journal of Higher Education. Dr. Garcia also serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).